Chapter4 Access to Justice | 91 District Court sentenced him to life in prison for conspiracy to kill Americans, providing material support to terrorists, and conspiring to do so. In May 2014, Mostafa Kamel Mostafa, known as Abu Hamza Al-Masri, was convicted in the same court on 11 terrorism charges. Therefore, it has been demonstrated that federal courts have the expertise, capacity and resources to try high-profile cases of terrorism. 215. In the cases under analysis, however, the United States decided not to proceed through the established civilian criminal court system, but rather to create a new structure outside of U.S. territory to try aliens suspected of engaging in terrorism. This has been interpreted by many as a move to create a system to provide a veneer of legitimacy, while at the same time hiding complicity for war crimes allegedly committed by the United States Government. 248 According to the U.S. Government, military commissions are an appropriate venue to prosecute Guantanamo detainees given that they incorporate fundamental procedural fair trial safeguards, including the presumption of innocence and the prohibition of admission of any statement obtained by the use of torture or by cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. With regard to the release of the declassified executive summary of the Committee Study of the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program mentioned above as it relates to the military commissions, the Government has indicated that unredacted portions of the executive summary, which are the vast majority of the document, were declassified and the Office of the Prosecutor was reviewing the full report to see if there is any exculpatory evidence that would favor the detainees. 249 216. For many, however, the military commissions at Guantanamo represent a poor substitute for a civilian criminal trial for cases in which the evidence is not sufficient to produce a conviction in a federal court. It is for these reasons that it is viewed by many as a controversial and discredited system. Military defense counsel before military commissions consider that the military commissions system at Guantanamo Bay is not competent, independent, or legitimate in that it was created for the express purpose of convicting and killing persons imprisoned at Guantanamo under the color of judicial authority. They argue that the military commissions system was designed to guarantee the permanent silence of victims of torture in an effort to suppress and conceal criminal conduct by U.S. Government agents. “A state crime cannot be a state secret,” stated one of the attorneys in a public hearing held at the IACHR. 250 The American Civil Liberties Union has affirmed in this regard that “[t]he military commissions were created to circumvent the Constitution and result in quick convictions, not to achieve real justice.” 251 248 249 250 251 IAHCR, Expert Meeting on the situation of detainees held at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Washington DC, October 3, 2013. IACHR’s hearing, Human Rights Situation of Persons Deprived of Liberty at the Guantanamo Naval Base, United States, 154 Period of Sessions, March 16, 2015. IACHR’s hearing, Human Rights Situation of Persons Deprived of Liberty at the Guantanamo Naval Base, United States, 154 Period of Sessions, March 16, 2015. ACLU, House Passes Changes To Guantanamo Military Commissions, October 8, 2009. Available at: https://www.aclu.org/national-security/house-passes-changes-guantanamo-military-commissions Inter-American Commission on Human Rights | IACHR