Back when the color-coded terror alert system was ubiquitous, the Bush administration had a penchant for imagining terrorist plots aloud in the hopes of drumming up fear among Americans. Sometimes, he would even infuse his wild plots into important speeches like the State of the Union Address. Bush’s 2002 address featured one such tall tale:
Our soldiers, working with the Bosnian government, seized terrorists who were plotting to bomb our embassy."
Seven years later, a judge has ordered those so-called terrorists to be freed on account of zero evidence. It’s not clear whether the American courts will be able to return the seven years of lost freedom to the five accused. It’s also unclear how many similarly unlawfully detained combatants (if "combatants" is their real name) remain. If this case is any evidence, we might see the de jure obsolescence of the Guantanamo Bay prison very soon.
According to U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, the Bush administration had no grounds to keep the detainees. In mobster-like fashion, the Administration’s case relied on a single unnamed witness who undoubtedly provided his information under duress. The LA Times reports:
Reporting from Washington -- A federal judge ruled here for the first time Thursday that the Bush administration had no basis for holding several of its long-term prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and he ordered that five of the Algerian natives go free.
The question in the case was whether the men, who lived in Bosnia and had never fought or been near a battlefield, had plotted with Al Qaeda and were planning to fight in Afghanistan. In Thursday's ruling, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, a Bush appointee, said the government's case was weak because it relied on only one unnamed witness who linked the men to Al Qaeda. They deserve to be released, he said.
This case has an interesting chronology that probably mirrors the situation of many Guantanamo Bay prisoners. The accused were initially released from a Bosnian court back 2001 on account of lack of evidence. Upon their release, "U.S. Authorities" extraordinarily renditioned the freed men and scurried them away to Cuba. The Administration’s initial allegations were trumped up to feverishly hyperbolic levels before being inserted into the 2002 prime-time address to the nation. In that speech, Bush accused the suspects of plotting to bomb the U.S. embassy in Sarajevo.
But the Bush administration quietly backed off those charges when it was time to bring the case before a judge. Those charges were replaced by the nebulous charge of planning to travel to Afghanistan "to take up arms against U.S. forces." Although that charge was the catch-all staple behind labeling prisoners as "enemy combatants," Judge Leon wasn’t buying it. The prisoners’ lawyers argued that they were swept up by mistake, which the judges decision supported. A sixth prisoner remained held indefinitely under suspicion that he was linked to Al Queda.
The US can appeal to a D.C. court, which has "generally endorsed the Bush administrations policies." Fortunately for America’s nearly-extinct moral high ground, though, President-Elect Obama plans close Guantanamo, and Civil libertarians "expect that most of its remaining 250 detainees will be released." As one such civil libertiesist notes:
Civil libertarians said Thursday's decision confirmed what the Bush administration's critics had long assumed -- that the cases against the Guantanamo prisoners would not stand up if they were examined by an independent judge.
"For seven years, the Bush administration sought to avoid the courts because it had no evidence and sought instead to create a lawless prison," said Vincent Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights. "We must note that justice here, however, comes seven years too late."