1115.org

There’s interesting news out of Salim Hamdan’s trial. It’s nice to see that even if we admit as evidence statements extracted by coercion, we do draw the line somewhere.

Navy Capt. Keith J. Allred, the judge in Hamdan’s trial, threw out “some statements the defendant gave interrogators because they were obtained under “highly coercive” conditions while he was a captive in Afghanistan”.

On the other hand, there’s:

But the judge declined to suppress admissions made by Hamdan after he arrived at the U.S. military prison here, ruling that the Fifth Amendment did not apply to Hamdan and that “no coercive techniques influenced” what he said.

Which may be partly balanced by:

Allred ruled, however, that to use the admissions, prosecutors must produce Hamdan’s interrogators to explain the conditions under which the questioning took place.

The government couldn’t be too thrilled at this turn of events.

Allred’s willingness to throw out evidence in a proceeding against an accused al-Qaeda member could bode badly for cases the government expects to bring against planners of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, some of whom were subjected to far more coercive conditions. Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-confessed mastermind of those attacks, and other accused Sept. 11 conspirators are scheduled to be tried after Hamdan. Mohammed is one of three detainees the government has said was subjected to “waterboarding,” a form of simulated drowning.

They’re probably not looking forward to producing Hamdan’s interrogators in court either, to explain the conditions under which his questioning took place.

It’s heartening that even in the very first show trial, for which one has to assume they handpicked the friendliest judge possible — because that, unfortunately, is how the Bush administration characteristically operates — they weren’t able to come up with a judge who is willing to turn a blind eye to everything. And now he’s gone and set a precedent that is bound to be invoked frequently in subsequent military commission trials.

Of course, one has to wonder at the man of principle who says proudly to himself: “I will compromise my integrity only thus far, and no farther.”