Secret hearings to determine Guantanamo detainees' fate

The US began a series of secret hearings today to determine whether 14 alleged terrorist leaders at its prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, should be declared “enemy combatants” who can be held indefinitely and prosecuted by military tribunals.

No details were released and a military spokesman declined to identify detainees who appeared before the panel of three officers.

Edited transcripts of the hearings at the US Navy base in south east Cuba will be released later, he said.

The 14 detainees, including an alleged mastermind of the September 11 attacks, were moved in September from a secret CIA prison network to the prison at Guantanamo Bay, where the US holds about 385 men on suspicion of links to al Qaida or the Taliban.

Some are expected to boycott the proceedings and their hearings will be held in absentia, the spokesman added.

The military held 558 combatant-status review tribunals between July 2004 and March 2005 and the panels concluded that all but 38 detainees were “enemy combatants” who should be held. Those 38 were eventually released from Guantanamo.

The military allowed the media to cover previous hearings, but this time has adopted more stringent rules, barring anyone without a special security clearance.

The 14 detainees include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a suspected mastermind of the 9/11 attacks who was captured in Pakistan in March 2003, and other alleged al Qaida figures.

Legal experts have criticised the US decision to bar independent observers from the hearings, with one news agency filing a letter of protest, arguing that it would be “an unconstitutional mistake to close the proceedings in their entirety.”