GUANTANAMO BAY US NAVAL BASE, Cuba, Aug 29 (AFP) - The United States will need years to finish the warcrimes tribunals of Al-Qaeda and Taliban detainees it started this week, according to US officials.
But only a small proportion of the 585 men from 40 countries held at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba are likely to face the military commissions that some observers say have put the US commitment to justice on trial.
The appearances of David Hicks, an Australian who converted to Islam and fought with the Taliban, Yemenis Salim Ahmed Hamdan and Hamza Ahmed al Bahlul, and Ibrahim Ahmed al-Qosi, a Sudanese follower of Osama bin Laden, were accompanied by a barrage of criticism.
Translation errors caused courtroom consternation, defence lawyers protested the lack of help and rights groups said that while the presiding judge, Colonel Peter Brownback, and his panel of five officers may have good intentions, there was a serious risk of bias.
At the end of the week, the official US line remained that the commissions offered a full and fair trial, while meeting US security concerns as the post-September 11 war on terror is pursued.
Critics highlighted the lack of appeal outside the military chain of command, as much evidence remained secret and panel members had little experience handling labyrinthine US and international law.
And the process, while hastily set up, will take time to complete.
Colonel David McWilliams, chief spokesman for the military commissions, said "it will be a matter of years" before the last accused terrorist makes it through the tribunals.
Most detainees have been at Camp Delta here, with virtually no contact with the outside world, for more than two and a half years. Hicks's father said his son was now worried about his "mental side."
The US military only started telling detainees they would be charged in June of last year. On top of the four cases started, only 11 more detainees are considered eligible for trial.
Chief prosecutor Colonel Bob Swann said nine more cases are close to being finalised and he promised some big Al-Qaeda names would soon follow.
McWilliams said the time to prepare cases and the number of prosecutors and defenders available meant a wait was inevitable.
The commission spokesman also told how only a "small proportion" of Guantanamo inmates, and the "high value" detainees held in secret elsewhere, would face charges.
All detainees are going through review tribunals to decide if they were properly labeled "enemy combatants." Administrative tribunals will then filter out those who are not considered a threat to the United States.
"It is very unlikely that the majority would go to the military commissions," said McWilliams.
That still leaves the US military facing multiple legal challenges, which could go to the US Supreme Court, as well as a fight to maintain its judicial reputation.
The government is desperate for the first US military commissions since 1948 to get an international stamp of approval.
On top of perceived judicial failures, most lawyers and rights activists say the commissions are an administrative mess which no one understands. Brownback, for example, has left it to his superiors to decide if Bahlul, an Al-Qaeda propaganda specialist, could defend himself.
"It is not US justice but the US commitment to justice which is being called into question through these trials," said Navy Lieutenant Commander Charlie Swift, who is defending Hamdan in the tribunals and attacking his military bosses in the civil courts.
"I am very proud of military justice. It is on a par with the federal and state system. The prosecutors and defenders are very professional. But this is not military justice," he added.
"While the immediate focus of the proceedings is the guilt or innocence of the four men, all those involved are keenly aware that the events in the courtroom here are part of a wider drama involving the standing and reputation of the United States for evenhanded justice," The New York Times reported.
According to Neal Sonnett, a Miami lawyer who observed the hearings for the American Bar Association, the system is too "enclosed," a result of having soldiers as "the captor, the prosecutor and the defender and the reviewer and the jailer or the executioner."