Patriot of conscience.

By all accounts, Colby Vokey is a model officer in the U.S. Marine Corps, at one point helping command an artillery unit in Kuwait during the Gulf War in 1991. For the past four years, Vokey has served as chief of all the Corps’ defense lawyers in the western United States – and he’s played a key role in some of the military’s most sensitive legal issues, including the murder investigation in Haditha, Iraq, and in the debate about detainees at the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay. “Colby Vokey?” muses retired Col. Jane Siegel “Integrity almost seems like a word too small to describe him.” Says Lt. Col. Matthew Cord, “He’s just one of the best.”

So when Vokey announced recently that he wanted to leave the Corps, it said something troubling about the military system of justice that he’s served for almost 20 years. Vokey charges that some commanders and officials in the Bush administration have abused the system of justice, and he’s going to retire from the Corps May 1, 2008. People who know him say that privately, Vokey has acknowledged he is “angry” and “bitter.” Publicly, Vokey describes himself as “fed up.” “I think changes to the system are well-overdue,” he told NPR. “And it’s a little frustrating when you see problems are highlighted time and time and again.”

[snip]

The U.S. has imprisoned hundreds of “enemy combatants” at Guantanamo Bay in a military legal system that Vokey denounces as “horrific.” Vokey saw the system first-hand when he agreed two years ago to defend a teenager there who had been charged with murdering a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan. Vokey said he knew the case would be difficult, but he discovered that the legal system at Guantanamo is a “sham.” Vokey said the military staff constantly harassed him and interfered with his defense work by making it difficult even to meet with his client or show his client the government’s evidence against him. The teenager confessed to killing the soldier, but he told Vokey he confessed after being shackled for hours in excruciating positions and bombarded by screeching music and flashing lights. FBI agents have reported seeing detainees treated in similar ways and investigators at human rights groups have reported evidence suggesting that detainees are routinely abused. Vokey calls the system “disgraceful.”

“Anytime you want to subvert the rule of law to the power of a government, you’ve got a very bad thing brewing,” Vokey told NPR. “As an officer in the Marine Corps I took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. And now we are perpetrating something that if any other country in the world was doing, we would likely step in and stop it.” Hemingway, who until recently was the top lawyer advising U.S. officials on how to handle detainees at Guantanamo, dismisses those charges. Hemingway said he has asked the staff to investigate complaints by detainees, including Vokey’s client, and “we have found absolutely nothing to substantiate that.” He added, “I know of no one in uniform who signed up to embarrass the United States of America by running a system that doesn’t meet what we consider to be appropriate standards.” Vokey, undeterred, said the legal system at Guantanamo has left him feeling “disgusted.”

When asked to identify exactly which officials in the military and the Bush administration he believes have abused the system of justice, Vokey avoids giving an answer. When pressed, Vokey went to his bookshelf, pulled out the Manual for Courts-Martial, and read from Article 88: “‘Any commissioned officer who uses contemptuous words against the president, vice president, Congress’” and a list of other officials, he said, “’shall be punished as a court martial may direct.’” “I need to be careful,” Vokey said. Article

So much for tortured claims of an ‘open’ proceeding.

A civilian lawyer for the only Canadian terrorism suspect held at Guantanamo said on Wednesday he had been barred from his client’s hearing at the U.S. base next week because of a dispute with military defense lawyers.

The Canadian lawyer, Dennis Edney, said he was prevented from visiting Toronto-born Omar Khadr, who is accused by a U.S. military war crimes tribunal of throwing a grenade that killed one American soldier and wounded another during a firefight at an alleged al Qaeda compound in Afghanistan in 2002.

Edney said the ban came after he disagreed with and publicly criticized the U.S. military lawyers appointed to defend Khadr, who was 15 years old and severely wounded when he was captured. He is now 21.

“It’s certainly not in Khadr’s best interest,” Edney said by telephone. “It’s a violation of the accepted right to counsel. They obviously don’t want me speaking to Khadr before the arraignment.”

Military defense lawyers did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

[snip]

Edney, who was at the June hearing, battled for years before winning U.S. permission to visit Khadr. He said he was barred from seeing him in September and that military defense lawyers recently told him in a phone call that he could not attend Khadr’s arraignment.

Under revised trial rules, defendants can represent themselves or have U.S. military defense lawyers appointed. Foreign and civilian lawyers can join the defense but only as advisors, if they obtain U.S. security clearances and if someone other than the U.S. government pays the bill.

Khadr fired his American civilian lawyers and has repeatedly said he only wants Canadian attorneys. Article