May 15 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama will resume military tribunals for some terrorism suspects held at the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, while also giving prisoners new legal rights, an administration official said.

Obama ordered a 120-day halt to the war crimes tribunals hours after taking office in January. His administration will announce details of the resumption today, according to the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Two changes to the Manual for Military Commissions that Obama and Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will announce deal with admissibility of evidence, said another administration official speaking on condition of anonymity.

Prosecutors seeking to admit hearsay evidence will now have the burden or proving its reliability, the official said. The defendant now has the burden of proving hearsay evidence introduced by military prosecutors is unreliable.

Another change would bar statements obtained through the use of cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment such as simulated drowning, known as waterboarding, officials said. Current rules already ban statements obtained through torture.

Executive Order

White House officials have been reviewing the existing legal procedures that Obama has said don’t adequately protect the accused.

The administration is still seeking court approval to put legal proceedings on hold for another four months while it makes the changes to the legal system, one of the officials said.

Defense Department officials previously have said that as many as 80 of the 241 suspected terrorists remaining at Guantanamo would be tried before military commissions.

“It’s disappointing and it’s a mistake,” said Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the National Security Project of the American Civil Liberties Union in New York. The suspects should be tried in U.S. federal courts, he said in a telephone interview today.

Jaffer said Obama’s addition of new due-process rights amounts to “a new legal system” that will get bogged down in its own litigation, delaying the trials of detainees even further.

“There is no set of tweaks that can make the military commission system consistent with international and U.S. constitutional law,” he said. “The right course of action was to retire the military commissions and not to revive them.”

Last month, Defense Secretary Robert Gates suggested that as many as 100 Guantanamo Bay detainees who can’t be released or tried in federal courts could be moved to the U.S. when the Obama administration closes the prison later this year.

Dean Boyd, a spokesman with the Department of Justice, referred calls to the White House.

To contact the reporter on this story: Kim Chipman at KChipman@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: May 15, 2009 10:02 EDT