Terror-court general defends role
Posted on Fri, Jun. 20, 2008
By CAROL ROSENBERG
HEESOON YIM / ASSOCIATED PRESS
Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann, legal advisor to the convening authority, Office of Military Commissions, takls to reporters at the Pentagon, Monday, March 31, 2008.
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba -- Defending his ''intense and direct'' management style, the general overseeing the war trials here testified Thursday that he pushed Pentagon lawyers to pick up the pace of war-crimes prosecutions -- not for political purposes but in the interest of kick-starting sluggish military commissions.
Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann described arriving at the Pentagon's Office of Military Commissions nearly a year ago and discovering ''a lack of focus'' and ``a lack of preparation.''
Hartmann testified before an Army judge at the pre-trial hearing of detainee Mohammed Jawad, six weeks after a Navy judge banned the general from oversight in the case of Osama bin Laden's driver because of the appearance of impropriety.
Jawad's lawyer, Air Force Reserve Maj. David Frakt, wants the judge to dismiss charges against the Afghan -- by ruling that his client was tortured with two weeks of sleep deprivation in 2004 and that Hartmann exercised unlawful command interference in the first U.S. war-crimes tribunals since World War II.
`SADISTIC TREATMENT'
Frakt said his at-times suicidal client was subjected to ''pointless and sadistic treatment'' in a ``bleak underworld of barbarism and cruelty, of anything goes, of torture.''
The Bush administration says the United States does not engage in torture.
Hartmann, for his part, denied that he insisted on moving forward with certain specific prosecutions -- notably the trial of Jawad, who is accused of attempted murder in a Kabul bazaar by throwing a grenade at U.S. soldiers, wounding two and their translator in December 2002. Conviction could carry a life prison sentence.
The scene was an extraordinary highlight of a 14-hour pre-trial hearing:
• Hartmann, with the single star of a brigadier on his shoulder, outranked everyone in the room as he submitted to questioning from the chief prosecutor, who works for him;
• It was the first ever commissions hearing for trial judge Army Col. Stephen Henley;
• Frakt is a law-school professor mobilized to reserve duty as a defense attorney.
Hartmann defended a remark widely attributed to him that he chose cases that would ``capture the imagination of the American people.''
''I meant that in the context of the kinds of cases that should be the focus of a legal office that had limited resources,'' he said.
Earlier, the Pentagon's chief prosecutor who resigned in protest of what he considered inappropriate meddling testified that Hartmann fast-tracked the Jawad case to trial, favoring it at staff meetings as the case of the Afghan who threw the grenade at the soldiers.
''Your client went from the freezer to the front burner after General Hartmann arrived,'' said Air Force Col. Morris Davis, who is retiring and said he was denied a medal because he became a whistle-blower against what he described as politically motivated prosecutions.
Critics have called Hartmann a meddling ''nanomanager'' who interfered with prosecutorial discretion to get cases to trial, if not conviction, before the end of the Bush administration.
The current chief prosecutor, Army Col. Lawrence Morris, dismissed criticism of Hartmann's leadership style as the product of a ``superficial personality conflict. General Hartmann came in, kicked over some furniture, wasn't so gentle as some subordinates wish.''
Hartmann defended his expressions of impatience with prosecutors and other subordinates as measured displays of anger to kick-start a system that had few active prosecutions in the pipeline when he got the job as ``legal advisor to the Convening Authority.''
WATERBOARDING
He flatly denied telling prosecutors that it would be up to each trial judge to decide whether evidence derived from waterboarding would be legal at trial. Human-rights lawyers call waterboarding torture, and consider any evidence obtained that way as illegal.
As a witness, Hartmann displayed the impatience his subordinates have described -- offering quick, clipped answers to questions, at one point interrupting an attorney asking him a question, then stopping himself to apologize and yield.
But Hartmann acknowledged that he differed sharply with the prosecutor who resigned over whether to proceed with prosecution before evidence in the case was declassified, meaning it could be used at public trial.
He also said he recommended approval of charges against Jawad without knowing at the time that the Afghan captured as a teen had been subjected to Guantánamo's ''Frequent Flyer'' sleep deprivation program.
For two weeks in May 2004, according to prison camp records released to Frakt, guards made the young captive change prison camp cells 112 times, shackling and shuffling him every two to four hours.
''They didn't have the detention records, they didn't know about the mistreatment,'' said Frakt, calling the decision to press charges against his client rushed, and without proper preparation.
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