http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,6903,992468,00.html

Confess or die, US tells jailed Britons

Outrage over plight of Guantanamo detainees

Martin Bright, Kamal Ahmed and Peter Beaumont
Sunday July 6, 2003
The Observer

The two British terrorist suspects facing a secret US military
tribunal in Guantanamo Bay will be given a choice: plead guilty and
accept a 20-year prison sentence, or be executed if found guilty.
American legal sources close to the process said that the prisoners'
dilemma was intended to encourage maximum 'co-operation'.

The news comes as Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, prepares to urge
US Secretary of State Colin Powell to repatriate the two Britons. He
will say that they should face a fair trial here under English law.
Backed by Home Secretary David Blunkett, Straw will make it clear that
the Government opposes the death penalty and wants to see both men
tried 'under normal judicial process'.

Lawyers acting for Moazzam Begg, 35, from Sparkbrook, Birmingham, and
Feroz Abassi, 23, from Croydon, said that any confessions gathered
while the men were kept without charge or access to lawyers in Bagram
airbase in Afghanistan and Camp Delta in Cuba would have no status in
international law and would be inadmissible in British courts.

Gareth Peirce, who acts for Moazzam Begg, said: 'Anything that any
human being says or admits under threat of brutality is regarded
internationally and nationally as worthless. It makes the process an
abuse. Moazzam Begg had a year in Bagram airbase and then six months
in Guantanamo Bay. If this treatment happened for an hour in a British
police station, no evidence gathered would be admissible,' she said.

Stephen Jakobi of Fair Trials Abroad, which is leading the campaign
for the two men, said: 'Our concern is that there will be no
meaningful way of testing the evidence against these people. The US
Defence Department has set itself up as prosecution, judge and defence
counsel and has created the rules of trial. This is patently a
kangaroo court.'

Begg's family believe he was kidnapped in Pakistan by US authorities.
He was taken to Bagram on suspicion of passing funds to al-Qaeda and
later transferred to Camp Delta. He has not seen a lawyer since he was
seized.

In a clear signal of the high lev els of concern within the
Government, the acting British ambassador in Washington, Tony Brenton,
will raise 'official concern' with the White House.

According to US legal and constitutional experts, the Final Rule, the
regulations that will govern the military commissions, has rendered a
fair trial almost impossible.

Among those representing the two British men in the United States is
Michael Ratner, of the Centre for Constitutional Rights, who believes
the tribunals are weighted in favour of securing guilt verdicts.

'The trial system in Guantanamo Bay allows a whole series of serious
breaches of defendant rights that would mean that they could never
come to trial in the US.

'First, it allows the wiretapping of attorney-client meetings,
although those wiretaps cannot actually be used in evidence. Then
there is the fact that the Pentagon "Appointing Authority" - probably
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld - has the ability to remove a
judge at any time without giving any reason.'

Among other concerns about the 50-page Final Rule, which was published
by the Department of Defence last week for governing the trials, are:

· that rules of evidence are so broad that it is left at the
discretion of the trial's presiding officer whether to allow any
evidence he believes would be convincing to a 'reasonable person' and
that that would appear to allow the admission of hearsay evidence; ·
that evidence can be admitted by telephone and by pseudonym; · that it
is insisted that only security-screened civil attorneys be allowed to
appear before the court and they can also be removed at any time.

The concerns follow allegations by Amnesty and other human rights
groups that US detainees in Guantanamo Bay have suffered severe abuse,
including beatings that may have led to the death of two men held at
the US detention facility at Bagram.

In March, Amnesty wrote to President Bush to complain about the
treatment of detainees after US military officials reportedly
confirmed that post-mortem reports in the cases of the two men who
died at Bagram gave cause of death as 'homicide' and 'blunt force
injuries'.