Gitmo lawyer consulted priest on trials’ fairness

STRUGGLING with orders to prosecute a young detainee at Guantanamo Bay, Army Lt Col Darrel Vandeveld went online and consulted a priest for help with his concerns about the fairness of the military tribunals.

Vandeveld described a crisis of conscience over the prisoners’ treatment and the ethical handling of cases that led him to quit last month.

“I am beginning to have grave misgivings about what I am doing, and what we are doing as a country,” he wrote in the email. “I no longer want to participate in the system, but I lack the courage to quit. I am married, with four children, and not only will they suffer, I’ll lose a lot of friends.”

Vandeveld has sparked criticism of the tribunals with claims that the government withheld evidence from detainees. But his correspondence with the priest and other statements suggest his defection was driven also by discomfort with the unforgiving treatment of detainees at the isolated US Navy base in Cuba.

A 48-year-old veteran of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, Vandeveld has testified he went to Guantanamo in 2007 as a “true believer” in the Pentagon’s specially designed system for prosecuting terrorist suspects.

In his email to the priest, the Catholic said that while the detainees may be guilty, minimal thought was being given to their rehabilitation. He said he believed teaching tolerance would “end the hatred” of the Guantanamo prisoners.

Father John Dear, a Jesuit priest and social activist, encouraged Vandeveld to quit, telling him the US operation at Guantanamo is “a sham”.

The chief prosecutor at Guantanamo, Army Col Lawrence Morris, said that Vandeveld never raised any concerns with him.