I  checked in early this morning at the Joint Base Andrews (a.k.a. Andrews Air Force Base) Passenger Terminal for my flight to Guantanamo Bay Naval Station, Cuba (GTMO) to monitor hearings in the war crimes case against Hadi al Iraqi.

A gentleman announced that for reasons beyond their control, our mission to Guantanamo Bay has been pushed back 24 hours. The 2-hour delay on my flight yesterday from Indianapolis suddenly seemed insignificant.

I heard through the grapevine that the GTMO airfield was jammed with aircraft from an air show, and that this information was notconveyed to the Military Commissions in a timely manner. Also, it is no secret that Pope Francis is in Cuba, and as I mentioned before,there are rumors that he will travel to Guantanamo Bay before he flies to the U.S. later this week.

All the observers were granted TDY (Temporary Duty) orders, which provides us with funds to cover meals and a hotel for the night.

While we waited for a briefing from Brigadier General Mark Martins this morning, observers were able to introduce ourselves to each other, and tell a little bit about what we do and what school or organization we are representing. We have what looks like an interesting mix of observers from around the U.S.

Briefing by Chief Prosecutor Brig. Gen. Martins

Shortly after the delay was announced, our two military commission escorts announced that Brigadier General Mark Martins, who is the U.S. Military Commissions Chief Prosecutor, would conduct his briefing at Andrews instead of waiting until we arrived in GTMO.

Brig. Gen. Martins spent over an hour with the group updating us on the Hadi al Iraqi hearings, and on the other two major pending cases – the case against al Nashari and the case against the 9/11 defendants. A prosecution staff member provided us with copies of his remarks and a DVD containing all the documents available as of yesterday that are also available on the Military Commission website.

Brig. Gen. Martins indicated that he expects to get everything done despite the compressed Hadi al Iraqi schedule. The two issues discussed in the previous blog post will be litigated once the commission has inquired as to whether al Iraqi has restored his current defense counsel to full representational capacity.

The observers asked great questions the answers to which revealed General Martins’ intellect and philosophy on the military commission process. He talked at length about the “narrow and necessary jurisdiction” within our justice and counterterrorism institutions. My intuition tells me that not everyone agrees with the fairly rosy picture of the legal robustness of the commission process that he alluded to.

Despite that, Brig. Gen. Martins was quite welcoming to the observers, indicating that transparency is crucial and that we play a role in holding the commissions accountable. Several times during the hour Brig. Gen. Martins mentioned the intense adversarial nature of the commissions process. Interestingly enough, we never even met or were introduced to any of the defense team by our escorts. I am assuming we will meet them at some point tomorrow.

Revised Hadi Hearing Schedule

The hearings in the Hadi case will presumably begin on Tuesday the 22^nd, rather than on Monday the 21^st. Already, this week’s hearings were reduced from a full week to 3 days. Now, there may only be two days of hearings before we return from Guantanamo on Wednesday evening.

National 9/11 Pentagon Memorial

After the briefing by Brig. Gen. Martins, the observers went their separate ways for the evening. I decided after lunch in D.C. to head to the National 9/11 Pentagon Memorial that captures the name, location, and age of each of the 184 victims. Abd al Hadi al Iraqi is not a defendant in the 9/11 case, but a visit to the memorial seemed appropriate given the reason I am in D.C.

By: Tyler Smith, J.D. Candidate, 3L, Indiana University McKinney School of Law