In Gitmo Opinion, Two Versions of Reality

[Exilednight]

Update April 25, 2011: On Sunday night, a number of news outlets and WikiLeaks published a trove of classified documents <1> on detainees at Guantanamo Bay. ProPublica has been reporting on Gitmo <2> and the issues surrounding indefinite detention for more than two years. In October 2010, Dafna Linzer revealed how the Obama administration censored one federal judge's Gitmo decision <3> that had questioned the government's evidence against a detainee.

When Judge Henry Kennedy Jr. ordered the release of a Guantánamo Bay detainee last spring, the case appeared to be a routine setback for an Obama administration that has lost a string of such cases.

Uthman Abdul Rahim Mohammed Uthman
But there turns out to be nothing ordinary about the habeas case brought by Uthman Abdul Rahim Mohammed Uthman <5>, a Yemeni held without charges for nearly eight years. Uthman, accused by two U.S. administrations of being an al-Qaida fighter and bodyguard for Osama bin Laden, is among 48 detainees <6> the Obama administration has deemed too dangerous to release but "not feasible for prosecution."

A day after his March 16 order <7> was filed on the court's electronic docket, Kennedy's opinion vanished. Weeks later, a new ruling <8> appeared in its place. While it reached the same conclusion, eight pages of material had been removed, including key passages in which Kennedy dismantled the government's case against Uthman.

http://www.propublica.org/article/in-gitmo-opinion-two-versions-of-reality

Is anyone else scared by the precedent this sets?

[gratuitous]

1. Oh, open courts are just so quaint

Who needs a Constitution anyway? Okay, that's enough lookin' backwards to the past. Let's look forward to the future! Well, not the rest of you lot in Gitmo. Nothin' there to really look forward to there, is there?

[Exilednight]

2. I agree, and it scares the hell out of me that politicians of any stripe are

rewriting judicial opinions. The courts are suppose to be the referees and now they are having their calls changed by the players.

[Exilednight]

3. I find it hard to believe that no one else cares. n/t

[slipslidingaway]

4. knr n/t