Beyond Guantánamo’s Wardrobe Malfunction
October 16,
2012
Beyond Guantánamo’s Wardrobe
Malfunction
What should have
been the most solemn and momentous of legal proceedings—a test for American
justice—devolved, Tuesday, into bickering about clothes. The wardrobe
consultation took place in a courtroom in Guantánamo Bay, on the second day of
hearings for five 9/11 defendants. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged planner
of the September 11th attacks and murderer of three thousand people, had said
that he wanted to wear a woodland camouflage vest—though not, apparently,
because he thought that the green would contrast nicely with his beard, which
has grown enormous and been dyed orange. It had something to do with being a
soldier of the world. (K.S.M., who had stayed in his cell after an appearance on
Monday, “offered to remove or sew shut any pockets on the vest,”
Charlie Savage of the Times
reported
.) And yet that wasn’t the most absurd part. Nor was the
decision by another one of the defendants’ lawyers, Cheryl Bormann, to wear the
hijab. The real madness was the dispute between the presiding judge, Colonel
James Pohl, and the prosecution over whether Pohl or the prison commander got to
decide what the prisoners could wear. Pohl, according to reports from the scene,
was taken aback that the prosecutors would even think to question
it.
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