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With Election, Sun Sets On Guantanamo Trials

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The Associated Press

The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 4, 2008

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba - Camp Justice, erected six months ago for the first U.S. war-crimes trials in a half-century, already feels like a ghost town.

A hundred canvas tents pitched on a weed-choked airfield to house an army of lawyers and journalists stand mostly empty. With the clock running out on the Bush administration, so too is it ticking for America's six-year attempt to try what it called "the worst of the worst" for crimes of war.

"It is getting quiet here," lamented Kiplin Rall, a Jamaican managing a small convenience store in a rusting hangar at Camp Justice.

Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain have both pledged, if elected, to close the offshore prison at Guantanamo Bay. Amnesty International Secretary-General Irene Khan this week urged whoever wins to make good on that promise in his first 100 days in office.

Only two trials have been held since then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld outlined the initial rules in March 2002, and just one more is scheduled before Bush's term ends Jan. 20: a relatively minor case that charges an Afghan with wounding two U.S. soldiers and their interpreter in 2002 when he was 16 or 17. A judge threw out his confession last week because it was obtained through torture.

In all, 255 men are held at Guantanamo, the great majority without charges. Army Col. Lawrence Morris, Guantanamo's chief prosecutor, said two dozen cases are at various stages, with a dozen more or so moving toward charges.

But Morris' predecessor, retired Air Force Col. Morris Davis, said those cases will likely never be brought forward as war-crimes trials at Guantanamo Bay. He said trials could conceivably be held elsewhere, but the system would need to change fundamentally.

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