Wendy Kelly

Wendy Kelly
Wendy Kelly inspects troops in Guantanamo on 2008-02-02.
Service/branch United States Army Reserve
Rank Colonel

Wendy Kelly is an American lawyer and officer in the United States Army Reserves.[1][2][3] In 2004 Kelly was an Assistant United States Attorney.[4] In 2005 Kelly was appointed the director of operations of the Office of Military Commissions, a job the Philadelphia Inquirer describes as "...the executive producer of America's forthcoming terrorism trials...". The Inquirer reports that part of her responsibilities include overseeing the construction of complex where the Guantanamo military commissions would convene. The Inquirer also reported: "Back in Washington, in an unmarked, secure corner office near the Pentagon, Kelly helps draft terrorism-trial rules and reviews proposed formal charges against detainees, including top-secret evidence."

According to the Inquirer, Kelly said:[1]

"On one hand, you have our ideal of the presumption of innocence, and then you have the notion that you are dealing with people who could be - well, most likely are - guilty of terrible crimes and are our sworn enemy. How you handle that is the challenge."

"Every time you talk about Guantanamo, it sets off people's buttons, either rightly because they know what's happening, or wrongly because they think they know."

"I'm sure most Americans think, 'To hell with them. Why should we give them a fair trial? They're terrorists.' It's true that we don't have to provide a trial for any of these people. We have the legal right to keep them until the conflict is over, which may be five years or may be 100 years. But if you're going to provide trials - for the sake of the United States and the JAG [military legal] corps, because we are the ones who are going to be judged - they have to be fair."

In 2008 an email from Kelly was submitted at hearings of several military commissions in an attempt to show that the Guantanamo military commissions Convening Authority had been involved in the composing the charges against Khadr and five other Guantanamo captives.[5] According to Brian Mizer, an attorney for Salim Ahmed Hamdan said "'What that e-mail shows is who's drafting the charges,' says Mizer. 'It's not the prosecutor, which is intended to be an independent office according to Congress. It's the convening authority.'"

References

  1. 1 2 John Schiffman (December 9, 2007). "Mission: Fairness". Philadelphia Inquirer. Archived from the original on 2007-12-17. Retrieved 2007-12-26.
  2. ↑ Shanita Simmons (2008-02-02). "474th Celebrates Six Months of Hard Work". JTF-GTMO. Retrieved 2011-09-29. The ELC, which is designed to facilitate military commissions where multiple defendants are tried together, is scheduled to be ready for use by early March. Army Col. Wendy Kelly, director of operations for the Office of Military Commissions, mentioned that the complex will include one of the first military courtrooms designed to protect highly-classified information and provide the state of the art technology usually found in federal courts.
  3. ↑ Shanita Simmons (2007-11-02). "Court 21 promises state-of-the art judicial proceedings". The Wire (JTF-GTMO). pp. 3, 12. Retrieved 2011-09-29.
  4. ↑ "United States Attorney's Office: News Release". United States Attorney's Office. 2004-07-27.
  5. ↑ Ross Tuttle (2008-04-03). "Officials in Gitmo Trials Not Even Pretending to be Impartial: More evidence is emerging that the military commissions process is "rife with conflicts of interest."". Alternet. Retrieved 2011-09-29.
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