- NEW YORK (PRNewswire)
- After he signed an order allowing the use of military tribunals in terrorist
cases, President George W. Bush insisted he alone should decide who goes
before such a military court, his aides tell Newsweek. The tribunal document
gives the government the power to try, sentence -- and even execute --
suspected foreign terrorists in secrecy, under special rules that would
deny them constitutional rights and allow no chance to appeal.
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- Bush's powers to form a military court came from a secret
legal memorandum, which the U.S. Justice Department began drafting in the
days after Sept. 11, Newsweek has learned. The memo allows Bush to invoke
his broad wartime powers, since the U.S., they concluded, was in a state
of "armed conflict." Bush used the memo as the legal basis for
his order to bomb Afghanistan. Weeks later, the lawyers concluded that
Bush would use his expanded powers to form a military court for captured
terrorists. Officials envision holding the trials on aircraft carriers
or desert islands, report Investigative Correspondent Michael Isikoff and
Contributing Editor Stuart Taylor Jr. in the November 26 issue of Newsweek
(on newsstands Monday, November 19).
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- The idea for a secret military tribunal was first presented
by William Barr, a Justice Department lawyer -- and later attorney general
-- under the first President Bush, as a way to handle the terrorists responsible
for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. The idea didn't
take back then. But Barr floated it to top White House officials in the
days after Sept. 11 and this time he found allies, Newsweek reports. Barr's
inspiration came when he walked by a plaque outside his office commemorating
the trial of Nazi saboteurs captured during World War II. The men were
tried and most were executed in secret by a special military tribunal.
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