J. Wells Dixon [attorney, Center for Constitutional Rights Guantanamo Global Justice Initiative]: "In the last week, the government has released unclassified excerpts of Combatant Status Review Tribunal proceedings for four men who were transferred from secret CIA prisons to Guantanamo Bay in September 2006. These documents are remarkable not only because they reveal confessions to horrible acts of violence — in the cases of Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Walid Bin Attash — but also because they raise concerns about the use of evidence obtained by torture and coercion so serious that Senators Graham and Levin, who surreptitiously witnessed KSM's hearing, have called for a thorough investigation.

The government's dual purpose in releasing selected portions of the transcripts is abundantly clear. First, it must go through the proverbial motions to obtain a finding that these men are "unlawful enemy combatants" — i.e., that they are somehow associated with the Taliban or Al Qaeda — which is a technical jurisdictional requirement to make them eligible for trial by military commission. Second, the government is plainly attempting to legitimize their continuing detention by showing that they have received some measure of fair process. But the CSRTs cannot justify the unlawful detention of these men — which has included their disappearance into secret CIA prisons overseas for several years, infliction of "enhanced interrogation techniques" amounting to torture, and denial of access to counsel and isolation for the last six months at Guantanamo — or the flawed military commission process through which they will likely be charged and tried.

While the government may seek to convince the public that the CSRT process is fair and effective in meting out justice to terrorists by parading the so-called "worst of the worst" before these tribunals to announce their confessions, these hearings in no way resemble fair proceedings. Rather, they have all of the hallmarks of the infamous Star Chamber in Tudor England — proceedings conducted largely in secret, without formal charges or access to counsel, with no opportunity for a defendant to view or test evidence against him or to call witnesses or present other evidence in his own defense, and with frequent reliance on evidence obtained through torture and coercion. Like their royal predecessor, the CSRTs are sham proceedings established to try unspecified or undefined offenses without public scrutiny and to conceal the circumstances under which alleged confessions to these offenses were likely extracted. Any suggestions that the CSRT proceedings comport with our values and traditional notions of justice insults our nation's Founders who insisted on due process and strict adherence to the rule of law.

We have a system of justice in this country with rules that are fair and fully capable of trying individuals accused of heinous offenses — the criminal justice system — which notably has been used successfully to prosecute alleged terrorists, both foreign and domestic. Indeed, it is only in an open court before a neutral judge, with access to counsel and a fair opportunity to present and test evidence against a detainee, that we will really know whether that person has made a knowing and voluntary confession or is otherwise guilty of terrorist acts. And it is in open court that the torture and abuse that these men have likely suffered at the hands of U.S. officials, and the possible complicity of foreign governments in the CIA's secret prison program, will be exposed.

Ultimately, by labeling these detainees as unlawful enemy combatants and refusing to give them fair trials in the civilian court system, the government creates a substantial risk of validating what men like KSM want most — to be seen as legitimate warriors against the United States — rather than what they may actually be — perpetrators of crimes against humanity."