Snark Injection for Guantanamo Trial
While the Supreme Court has most certainly dealt the strongest blows against the Bush administration’s handling of Guantanamo detainees, a lower court in the same city might have dealt the most creative one. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has rejected the government’s evidence for keeping a prisoner at Guantanamo by citing a celebrated poem of nonsense:Lewis Carroll notwithstanding, the fact that the government has “said it thrice” does not make an allegation true. See LEWIS CARROLL, THE HUNTING OF THE SNARK 3 (1876) (”I have said it thrice: What I tell you three times is true.”). In fact, we have no basis for concluding that there are independent sources for the documents’ thrice-made assertions.
The opinion was referring to the government’s evidence against Huzaifa Parhat, who was detained in Afghanistan in 2001. While three documents were meant to convince the court that he should not be released, Judge Merrick B. Garland, who penned the ruling, flatly stated: “We are not persuaded.” His quite serious explanation, available in full as a pdf, follows:
Many of those assertions are made in identical language, suggesting that later documents may merely be citing earlier ones, and hence that all may ultimately derive from a single source. And as we have also noted, Parhat has made a credible argument that — at least for some of the assertions — the common source is the Chinese government, which may be less than objective with respect to the Uighurs.
Mr. Parhat is one of 17 Uighurs, a Muslim minority from western China, who were brought to the Guanatanamo prison after being detained in Afghanistan. As William Glaberson reported in The New York Times, their cases have drawn wide attention since they were spoiling for a fight against the Chinese, not Americans.
Despite the ruling, it is not clear what will happen to Mr. Parhat. No other country seems willing to accept him or the 16 others, except China, which may be all too eager. Washington refuses to send them back there, citing human rights concerns.
As for Mr. Carroll’s poem, it is available online for free in either text or audio. And feel free to channel Mr. Carroll yourself in the comments.
Original Source : http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/30/snark-injection-for-guantanamo-trial/?hp
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