This Week's Motions Hearing in Al Hadi
A programming note from Lawfare HQ: for the rest of this week, Lawfare unfortunately won't be almost-live-blogging pre-trial motions litigation in the military commissions case of United States v. Abd al Hadi al Iraqi.
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A programming note from Lawfare HQ: for the rest of this week, Lawfare unfortunately won't be almost-live-blogging pre-trial motions litigation in the military commissions case of United States v. Abd al Hadi al Iraqi.
Instead, we'll opt today, tomorrow and Friday for a different coverage format, by reading the transcript of each day’s proceedings—just as soon as one becomes available, of course—and thereafter writing one or more posts digesting the hearing's most significant developments.
So stay tuned. We understand that today's session got underway at 0900, with some personnel changes in the prosecution team.
UPDATE: It seems the hearing ended almost as quickly as it began---and that proceedings will be on hold for at least the rest of this week, if not longer. From the Miami Herald's Carol Rosenberg:
The Pentagon’s latest bid to hold a hearing at the war crimes court hit a snag in the first morning of an Iraqi detainee’s’ two-week session Wednesday, when the judge ruled there was a conflict created by the appointment of a U.S. Marine defense attorney to two ongoing cases.
Navy Capt. J.K. Waits, the judge, sought to press forward after ruling that the accused terrorist, Abd al Hadi al Iraqi, had two military lawyers unburdened by the conflict. Hadi, accused of commanding al-Qaida’s army after 9/11, replied that he had lost confidence in his entire Pentagon-appointed defense team over the episode.
Waits recessed the case indefinitely until Hadi could consult with the conflicted lawyer, who wasn’t at this remote outpost for this week’s hearings.
