Sunday, March 13, 2005

On the legal front

"Terrorist" continues to mean what we want it to mean, and our response continues to be violence.

A federal judge on Saturday prohibited the government from transferring 13 Yemeni prisoners from the military's detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, until a hearing could be held on their lawyers' fear that they might face torture if sent to another country.

[snip]

The government argues that all the prisoners were members of the Qaeda terrorist network or the Taliban in Afghanistan, or have ties to those groups. Mr. Falkoff said that after talking to his clients during two weeklong visits to the detention center and reviewing government documents, he did not believe they were terrorists.

He said he believed one was an aid worker, another was a medic and a third was a 17-year-old who had traveled to Afghanistan to teach children the Koran. He acknowledged that he did not have independent corroboration for their stories.

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