Military Commissions Act of 2009
The United States House of Representatives passed a bill, known as the Military Commissions Act of 2009, which amended the Military Commissions Act of 2006.[1]
Formally, it is Title XVIII of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010 (Pub.L. 111-84, 123 Stat. 2190, enacted October 28, 2009).
On December 3, 2009, Carol Rosenberg, of the Miami Herald, reported on a hearing before Lieutenant Colonel Nancy Paul, the Presiding Officer for USA v. Al Qosi, describing Paul as the first Presiding Officer to address the implications of the new act.[2] Paul ruled that the Prosecution could not use the new act to place additional charges against Sudanese captive Ibrahim al Qosi.
A new 281 page set of procedures for conducting military commissions in accordance with the Military Commissions Act of 2009 was released on May 4, 2010, one day ahead of the first new hearing in the case of Canadian Omar Khadr.[3] On May 24, 2010, Steven Edwards, writing for the Vancouver Sun, reported that the Canwest News Service had recently learned that there was internal controversy within the Obama administration over new rules for conducting Guantanamo military commissions. According to Edwards some Obama appointees had tried to get new rules which would have caused the Prosecution to abandon charging Guantanamo captives like Omar Khadr with murder. Edwards wrote that the change would have triggered dropping charges against a third of the Guantanamo captives the Prosecution planned to charge with murder.
See also
- Detainee Treatment Act
- Military Commissions Act of 2006
- Enemy Belligerent Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010
References
- ↑ Jaclyn Belczyk (2009-10-09). "House passes amendments to Military Commissions Act". The Jurist. Archived from the original on 2009-12-04.
- ↑ Carol Rosenberg (2009-12-03). "Guantánamo judge won't expand Sudanese captive's war crimes case". Miami Herald. Archived from the original on 2009-12-04.
- ↑
Steven Edwards (2010-05-24). "Obama officials pushed, but failed, for new rules in Khadr tribunal". Vancouver Sun. Retrieved 2010-05-25.
The officials sought to strip a new commissions manual of a law-of-war murder definition that is central to Khadr’s prosecution in the mortal wounding of Special Forces Sgt. First Class Chris Speer during a 2002 firefight in Afghanistan, insiders say. Omission of the segment could have also obliged prosecutors to trim or abandon “up to one-third” of its cases, according to one inside estimate.
mirror
| 40x40px | Wikisource has original text related to this article: |
