Seattle law experts discuss terror war

The open-ended detention of terrorism suspects was defended by a former top military lawyer Friday in Seattle as a wartime necessity.

Speaking at a legal forum at Seattle University, Army Maj. Gen. John Altenburg said that under the international law of war "you hold these people until the war is over.

"That keeps them from going back to the battlefield," he said.

But Altenburg also faulted the Bush administration for "arrogance and naiveté" in failing to explain its stance on the legal issues to the American public.

Altenburg, who retired in November 2006, served as the chief military lawyer responsible for reviewing charges and evidence against people detained in Afghanistan by U.S. forces.

The military-run prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which at its peak held about 800 terrorism suspects, has been a flashpoint for international criticism, centered on allegations of torture and deprivation of basic legal rights such as due process.

Most of the approximately 300 detainees remaining at the U.S. enclave in Cuba have been there for years, face indefinite detention and have had little or no contact with lawyers.

Some legal experts at Friday's forum asserted that terrorism suspects should be tried in civilian courts, where they would be afforded due-process rights.

"It was a (Bush administration) policy decision to put them outside the reach of U.S. courts" at Guantanamo, said Joe McMillan, an attorney with the Seattle law firm Perkins Coie. He and colleague Harry Schneider are providing pro bono representation to a detainee who once served as Osama bin Laden's chauffeur.

McMillan said his client has been confined to a tiny cell in solitary confinement and conditions that are harsher than the worst criminal faces in a maximum-security prison. The isolation is literally driving his client crazy, McMillan said.

Seattle criminal defense lawyer Jon Zulauf, who represents two detainees at Guantanamo, said both claim to have been tortured there.

"Their primary complaint is that there is no fair hearing -- no way to prove their innocence," Zulauf said. "The federal courts do a fine job at handling these cases. I don't see any reasons why we can't hand these detainees to individual judges.

"Let's have a trial. ... There is no reason to let these people languish at Guantanamo Bay," he said.

Other panelists contended that the U.S. has engaged in wholesale violations of its obligations under international treaties prohibiting torture and governing the conduct of war.

The Bush administration has argued that some of those captured in the war on terrorism are illegal combatants who aren't subject to protections provided prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions.

But Sandra Hodgkinson, deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, sought to "dispel the myth of mistreatment" by U.S. forces.

"The policy since day one has always been humane treatment," she said. "Is the law always followed? No. We have had courts-martial. We are taking it seriously, and we are doing our best to always get it right."

Military commissions are a tool for the commander of American forces at a time of war, Altenburg said. "They will never comport to American criminal justice standards."