sillytrippy ([info]sillytrippy) wrote,
@ 2008-08-06 22:49:00
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7545484.stm

I didn't know Guantanamo cases were being treated as war crimes... I thought they were unlawful combatants, which surely would make for criminal cases? Whatever, expecting sense is probably too much.

Anyway, were any of Hitler's drivers convicted of war crimes? Or was Hamdan accused of something more than just enthusiastic driving?

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[info]caramel_betty
2008-08-06 11:03 pm UTC (link)
The links on the sidebar are moderately helpful, as is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enemy_combatant

Essentially, pre-existing case law in the US (such as Ex parte Quinn) says that enemy combatants can be tried by the military tribunals, but aren't prisoners of war. The sort of example they give would be, say, someone who snuck through the lines, disguised, to blow up a hospital.

However, at various points the Supreme Court has ruled that the alleged enemy combatants have the right to (for example) challenge their status as enemy combatant in an independent court (which, for these purposes, means a mainstream US court, rather than a military court). At each point, the Bush administration has attempted to side-step the court's ruling by getting Congress to pass legislation allowing what they're doing. The latest attempt at this was in 2006. "The Military Commissions Act (MCA) passed in 2006 removed the right of habeas corpus and set up tribunals to try detainees who were not US citizens." However, in a 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court has told Bush to go fuck himself - you can't suspend habeas corpus.

However, while the alleged enemy combatants are now able to challenge their status in the US courts, the Bush administration has decided that it's going ahead with the military tribunals anyway. This may lead to a whole heap of shit if it's later determined that they shouldn't be there anyway, and that the trial was potentially unlawful.

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[info]rpc25
2008-08-06 11:18 pm UTC (link)
Reading the article, the defence case seems to have been that he was just driving enthusiastically for the money...

Apparently Hitler's chauffeur, Emil Maurice, was a senior SS officer too, and was given four years hard labour as punishment (though I'm relying on google translate's interpretation of the German wikipedia page here... :-)

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