“The military commissions at Guantanamo have been a farce since the beginning, and do nothing except delay justice," Amnesty International USA’s Security with Human Rights Director Daphne Eviatar said in the statement. "Both the prison at Guantánamo and its ineffective military commissions should be shut down.
Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for Nashiri for his role in the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen, which killed 17 US sailors.
The advocacy group Human Rights First (HRF) also said the decision to suspend the trial demonstrates the ineffectiveness of the military commissions.
"The commissions are untested and have a poor track record of success — a stark contrast to our federal court system, which has convicted individuals in over six hundred terrorism cases," HRF said in a press release on Friday.
Meanwhile, federal courts have produced more than 600 terrorism-related convictions in the same period, including 108 in which the defendant was captured abroad, the release added.
HRF also criticized President Donald Trump’s decision to keep Gitmo open and urged Congress to close facility and try inmates in federal courts.
