Judge selected for Guantanamo detainees’ tribunals
Published 9:00 pm Tuesday, December 30, 2003
WASHINGTON — A retired Army general will oversee military tribunals for suspected terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, including approving charges, the Pentagon said Tuesday.
Chosen for the job was John Altenburg Jr., who retired as a two-star general in 2002. His last military assignment was assistant judge advocate general for the Department of the Army.
None of the 660 suspected terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay has been charged, and although the Pentagon has not said when it expects to begin military trials, the first is expected soon. It would be the United States’ first use of military tribunals since World War II.
Earlier this month the Pentagon assigned military defense lawyers to Guantanamo detainees Salim Ahmed Hamdan of Yemen and David Hicks of Australia. They are among six people held at Guantanamo whom President Bush has determined are subject to trial by a military tribunal.
The decision to approve specific charges against any of the six, and to refer a case to trial, rests with Altenburg.
Human rights organizations have called on the United States to put on trial or release all the prisoners — or at least say what is planned for them. The groups complain that the open-ended, indefinite detentions have led to a deterioration in mental health, and dozens of suicide attempts, at the prison set up shortly after the start of the war in Afghanistan in October 2001.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has said military trials will be fair, impartial and as open to public scrutiny as possible without compromising classified information or protected witnesses.
The Pentagon on Tuesday also named four members of a review panel that would hear appeals of cases decided by military tribunals, and said they will be commissioned as Army major generals for their two-year term on the panel.
The four are:
Griffin B. Bell, the former U.S. attorney general in the Carter administration and former U.S. circuit judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Griffin currently is a partner at the law firm of King &Spalding.
Edward G. Biester, who has served since 1980 as judge of the Court of Common Pleas of Bucks County, Pa., Seventh Judicial District. He was Pennsylvania attorney general from 1979 to 1980 and served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1967 to 1977.
William T. Coleman, Jr., a senior partner and the senior counselor in the law firm of O’Melveny &Myers. He was U.S. secretary of transportation from 1975 to 1977 in the Ford administration.
Frank Williams, chief justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court. He served as a captain in the Army during the Vietnam War.
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