Ex-AG Griffin Bell named to review panel for tribunals
From Barbara Starr
CNN
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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A former U.S. attorney general, an ex-presidential cabinet member, a former congressman and a state chief justice will serve on a review panel for military commissions that would try detainees being held by the United States.
Griffin Bell, U.S. Attorney General under President Carter, is among the four civilians designated by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to serve on a panel that would review decisions of any legal proceedings against the detainees being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The four civilians will be commissioned as major generals in the U.S. Army and serve two-year terms, although the work will be intermittent. Those named include:
• Bell, who in addition to being a former U.S. Attorney General, is a former judge on the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.
• Edward Biester, a former congressman and Pennsylvania Attorney General who now is a Common Pleas Court judge in Buck County, Pennsylvania.
• William T. Coleman Jr., secretary of transportation under President Ford and currently a private attorney in Washington, D.C.
• Frank Williams, chief justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court.
The panel will review commission proceedings, consider written and oral arguments by the defense, prosecution and the government of the nation of which the accused is a citizen.
If they decide that a material error of law has occurred, the case can be returned for further proceedings or there may be dismissal of charges.
The panel will look at verdicts reached by tribunals and then possibly pass those verdicts to the president for further review. It would specifically review any death penalty verdicts.
A new "appointing authority" also was expected to be named on Tuesday.
As the potential start of the tribunals grows closer, the job of appointing authority is becoming increasingly significant. This person would be responsible for approving charges against a detainee, referring a case to trial, appointing a commission panel and negotiating any conflicts during trial.
Earlier this month, a federal appeals court ruled that terrorist suspects held in secret U.S. custody on non-U.S. territory deserve access to lawyers and the American legal system. (Full story)
The U.S. Supreme Court has already agreed to decide whether U.S. courts have jurisdiction over the "detention of foreign nationals captured abroad ... and incarcerated at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba."
More than 600 men from about 40 countries are being detained by the United States as part of its war on terror. The men are said to be al Qaeda or Taliban fighters captured mostly in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Some have been held for as long as two years at Guantanamo, without access to lawyers or family. The base is technically on international soil.
The U.S. government has been interrogating the men, and deciding whether they will face a military tribunal or be released back to their home countries.
