Federal Appeals Court Orders Government to Turn Over All Files on Gitmo Detainees

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT: Court Orders Government to Turn Over Files on Detainees
By WILLIAM GLABERSON
Published: July 20, 2007

A federal appeals court yesterday ordered the government to turn over virtually all its information on Guantánamo detainees who are challenging their detention, rejecting an effort by the Justice Department to limit disclosures and setting the stage for new legal battles over its justification for holding the men indefinitely.

The ruling, which came in one of the main court cases dealing with the fate of the detainees, effectively set the ground rules for scores of cases by detainees challenging the actions of Pentagon tribunals that decide whether terror suspects should be held as enemy combatants.

A three-judge panel of the federal appeals court in Washington unanimously rejected a government effort to limit the information it must turn over to the court and to lawyers for detainees.

The court said meaningful review of the military tribunals would not be possible “without seeing all the evidence, any more than one can tell whether a fraction is more or less than half by looking only at the numerator and not the denominator.”

Advocates for detainees have criticized the tribunals since they were instituted in 2004 because the terror suspects held at Guantánamo are not permitted lawyers during the proceedings and they are not allowed to see much of the evidence against them.

P. Sabin Willett, a Boston lawyer who argued the case for detainees, called the ruling “a resounding rejection of the government’s effort to hide the truth.”...

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/20/us/20cnd-gitmo.html?hp

[merh]

1. Is that why the prez just entered the Torture Ban?

:shrug:

[malaise]

2. DUers wake up

we're winning in slow steps. Bushco is fugged.