President (CSRT)

The Combatant Status Review Tribunal the US Department of Defense commissioned, like the Tribunals described in Army Regulation 190-8, which they were modeled after, were three member panels, led by a Tribunal President.

Initially United States President George W. Bush asserted that captives taken during the "Global War on Terror":

This assertion was criticized by many legal scholars. And lawyers who volunteered to represent Guantanamo captives mounted legal challenges in the US Court system. The first legal challenge to be heard before the United States Supreme Court was Rasul v. Bush.

The Supreme Court addressed some aspects of the case. In particular, it ruled that the Guantanamo captives were entitled to an opportunity to hear, and challenge, the allegations the DoD felt justified their continued extrajudicial detention.

Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote that the Department of Defense should convene Tribunals similar to those described in Army Regulation 190-8.

Army Regulation 190-8 sets out the procedure officers of the United States armed forces should follow to determine whether captives taken during a war where:

The Tribunal; President had to be a "field grade officer".

The most important difference between a CSRT Tribunal and an AR 190-8 Tribunal lay in their respective mandates.

The AR-190-8 Tribunals were intended to comply with the United States responsibilities, as a signatory to the Genevat Conventions, to establish a "competent tribunal" for any captive around whom there is doubt as to their combatant status. The Geneva Conventions state that all captives have to be accorded all the protections of Prisoner of War status, until a competent tribunal sat, and determined that the captive was not a "lawful combatant".

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Wikipedia