CBS– In an apparent reversal, President Barack Obama is reviving the Bush administration’s much-criticized military tribunals for Guantanamo Bay detainees, shocking those who expected the president to end them completely.

CBS News correspondent Kimberly Dozier reports that the president says these will not be your Bush-era tribunals, promising a new system that guarantees more legal rights for detainees.

Mr. Obama said the changes were designed to give defendants stronger legal protections, such as a ban on evidence “obtained through torture, or by using cruel or degrading interrogation methods,” like waterboarding; limiting use of hearsay evidence; granting the accused more say in who represents them; and protecting detainees who refuse to testify from legal sanctions.

But his action was almost instantly denounced by critics who called the new tribunals “Bush Lite,” reports Dozier.

During his presidential campaign, Mr. Obama was highly critical of the commissions used by the Bush administration.

“By any measure, our system of trying detainees has been an enormous failure,” he said last June 18.

And one of his first actions as president was setting in motion the closing of Guantanamo Bay prison within 12 months.

Re-opening these military tribunals may also delay the closing of Guantanamo, says Dozier. The earliest the trials of 13 defendents (9 of whom are charged with helping orchestrate the September 11 terror attacks) can resume is September. That would give prosecutors about four months to finish before the end of the year, because these military tribunals cannot be held back in the United States.

The rest of the 241 Guantanamo detainees will either be released, transferred to other countries, tried in civilian U.S. federal courts or, potentially, held indefinitely as prisoners of war with full Geneva Conventions rights.

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