Second-Class Justice for Non-CitizensThe President’s Military Order authorizing the commissions restricts their jurisdiction to persons who are not U.S. citizens. U.S. citizens may not be tried before the commissions, regardless of whether they were combatants who committed war crimes. This exclusion presumably reflects a political judgment that the U.S. public would not accept the truncated justice of commission proceedings for U.S. citizens. International human rights law, however, does not permit countries to discriminate between citizens and non-citizens with regard to their fair trial rights.52 The fact that a person is not a U.S. citizen should not be used as an excuse to weaken protections for their internationally recognized rights. Also see: U.S.: Military Commissions Changes Are ‘Cosmetic’: Commissions Should Be Scrapped for Regular Courts http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/08/31/usdom11671_txt.htm Letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on the Military Commissions at Guantanamo Bay, September 16, 2004 http://hrw.org/english/docs/2004/09/15/usdom9350.htm Making Sense of the Guantanamo Bay Tribunals, http://hrw.org/english/docs/2004/08/16/usdom9235.htm [52] ICCPR, art. 14 (“All persons shall be equal before the courts and tribunals”).
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