Lapkin Lambasts Hicks' Legal Strategy

As the United Kingdom grants Muhammad Dawood (aka David Hicks) British citizenship, and a potential "get out of Guantanamo free card", Ted Lapkin points out a few pertinent issues:

The Blair Government previously demanded the release from US custody of British subjects who were captured in Afghanistan while fighting for Osama bin Laden. The Hicks legal team will doubtless argue that its client should benefit from similar treatment. But it is worth noting that the discharge of those Britons from Guantanamo transpired before the 7/7 London suicide bombings. It remains to be seen whether the legacy of home-grown jihadist terrorism in the English Midlands has dampened Whitehall's enthusiasm for springing Islamic holy warriors from detention.

Reviewing the tactics deployed by Hicks' legal team, Lapkin opines:

Moreover, it is Hicks's own cunctatory lawyers who bear the primary responsibility for the length of their client's incarceration without trial. With all the chutzpah of a patricide who appeals for mercy on account of orphanhood, advocates for Hicks complain about the glacial pace of American military justice.

But in a deliberate strategy that seems governed more by politics than legal considerations, Hicks's lawyers have drawn out the judicial process through repeated requests for postponements. And while in US courtrooms his solicitors employ every delaying tactic in the book, in the courtroom of public opinion they shed crocodile tears over their client's predicament.

Lapkin then makes a plausible case that Hicks's supporters are guilty of hipocrisy in their criticism of the Guantanamo Military Tribunal system:

Thus the only plausible reason why the Hicks legal team is playing for time is so they can have their cake in the courtroom while eating it in the public relations arena. Because they realise the evidence against their client is overwhelming, they understand that political pressure to short-circuit the trial is his only chance to escape a serious prison sentence.

A similar sort of politically motivated dishonesty plagues other forms of criticism that have been directed towards the military commission process. Rules of evidence that permit the introduction of hearsay evidence are often indignantly denounced as a travesty of justice by the tribunal's opponents. Yet this same evidentiary procedure was employed by the Nuremberg tribunal after World War II, and is used today by other war crimes proceedings which no one thinks to challenge.

The United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia admits hearsay testimony that is deemed to be pertinent by the presiding judges. But other than neo-Nazis, rabid Serb nationalists and John Pilger, there are few voices complaining that Herman Goering and Slobodan Milosevic were the victims of kangaroo justice.

The most vociferous assailants of the US military commission process are often ardent supporters of the UN and its work. Thus for many critics of US foreign policy, what's good for the ICT goose is not good for the Guantanamo gander. Hearsay evidence is fine for the UN, but it is an abomination for the US.