Report: Gitmo Detainees Denied Witnesses

In this photo, reviewed by a US Department of Defense official, detainees stand together at a fence, one holding Islamic prayer beads, at Camp Delta prison, at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base, Cuba on Tuesday, Sept. 19, 2006. An attorney for a Guantanamo Bay detainee, Saifullah A. Paracha, has asked a judge to block a planned medical procedure on the prisoner's heart, saying that performing it at the U.S. base puts his life at risk, Wednesday, Nov. 15, 2006. Paracha already had one heart attack while in U.S. custody and in recent days has suffered chest pains, his lawyers said. Doctors plan to perform a cardiac catheterization on him this month at Guantanamo. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley) (Brennan Linsley - AP)

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- The U.S. military called no witnesses, withheld evidence from detainees and usually reached a decision within a day as it determined that hundreds of men detained at Guantanamo Bay were "enemy combatants," according to a new report.

The analysis of transcripts and records by two lawyers for Guantanamo detainees, aided by more than two dozen law students, found that hearings that determined whether a prisoner should remain in custody gave the accused little opportunity to contest allegations against him.

"These were not hearings. These were shams," said Mark Denbeaux, an attorney and Seton Hall University law professor who along with his son, Joshua, is the author of the report. They provided an advance copy of the report to The Associated Press late Thursday and planned to release it Friday on the Internet.

Their report, based on an analysis of records of military hearings of 393 detainees, comes as the U.S. government seeks to severely restrict detainee access to civilian courts, arguing that the Combatant Status Review Tribunals should be their main legal recourse.

Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, dismissed the findings as "recycled allegations," and noted the tribunals gave each detainee an opportunity to contest their designation as an enemy combatant.

"It is not a criminal trial and is not intended to determine guilt or innocence," Gordon said. "Rather, it is an administrative process ... to confirm the status of enemy combatants detained at Guantanamo as part of the Global War on Terrorism."

The military held Combatant Status Review Tribunals for 558 detainees at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay in southeast Cuba between July 2004 and January 2005 and found all but 38 were enemy combatants. Handcuffed detainees appeared before a panel of three officers with no defense attorney, only a military "personal representative."

According to the report, the representatives said nothing in the hearings 14 percent of the time and made no "substantive" comments in 30 percent. In some cases, the representative even appeared to advocate the government's position, the report said.

The report is based on transcripts of tribunals that the government first released earlier this year in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by The Associated Press as well additional records provided by lawyers for 102 Guantanamo detainees.

Twenty-one first-year law students at Seton Hall University in Newark, N.J., analyzed the documents to create a database analyzed by eight second- and third-year students.

Among their findings:

_ The government did not produce any witnesses in any hearing.