I'd be very happy to do so.
This is some background context. At the end of World War II, there were approximately 2 million combatants detained by the United States around the world, more than 400,000 on U.S. soil--not in Guantanamo Bay, not in Cuba, but on U.S. soil. It never occurred to anybody that any of these detainees had a right to habeas corpus, and no one claimed that this violated international law.
By contrast, the process in place for detainees at Guantanamo Bay—excuse me, if I refer to some notes, it's quite intricate—is this. Each detainee's enemy combatant determination is based on a specific record unique to its case.
After the initial assessment determination is made, that decision is subject to two mandatory levels of review, first by a legal adviser to the CSRT and then by the director of the CSRT. This process alone has led to the determination that 38 now-released detainees were not enemy combatants. Kangaroo courts don't release; they accuse.
In addition to the CSRT review process, the Department of Defense conducts an annual administrative examination of whether it's appropriate to release or repatriate each enemy combatant. Since 2002, about 390 detainees, or more than half of all detainees, have been transferred or released through this process.
Beyond the CSRT and military commissions, detainees have a right of appeal, first to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. circuit, a civilian court, and then to the Supreme Court.
In response to the earlier point, this is a stage at which any accusations of torture can be addressed by a civilian court, and by a very responsible civilian court, probably the highest court in the United States and probably the second-most important court in the United States.
Throughout the military...Khadr will by represented by competent and committed counsel who will pursue seriously....
In terms of how they meet or exceed international norms--it's like on the Geneva conventions--the CSRTs contain express qualifications for the judges to ensure the tribunal's independence. This is more than we gave the accused at Nuremberg. There are no comparable qualifications for an article 5 tribunal. They provide the detainee with a personal representative at the CSRT level and a military lawyer at the military commissions level. The first is not required by an article 5 tribunal; the second meets the requirements of the Geneva convention.
The recorder of the process is obligated to provide a tribunal with evidence to suggest that the detainee should not be designated as an enemy combatant--a devil's advocate, if you will. There's no such requirement under the Geneva conventions.
The detainee is provided with an unclassified summary of the evidence supporting his detention in advance of the hearing. He's presented an opportunity to testify. There's no such requirement for an article 5 tribunal.
They allow the detainee to introduce relevant documentary evidence. Article 5 tribunals provide no analogous guarantee.
Every decision is automatically reviewed by a higher authority. There's no right to an appeal under the Geneva conventions.
Briefly, without laying out the full procedures as they're enacted in statutory law, those are the key points on which the trials meet or exceed the requirements of international law.