CCPR/C/115/D/2005/2010 tribunal. However, the Combatant Status Review Tribunal was only empowered to determine whether the author was an “enemy combatant” and not to determine what was his actual status under the Geneva Conventions of 1949. 13. The unfairness of the process of the Combatant Status Review Tribunal was compounded by the author’s inability to invoke the Geneva Conventions of 1949 as a source of rights in Military Commission proceedings. Furthermore, the removal of habeas corpus rights under section 7 of the Military Commissions Act rendered it difficult for the author to seek review of the accuracy of his determination by the Combatant Status Review Tribunal. The non-judicial nature of the Combatant Status Review Tribunal and the removal of habeas corpus rights by the Military Commissions Act are contrary to article 9 (4) of the Covenant. 14. The unfairness of the author’s trial automatically renders his detention in Australia arbitrary and unlawful, as Australia assumed responsibility for carrying out the sentence and punishment. 15. The author’s trial in United States was unfair for the following reasons: (a) The Military Commission was not a competent, independent and impartial tribunal. First, while military commissions were formally enabled by an Act of Congress, under the Act, authority is delegated to the President to establish them and to the Secretary of Defense to convene them. The President is commander-in-chief of the armed forces and the Secretary of Defense is responsible for the armed forces. The author was therefore subject to a tribunal that was in essence an organ of the United States military against which he was allegedly engaged in hostilities in an armed conflict. Second, the jurisdiction of the Military Commission to prosecute the author flowed from a “dispositive” determination of a Combatant Status Review Tribunal that he was an “unlawful enemy combatant” and not from an independent inquiry into his status. Third, the Secretary of Defense decided on the composition of the Military Commission and the Court of Military Commission Review. The judges were commissioned officers of the armed forces under the command of the President and/or the Secretary of Defense. Fourth, members of the Military Commission were military officers on active duty, not appointed with the degree of independence typifying a regular court or court martial. Fifth, the Secretary of Defence prescribed the regulations for the appointment of prosecution and defence counsel. The prosecution and defence counsel in the author’s case were military employees of the Department of Defense. Sixth, the Secretary of Defense determined or could influence a number of vital procedural matters, including the availability of evidence to the defence, the protection of classified information, access of the defence to the trial records and the elements and modes of proof as “practicable or consistent with military or intelligence activities”. Seventh, under the Act, exclusive authority was vested in the President to interpret the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and those interpretations were binding and authoritative in domestic law. Eighth, the Secretary of Defense prescribed the maximum penalties and enjoyed discretion to mitigate the findings and sentence of a commission in a particular case; (b) The Government of Australia negotiated directly with the United States concerning the trial standards that would apply to the author. Such guarantees, which were still not sufficient to make his trial fair, did not apply to any other detainees at Guantanamo Bay. In fact, trial standards depended entirely upon the nationality of a particular offender and the willingness and capacity of their government to negotiate with the United States; (c) The author was not tried before a regularly constituted court but by a post facto tribunal that only prosecuted “alien enemy unlawful combatants”; (d) The author did not enjoy the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty. Public statements asserting his guilt were repeatedly made by senior United States 15