No Surprise: Judge Tosses Out Bulk of Evidence Against Terrorist/Former Gitmo Detainee Now On Trial in Civilian Court

No surprise. Either the courts must accept -- and bless as Constitutional -- the extraordinary treatment due to these vile monsters, and thus bless such treatment for all criminal suspects in the United States (plainly a hateful conclusion), or they must toss out all the evidence against them and set terrorists free.

It is the left's hateful agitation against all things Bush, plus Obama's delicately theoretical comprehension of the real-life flesh-and-blood world, that has brought us to this point.

And it will get worse.

A federal judge has tossed out most of the government's evidence against a tarrorism detainee on grounds his confessions were coerced, allegedly by U.S. forces, before he became a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay.

In a ruling this week, U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan also said the government failed to establish that 23 statements the detainee made to interrogators at Guantanamo Bay were untainted by the earlier coerced statements made while he was held under harsh conditions in Afghanistan.

However, the judge said statements he made during two military administrative hearings at the U.S. detention center in Cuba, where he was assisted by a personal representative, were reliable and sufficient to justify holding the detainee.

Musa'ab Omar Al Madhwani allegedly engaged in a 2 1/2-hour firefight with Pakistani authorities before his capture in a Karachi apartment in 2002.

The detainee says that after five days in a Pakistani prison, he was handed over to U.S. forces and flown to a pitch-black prison he believes was in Afghanistan. He says he was suspended in his cell by his left hand and that guards blasted his cell with music 24 hours a day.

He said that he confessed to whatever allegations his interrogators made and that harassment and threats continued after he was moved to a different prison in Afghanistan.

Al Madhwani said that interrogators at Guantanamo Bay on multiple occasions threatened him when he tried to retract what he now claims was a false confession.

The judge said he was particularly concerned that interrogators at Guantanamo Bay relied on or had access to the coerced confessions from Afghanistan made by Al Madhwani.

Military tribunals were created to square this circle, and to ensure basic fairness and reliability while still recognizing the difference between illegal combatants and run of the mill criminals (and also to keep US civilian courts untainted, to keep them from having to bless extraordinary measures as perfectly Constitutional as regards regular criminal citizens), but of course the left and their champion Obama has rejected them as insufficiently prissy and pristine.

So here we go.

I don't know what the Jackass In Chief will do. I know he doesn't dare risk his poll numbers crashing further after one after another terrorist is sprung by his moronic decisions. I guess I expect him to just hold these fellers indefinitely, or to... put them right back into the military tribunal system.

If that's possible. Which I don't know it is. Once someone enters the US criminal justice system, courts will not usually approve their transfer to a system that affords them a lesser standard of rights. Once they've got all the standard US criminal rights, courts do not strip them of such.

Thanks to Evil Bun-Bun.

posted by Ace at 04:54 PM

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