5 Dec 2024 7:28 am
Lessons from Abroad
Sometimes it is instructive to consider matters in foreign regimes to see what’s wrong with our own country. Russia, for example, recently released a Wall Street Journal reporter named Evan Gershkovich. He had been writing critical articles about Russian president Vladimir Putin and Russia’s war on Ukraine when he was suddenly arrested in Russia on charges of espionage. After a secret trial, he was convicted and sentenced to 16 years in prison. He was released as part of a big prisoner trade between the United States and Russia.
U.S. officials and the mainstream press correctly pointed out the kangaroo nature of Gershkovich’s trial. They pointed out that in the United States, thanks to the Bill of Rights, trials have to be held in public. Moreover, the accused here in the United States is entitled to have a jury, rather than a judge or commission, decide whether one is guilty.
What these American critics forget, however, is that while those procedural protections apply to America’s federal-court system, they do not apply to the national-security establishment’s judicial system that was established at its military prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. That judicial system mirrors the system used in Russia.
For example, at Gitmo the speedy-trial requirement in the Bill of Rights doesn’t apply. People who are accused of terrorism can be imprisoned for life without a trial. And if a trial is ever held, the accused is not accorded a jury trial, as the Bill of Rights guarantees; instead a military commission decides guilt or innocence.
Moreover, unlike the federal-court system, defendants in the Pentagon-CIA-NSA system can be tortured into confessing to a crime. Witnesses also can be tortured into providing evidence against the accused. Unlike the federal-court system, hearsay is admissible to help convict the accused. While the federal judiciary has created the appearance of establishing jurisdiction over the judicial system at Gitmo, the people who have been incarcerated at Gitmo for 20 years without a trial know that U.S. judicial control is just a veneer.
continued...
Sometimes it is instructive to consider matters in foreign regimes to see what’s wrong with our own country. Russia, for example, recently released a Wall Street Journal reporter named Evan Gershkovich. He had been writing critical articles about Russian president Vladimir Putin and Russia’s war on Ukraine when he was suddenly arrested in Russia on charges of espionage. After a secret trial, he was convicted and sentenced to 16 years in prison. He was released as part of a big prisoner trade between the United States and Russia.
U.S. officials and the mainstream press correctly pointed out the kangaroo nature of Gershkovich’s trial. They pointed out that in the United States, thanks to the Bill of Rights, trials have to be held in public. Moreover, the accused here in the United States is entitled to have a jury, rather than a judge or commission, decide whether one is guilty.
What these American critics forget, however, is that while those procedural protections apply to America’s federal-court system, they do not apply to the national-security establishment’s judicial system that was established at its military prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. That judicial system mirrors the system used in Russia.
For example, at Gitmo the speedy-trial requirement in the Bill of Rights doesn’t apply. People who are accused of terrorism can be imprisoned for life without a trial. And if a trial is ever held, the accused is not accorded a jury trial, as the Bill of Rights guarantees; instead a military commission decides guilt or innocence.
Moreover, unlike the federal-court system, defendants in the Pentagon-CIA-NSA system can be tortured into confessing to a crime. Witnesses also can be tortured into providing evidence against the accused. Unlike the federal-court system, hearsay is admissible to help convict the accused. While the federal judiciary has created the appearance of establishing jurisdiction over the judicial system at Gitmo, the people who have been incarcerated at Gitmo for 20 years without a trial know that U.S. judicial control is just a veneer.
continued...