Gitmo Ex-Prosecutor to Testify for Defense in Military Trial

Posted by Nick Fiske, Jurist Legal News and Research at 11:33 AM on February 22, 2008.

Former Guantanamo Bay chief military prosecutor Col. Morris Davis told the AP Thursday that he has agreed to appear as a defense witness in the military commission trial of Guantanamo detainee Salim Ahmed Hamdan. In October 2007, Davis resigned from his position at Guantanamo Bay, saying that politics were interfering with the prosecutions process. In a Wednesday interview with The Nation, Morris alleged that Pentagon general counsel William Haynes told him that none of the detainees could be acquitted, implying that the tribunal process may be rigged. Hamdan's lawyers plan to argue at a preliminary hearing in April that this alleged political interference violates the rules governing war crimes trials established by the 2006 Military Commissions Act. AP has more.

In October 2007, Davis told the New York Times that he was pressured to use classified evidence against defendants in closed war crimes trials for detainees. Also in October, Davis said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal that Guantanamo prosecutions were becoming politicized. Davis said that recently approved rules governing prosecutions at Guantanamo Bay result in the chief prosecutor reporting [PDF memo text] via the Legal Advisor to the Convening Authority to the Pentagon general counsel [PDF memo text], a presidential appointee. Davis said he filed an internal complaint about this structure, but the complaint was rejected.