1115.org

A BBC article about the detainee case that the Supreme Court is currently hearing crystallizes perfectly what’s at stake:

Two cases challenge the removal by Congress of the “habeas corpus” right of detainees under the US constitution to be heard by an independent judge.

If the court rules in their favour, indefinite detention under military control could be declared unlawful.

And if the court rules against them, it will be proclaiming that indefinite detention under military control is perfectly lawful in the United States of America in the 21st century. (That will tend to make us somewhat of an outlier in the English-speaking world.)

One of the most hackneyed phrases about the foundations of our justice system is the notion that it is better for a hundred guilty men to go free than for one innocent man to suffer imprisonment.

Which is why it’s ironic that just as the Supreme Court started to hear arguments in the detainee case yesterday, the case history of Murat Kurnaz surfaced in the mainstream media again.

Kurnaz was one of the innocent men swept up in the aftermath of 9/11 and shipped off to Guantanamo:
• A Turkish citizen who was born and raised in Germany, he was detained in Pakistan in October 2001 and taken to Guantanamo a few months later on suspicion that he was a supporter of al-Qaeda.
• By early 2002, U.S. military intelligence and German law enforcement authorities had largely concluded there was no information linking Kurnaz to al-Qaeda or terrorist activities.
• A military tribunal at Guantanamo nevertheless concluded that he should remain in prison.
• In January 2005, U.S. District Judge Joyce Hens Green criticized the military for ignoring evidence in Kurnaz’s favor and ruled that his detention was illegal.
• One and a half years later, Kurnaz was still being held at Guantanamo.
• He was finally released in August 2006. Only after German Chancellor Angela Merkel personally intervened with George Bush.

Almost five years after he was detained, this innocent man was finally released from Guantanamo. Not because of the kangaroo courts the Bush administration calls military review tribunals, but despite them.

His story has resurfaced now because of “newly released military and court documents” that testify to how this one innocent man suffered imprisonment. Imprisonment that could so easily have been indefinite, had he been a citizen of some other country.

The biggest irony is that the Supreme Court essentially must decide two issues in the current case: whether Guantanamo detainees have a constitutional right of habeas corpus, and if so, whether Bush’s military tribunals are an adequate substitute for a proper judicial review before a federal court.

Kurnaz’s case clearly screams “No!” to the second issue. But it is not at all clear how many of our Supreme Court Justices have ears to listen. The smart money says that at least four of them (Alito, Roberts, Scalia and Thomas) are probably as deaf to these screams as Thomas has been dumb on the bench all these years.

For the record, Pol Pot is said to have subscribed to the view that “it is better that ten innocent men suffer than one guilty man escape”. It’ll be nice to know who’s in his camp.