I was driving home from work this morning when I heard something that, even with this administration, I find hard to believe--interrogators at Gitmo were encouraged to destroy notes from their interrogations.
You've gotta be kidding me, I thought. Well, turns out I heard right, per the AP.
The Pentagon urged interrogators at Guantanamo Bay to destroy handwritten notes in case they were called to testify about potentially harsh treatment of detainees, a military defense lawyer said Sunday.
The lawyer for Toronto-born Omar Khadr, Lt. Cmdr. William Kuebler, said the instructions were included in an operations manual shown to him by prosecutors and suggest the U.S. deliberately thwarted evidence that could help terror suspects defend themselves at trial. (emphasis mine)
Kuebler intends to use this to have the case against Khadr thrown out. Needless to say, whatever shred of legitimacy the trials of Gitmo detainees--including and especially that of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed--may have had just gone in File 13 along with the notes.
Even if you believe the administration's palpably offensive argument that the Constitution doesn't apply on Gitmo, basic human rights dictate that you do not withhold potentially exculpatory evidence from the defense. Period.
Khadr's story is particularly gut-wrenching. According to his article on Wikipedia, Khadr has been detained since 2002, when he was 15 years old. In other words, a child soldier. He's a Canadian citizen--and yet, neither Harper (nor, if I'm reading right, Chrétien or Martin) have sought to have him repatriated despite numerous appeals. Any Canadians reading this--if there wasn't a case to have him repatriated, there is now. If Khadr's trial is allowed to go on now (especially since the original judge was reportedly cashiered due to a ruling that favored the defense), it will have all the legitimacy of a Star Chamber.
I've said before that even though many of these detainees may be manifestly guilty of war crimes, the legitimacy of any guilty verdict would be questionable at best. Somehow I think that we're about to get an answer to some of those questions.