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.
But there turns out to be nothing ordinary about the habeas case brought by Uthman Abdul Rahim Mohammed Uthman, 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 the Obama administration has deemed too dangerous to release but "not feasible for prosecution."
A day after his March 16 order was filed on the court's electronic docket, Kennedy's opinion vanished. Weeks later, a new ruling 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/...
That link is a long read and will require your attention.
Clear the time. It's that damning.
The tl;dr version is this:
- The Obama administration says that Guantanamo inmate Uthman Abdul Rahim Mohammed Uthman is too dangerous for release but his case is "not feasible for prosecution". So they want to imprison him without trial indefinitely.
- To justify this indefinite detention, they presented Judge Henry Kennedy, Jr. with their evidence. The bulk of this evidence are "contradictory, fragmentary and internally inconsistent statements" made by two men.
- These two men were tortured in a CIA secret prison for over a year. One of them became psychotic. The other committed suicide.
- On March 16, Judge Kennedy ordered the release of the prisoner Uthman. The order was filed on the court's electronic docket.
- A day later, Judge Kennedy's opinion disappeared.
- Weeks later, a new ruling was put in its place. Although the finding was the same, 8 pages of material had been removed. This material included key passages where the judge dismantled the government's case.
- The government claimed that they forgot to redact classified material cited in the original opinion before they approved the release of that opinion.
- The judge insisted that the reasoning behind his original decision be made public.
- There are different accounts of what happened next. But the end result was that the government wrote its own opinion and entered it into the record.
To summarize: The Obama Department of Justice is rewriting judicial opinions to keep hidden the fact that the Guantanamo inmates they want to indefinitely detain without trial are being held on unreliable evidence obtained by torture.
Please read that sentence a second time.
Then tell me about your "disappointment" with Obama's civil rights record.
[in case you were wondering, the NSFW meant "not safe for weak stomachs"]
EDIT:
Some comments are trying to argue that the DoJ didn't write the New Improved opinion - Judge Kennedy did.
Let's say you write a diary about how badly I suck. I then force you to revise that diary to omit all the details you provided about why I suck.
Even though all the words in the revised diary are yours, you didn't decide what the diary says. I did.
Are you going to claim that you're still the writer?