GUANTANAMO BAY US NAVAL BASE, Cuba, Aug 24 (AFP) - The defence for the first "war on terror" detainee to be brought before a special US military tribunal on Tuesday demanded that nearly all of the officers judging the case be replaced.
The military-appointed lawyer for Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a driver for Osama bin Laden, said the presiding judge and four others of the six member panel should stand down.
A marine lieutenant colonel on the judging panel told the opening day of the military commission he had been involved in the transportation of prisoners from Afghanistan to the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay US Naval Base in Cuba.
An air force colonel was a senior intelligence officer who operated in Afghanistan from November 2001 to about February 2002 as US forces and their allies brought down and chased the Taliban militia and bin Laden.
The lawyer, Navy Lieutenant Commander Charlie Swift, said the United States "appears to be metering out victor's justice" by letting the officers stay on the panel.
He also objected to a third member of the panel who told how he visited Ground Zero at New York about two weeks after the World Trade Center towers were destroyed by Al-Qaeda hijackers.
A fourth officer admitted he had been "angered" by the September 11 attacks and that he feared his family would be attacked because of his duties judging the cases of Guantanamo detainees.
US military authorities have asked that the names of the tribunal members and the military prosecutors not be published because of fears for the families.
Swift said the presence of such officers as judges "does not give confidence to the accused and does not give confidence to the public at large that this will be fair."
Military prosecutors opposed the challenges as unfounded, but presiding officer Colonel Peter Brownback agreed Swift's challenge could be sent to the US military authorities that oversee the commissions.
Swift also said Brownback should not be allowed to serve as the presiding judge, saying that as the only lawyer on the panel he could have an overbearing influence on the rest of the panel.
The defence has also filed motions saying the tribunals should wait until US civilian courts have had a chance to rule on the legality of the commissions.
The makeup of the panels is one of many complaints made by defence lawyers, legal groups and human rights activists about the military commissions that will this week hold pre-trial hearings for three more Guantanamo inmates, including Australian David Hicks.
"The commission here must be completely independent and impartial and what we saw today from members of the commission cast doubts," said Sam Zia Zarifa, an observer at the hearing for Human Rights Watch.
But Deborah Pearlstein of Human Rights First said the commission process was to blame, not the military judges. "These are clearly good people trying to do the right thing in a badly damaged system."