drumhead tribunal

English

Noun

drumhead tribunal (plural drumhead tribunals)

1. A drumhead court-martial.
   • 1969, Derek Walcott, “Negatives”, in Collected Poems, 1948-1984, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, published 1986, page 124:

     I never knew you, Christopher Okigbo, / I saw you when an actor screamed "The tribes! / The Tribes!" I catch / the guttering, flare-lit / faces of Ibos, / stuttering, bug-eyed / prisoners of some drumhead tribunal.

   • 2012, Alfred W. McCoy, chapter 6, in Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation‎^[1], Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, page 207:

     By mid-2006, Australia thus remained one of the few foreign nations that still accepted the legality of Guantanamo's endless detention and drumhead tribunals.