Unjust, unwise, unAmerican America's plan to set up military commissions for the trials of terrorist suspects is a big mistake YOU are taken prisoner in Afghanistan, bound and gagged, flown to the other side of the world and then imprisoned for months in solitary confinement punctuated by interrogations during which you have no legal advice. Finally, you are told what is to be your fate: a trial before a panel of military officers. Your defence lawyer will also be a military officer, and anything you say to him can be recorded. Your trial might be held in secret. You might not be told all the evidence against you. You might be sentenced to death. If you are convicted, you can appeal, but only to yet another panel of military officers. Your ultimate right of appeal is not to a judge but to politicians who have already called everyone in the prison where you are held �killers� and the �worst of the worst�. Even if you are acquitted, or if your appeal against conviction succeeds, you might not go free. Instead you could be returned to your cell and held indefinitely as an �enemy combatant�. Sad to say, that is America's latest innovation in its war against terrorism: justice by �military commission�. Over-reaction to the scourge of terrorism is nothing new, even in established democracies. The British �interned� Catholics in Northern Ireland without trial; Israel still bulldozes the homes of families of suicide bombers. Given the barbarism of September 11th, it is not surprising that America should demand retribution�particularly against people caught fighting for al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. American officials insist that the commissions will provide fair trials. The regulations published by the Pentagon stipulate that the accused will be considered innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, that he cannot be compelled to testify against himself, and that the trials should be open to the press and public if possible. The problem is that every procedural privilege the defendant is awarded in the regulations is provisional, a gift of the panel which is judging him. The regulations explicitly deny him any enforceable rights of the sort that criminal defendants won as long ago as the Middle Ages. Moreover, the planned commissions lack the one element indispensable to any genuinely fair proceeding�an independent judiciary, both for the trial itself and for any appeal against a conviction. The military officers sitting as judges belong to a single chain of command reporting to the secretary of defence and the president, who will designate any accused for trial before the commissions and will also hear any final appeals. For years, America has rightly condemned the use of similar military courts in other countries for denying due process. Why dispense with such basic rules of justice? Mr Bush's officials say they must balance the demand for fair trials with the need to gather intelligence to fend off further terrorist attacks. Nobody denies that fighting terrorism puts justice systems under extraordinary strain. But this dilemma has frequently been faced by others without resorting to military trials. The established procedure is to pass special anti-terrorism laws, altering trial rules somewhat to handle terrorist cases, but not abandoning established court systems, and trying to retain the basic rights of those accused as far as possible. Britain and Spain have done this. There is no reason why America's own civilian courts, which have successfully tried plenty of domestic and foreign terrorists (including Mr Lindh), could not be adapted to this purpose. http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=1908281