Guantánamo trials: the king is dead, long live the king
16.10.07
So farewell, then, to a Colonel named Morris, the old chief prosecutor of Guantánamo’s tainted Military Commissions, who resigned two weeks ago, and welcome, er, a Colonel named Morris, the Commission’s new chief prosecutor.
To be fair, this new Morris is actually a different man, as the photos show. The new Morris, Col. Lawrence J. “Larry” Morris, as opposed to the old incumbent, Air Force Col. Morris “Moe” Davis, is a veteran Army Colonel with a background in both military intelligence (useful for an administration lacking in intelligence) and legal defense cases (not useful at all for an administration that does not believe in defense lawyers).
Old Morris.
New Morris.
“Larry,” who currently runs the Army’s defense services for soldiers accused of crimes, will take over as soon as his old job comes to an end, and as soon as the chief prosecutor’s poisoned chalice has been polished by the Pentagon to make it look appealing. Given the career-suicidal pressures of the job, however, and its relatively fast turnover (“Larry” is the fourth chief prosecutor in as many years), I’d be looking out for an alternative career if I was a Colonel in any of the branches of the US military, and if any of my names was Morris.
For more on Guantánamo and the Military Commissions, see my book The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK). To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed.
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