Interesting points, Willy, Jan and Ghaliyaa, although I’m finding that it’s actually rather more complicated than that. In the cases where the prisoners have won their habeas petitions, the judges have all recognized what you describe correctly, Willy, as “the most obvious flaws in the supposed evidence and the undeniable fact that the detainee has been subjected to ill-treatment, brutality, humiliation and torture.”
However, in the cases where the prisoners have lost, for the most part the judges have been following the rules, and the problem, therefore, is with these rules — and, specifically, the refusal to distinguish between al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

Willy – the rule of law has become more than quaint, but non-existent here in the US…

You are right. These people seem to be trained in sadism. It’s remarkable.

Thanks Andy, I am sure every time I read these stories, one thing sticks out a mile. All these judges that are elected on their popularity with government seem to have an unfortunate habit of ignoring the most obvious flaws in the supposed evidence and the undeniable fact that the detainee has been subjected to ill-treatment, brutality, humiliation and torture.

It seems the rule of law has become ‘quaint’ in the USA.

It was, I believe, Dostoevsky who suggested that the health of a society could best be determined by looking in its prisons; the United States’s most famous prison at Guantanamo Bay is a most unhealthy place, and hence, the society that created it must be peculiarly deranged.

In the somewhat imbalanced scale of justice that Judge Kennedy was using, and to be fair to him, just about every other habeas judge has been using (to wit, any evidence at all of any connection to Taliban or Qaeda, even if not “good” evidence in any other context), And hence, No. 522 had some remote connection to bad people and training in violence, and, under the perverse rules of the game, that’s good enough to hold him for the duration of hostilities, however long that takes, possibly up to the rest of his life.

The irony is, while the result is unfortunate, this was the fairest hearing No. 522 has had in over eight years… even if, alas, it’s likely to be the only one he gets. Indeed, he is in an elite group of only around 50 of the nearly 800 men to pass through GTMO to get such a fair hearing, and we won’t even count how many others have gone through Bagram and the other elements of the American Gulag Archipelago without anything at all.

The grim reality that the continued presence of No. 522 and so many other Muslims in American custody is pretty much the best recruiting sergeant for those who might want to commit violence against Americans and their nation… seems to elude most Americans. As I said… a most peculiarly deranged society.