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Chief Guantanamo Judge Wrote Paper Slamming Military Commissions

By Debra Cassens Weiss

December 13, 2007, 12:45 pm CST

The chief judge of military commissions at Guantanamo Bay apparently had a different view of the system when he was a master’s degree candidate at the Naval War College.

Col. Ralph Kohlmann concluded in a 2002 paper that terrorism suspects should be tried in federal courts rather than before military commissions, the New York Times reports.

An apparent lack of independence by military judges could create credibility problems and international condemnation, he said. Federal courts could handle the job and protect jurors, as shown by past experience with terrorism and organized crime cases.

“Even a good military tribunal is a bad idea,” Kohlmann wrote. “The existing United States criminal justice system does not have to be put aside simply because the potential defendants have scary friends.”

The paper got the notice of human rights advocates when David Glazier, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, e-mailed them a link after coming across the document along with other court papers in a Guantanamo case.

“My reaction was, this is pretty amazing, that even the chief judge of the commissions has recognized the horrendous problems of the commission process,” he told the Times.