Court Vicrtory against terrorists.

Much of the evidence against the detainees is weak. One prisoner at Guantanamo, for example, has made accusations against more than 60 of his fellow inmates; that's more than 10 percent of Guantanamo's entire prison population. The veracity of this prisoner's accusations is in doubt after a Syrian prisoner, Mohammed al-Tumani, 19, who was arrested in Pakistan, flatly denied to his Combatant Status Review Tribunal that he'd attended the jihadist training camp that the tribunal record said he did.

Tumani's denial was bolstered by his American "personal representative," one of the U.S. military officers -- not lawyers -- who are tasked with helping prisoners navigate the tribunals. Tumani's enterprising representative looked at the classified evidence against the Syrian youth and found that just one man -- the aforementioned accuser -- had placed Tumani at the terrorist training camp. And he had placed Tumani there three months before the teenager had even entered Afghanistan. The curious U.S. officer pulled the classified file of the accuser, saw that he had accused 60 men, and, suddenly skeptical, pulled the files of every detainee the accuser had placed at the one training camp. None of the men had been in Afghanistan at the time the accuser said he saw them at the camp.

The tribunal declared Tumani an enemy combatant anyway.

Being released does not prove ones guilt or innocence.

Being released does not prove ones guilt or innocence.

Friday, September 01, 2006
For DA, innocent under the law may not be innocent enough
Having just blogged about the first Tulia defendant's compensation by the state for his wrongful incarceration, I was interested to read an editorial from today's Houston Chronicle ("Grudging Justice," Sept. 1) urging District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal to allow similar payment to Brandy Del Riggs, who was recently released on appeal after spending five years in prison. As the newspaper points out, that means she should be eligible for compensation, too. Wrote the Chronicle's editors:


By declining to retry 25-year-old Brandy Del Briggs in the death of her 2-month-old baby, Daniel, in 1999, Harris County prosecutors have admitted their evidence is inadequate to convict her. As the American legal system rests on the concept of being not guilty until so proved, that makes Briggs an innocent woman.

Yes, that is correct. What we have here is a system outside of the American legal system -- deliberately so. The purpose of having it outside of the American legal system is so that we don't have to afford people their civil rights, or provide them due process, or even a trial at all.

Reading this thread only fortifies my opinion that many in the US have no idea of what the principle of democracy is all about, perhaps some opinions would change if American soldiers were abducted and locked away in secret locations for years on end without access to their families and denied the right of habeas corpus. In a civilized society everyone is entitled to the rule of law which says all are innocent until proven guilty, none of those wretched people, locked away in Guantanamo Bay, have been charged or tried in a court of law, so how can anyone, other than an ignorant uncivilized fool, find them guilty of anything?

There is no good argument for suspending human rights. Our government is the most reprehensible one on Earth at the moment.

There is no good argument for suspending human rights. Our government is the most reprehensible one on Earth at the moment.

There is no good argument for suspending human rights. Our government is the most reprehensible one on Earth at the moment.