The Seton Hall folks who used Defense Department data early this year to show that most of the prisoners at Gitmo aren't accussed of being al-Qaeda fighters are back with another report, this time showing just how top notch the hearings for the prisoners are. From a Washingtonpost.com summary:
In their [new] report, "No-Hearing Hearings: An Analysis of the Proceedings of the Government's Combatant Status Review Tribunals at Guantanano," the Denbeauxs conclude based upon Defense Department documents that that "the Government did not produce any witnesses in any hearing and did not present any documentary evidence to the detainee in 96 percent of the cases."...Even more disturbing, the report determined, was that the government took "mulligans" against those few detainees who were actually found not to be an "enemy combatants." In each of the three (out of 102 documented cases) in which the Status Review Tribunals "found the detainee to be not/no longer an enemy combatant...the Defense Department ordered a new [proceeding] to be convened and the detainee was then found to be an enemy combatant." If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. And in one case, the Defense Department had to try three times -- three different tribunal proceedings -- before it got the "enemy combatant" classification it was seeking.
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