Media barred from Gitmo hearings

The Pentagon announced on Tuesday that the media will not be allowed to attend hearings for 14 suspected terrorists jailed on the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Instead, the media will have to put up with heavily edited transcripts provided by the military at their discretion.

Legal experts and human rights advocates condemned the government’s decision; one legal observer noted that:

“What the Pentagon is really concerned about is that ‘these 14 will open their mouths and say what was done to them,’ said Scott Horton, chair of the international law committee of the New York City Bar Association. ‘They were tortured and mistreated, and that fact is classified secret, which just shows you the perversity in which this whole process is traveling.’”

Welcome to the age of no habeas corpus. (I wonder if Abraham Lincoln would have accepted it).

Links- Guardian UK, Reuters AlertNet, FOX News, Andrew Sullivan – The Daily Dish, www.cd.sc.ehu.es

Image- CBC