Prosecutor Darrel Vandeveld resigns over fairness of Guantanamo trials

September 25, 12:07 PMCivil Liberties ExaminerJ.D. Tuccille

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In yet another sign that the kangaroo courts the Bush administration has set up to try terror suspects are falling apart, Army Lieutenant Colonel Darrel Vandeveld, a U.S. military prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay, has resigned because of ethical qualms over the way the government is conducting the prosecution of Mohammed Jawad.

Says the ACLU:

We learned late today that Army Lieutenant Colonel Darrel Vandeveld, the lead prosecutor in the military commissions case against Mohammed Jawad, has resigned in protest because the prosecution team was not providing the defense evidence that could indicate Jawad’s innocence. Jawad was a teenager when he was captured in Afghanistan and he’s one of the two youngest prisoners at Guantánamo.

CBS adds, "In a declaration submitted to the defense, Vandeveld said prosecutors knew Jawad may have been drugged before the attack and that the Afghan Interior Ministry said two other men had confessed to the same crime."

The former prosecutor also raises the possibility that Jawad was mistreated in custody -- specifically, by being subjected to sleep-deprivation.

Vandeveld hasn't just resigned, he's supporting a defense effort to get the charges against Jawad dismissed because of prosecutorial misconduct.

With his resignation, Vandeveld follows in the footsteps of at least three other military prosecutors, including former chief prosecutor, Col. Morris D. Davis, who ended up testifying for the defense.

Here's the deal: When your prosecutors jump ship and rush to lend support to the defense, it should be apparent that there's something rotten at the core of the legal apparatus. The military commissions aren't working, and they're clearly so corrupt that they're turning hardened veterans of the prosecutors' office into ad hoc public defenders.

Oh, and in a turn from the outrageous to the outrageously comic, Hina Shamsi of the ACLU's National Security Project reports that even the translators employed by the military commissions to make it possible for defendants to communicate with the court, and vice versa, aren't up to the job.

Al-Hawsawi’s defense lawyer, Major Jon Jackson, said at the end of the day that his client doesn’t understand about a quarter of the court proceedings because of incomprehensible interpretation. Al-Hawsawi’s civilian attorney, Nina Ginsberg, explained that because of shoddy interpretation, half of what Al-Hawsawi said to the judge about attorney-client confidentiality concerns, and concerns that he will not be able to obtain from the government documents related to his own torture, was unintelligible. All the defense counsel have asked that the proceedings be stayed until the government (whose responsibility it is) obtains competent interpreters.

Brilliant.