Combatant Status Review Tribunal - Critics

Critics

It has been suggested these CSR Tribunals are inherently flawed. The principal arguments of why they are inadequate to warrant acceptance as "competent tribunal," are:

• The CSRT conducted rudimentary proceedings
• The CSRT afforded detainees few basic protections
• Many detainees lacked counsel
• The CSRT also informed detainees only of general charges against them, while the details on which the CSRT premised enemy combatant status decisions were classified.
• Detainees had no right to present witnesses or to cross-examine government witnesses.

Some specific cases that call attention to what critics assert is a flawed nature of the CSRT procedure: Mustafa Ait Idir, Moazzam Begg, Murat Kurnaz, Feroz Abbasi, and Martin Mubanga. A comment on the matter by legal experts states:

The fact that no status determination had taken place according to the Third Geneva Convention was sufficient reason for a judge from the District Court of Columbia dealing with a habeas petition, to stay proceedings before a military commission. Judge Robertson in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld held that the Third Geneva Convention, which he considered self-executing, had not been complied with since a Combatant Status Review Tribunal could not be considered a 'competent tribunal' pursuant to article 5 of the Third Geneva Convention.

James Crisfield, the legal advisor to the Tribunals, offered his legal opinion, that CSRT "do not have the discretion to determine that a detainee should be classified as a prisoner of war -- only whether the detainee satisfies the definition of "enemy combatant"" Determining whether a captive should be classified as a prisoner of war is the purpose of a "competent tribunal."

On June 29, 2006, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the Geneva Conventions should be applied, but only Article 3, which does not require a competent tribunal.