Gitmo defense breach, caused by DoD error, halts proceedings

According to defense counsel for a Guantanamo Bay detainee, a “significant amount of defense work” was lost from a common drive in the Pentagon’s system, along with “over 500,000 emails containing attorney-client privileged communications.”

As a result, all lawyers representing detainees facing charges before the military commissions have been forced to stop work.

James Connell, lead counsel for defendant Ammar al Baluchi, called the breach, “simply the latest in a series of revelations of courtroom monitoring,” referring to disclosures in February of audio monitoring devices and controversial searches of the detainees’ legal bins.

Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, accused of plotting the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000, was to appear before a military commission next week,  but a judge granted a defense request to delay the proceedings until the computer problem could be sorted out.

DoD spokesman Lt. Col. Todd Breasseale denied prosecutors viewed confidential defense emails. “I can tell you unequivocally that NO prosecutor and no member of the privilege review team saw the content of any privileged communications,” adding that the Office of Military Commissions (OMC) suffered “a nearly catastrophic server ‘crash’” that “coupled with satellite latency issues” between US and Guantanamo based computers caused “losses of indiscriminate data” across both the prosecution and defense teams.