July 18, 2008, Go Tell it on the Mountain
Certainly, don't tell it to me, sayeth U.S. District Court Judge James Robertson, who denied the motion of GTMO detainee and alleged "OBL driver" Salim Hamdan for a stay of his show-trial military commission hearing. Hamdan, you recall, had won a Supreme Court case challenging the earlier version of commissions, only to have Congress pass a law calling for comparably vague and arbitrary commissions... the theme remains the same, really... any procedural unfairness is o.k. as long as it leads to a finding of guilt, be it hearsay, evidence obtained by torture, or "secret" evidence not provided to the prisoner. [Our interview with Neal Katyal, one of Hamdan's attorneys, is here.]
Hamdan's lawyers knew this was a long-shot; meanwhile, the rest of the GTMO detainee habeas corpus cases are proceeding apace before District Judge Hogan, before whom they are consolidated for procedural expediting (except for some cases retained by Judge Leon); our friend Candace is kind enough to keep me in the loop on that, and at least, so far, it looks like the judges intend to hold the government to the Supreme Court's imperative of "expeditious".
We'll all just have to stay tuned...