Prosecuting a man whose torture is public knowledge, while trying to prevent him from mentioning his torture, might seem like a lost cause, but the US authorities have a long history of denying reality when it comes to the “war on terror,” and so two weeks ago, eight months after he was arraigned, and three months after his last pre-trial hearing, al-Nashiri’s case once more came up before Army Col. James Pohl, the military commissions’ chief judge, who first of all dismissed objections, filed by the defense, that, as the Associated Press described it, he “could not be impartial because he had a financial incentive to side with the Pentagon, which paid his salary, and he was serving as the judge in other Guantánamo cases,” having chosen to preside over the cases of all the former CIA prisoners.
As the Miami Herald explained, al-Nashiri’s lawyers spent the rest of the first day asking the judge to “fund several consultants and additional legal staff for the death-penalty case — from a memory expert to one on handling national security evidence,” requests on which he did not immediately rule.
via Abd Al-Rahim Al-Nashiri: The Torture Victim the US Is Desperate to Gag | Andy Worthington.
Indiĝenaj Inteligenteco 