[JURIST] Two former military prosecutors characterized the military tribunals at Guantanamo [JURIST news archive] as "a fraud" and rigged" in e-mails written last year and just obtained by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Major Robert Preston wrote to his superviser:

I consider the insistence on pressing ahead with cases that would be marginal even if properly prepared to be a severe threat to the reputation of the military justice system and even a fraud on the American people." Preston also detailed personal moral and ethical problems with working on the cases, and was later transferred out.

When I volunteered to assist with this process and was assigned to this office, I expected there would at least be a minimal effort to establish a fair process and diligently prepare cases against significant accused. Instead, I find a half-hearted and disorganised effort by a skeleton group of relatively inexperienced attorneys to prosecute fairly low-level accused in a process that appears to be rigged.