Long Overdue

A federal judge has ordered that five prisoners at Guantanamo be set free, as the only evidence against holding them for the last seven years were the statements of an unnamed witness. From the Los Angeles Times:

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.

The events that make up the timeline of this case are truly shocking:

In the fall of 2001, the Algerian-born men whose case was decided Thursday were suspected of plotting to bomb the U.S. Embassy in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo. But a court in Bosnia rejected the allegation and released the men. Then, U.S. authorities took them into custody and shipped them to the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay.

In January 2002, President Bush referred to the case in his State of the Union address. “Our soldiers, working with the Bosnian government, seized terrorists who were plotting to bomb our embassy,” he said.
But when the case went before the judge, the administration's lawyers dropped that claim. Instead, they asserted that the Algerians planned to travel to Afghanistan to take up arms against U.S. forces. Leon concluded there was little or no evidence to prove the men made such a plan.

Unfortunately, the ruling may not mean the release of the prisoners immediately, as the Justice Department usually just goes along with the policies of the Bush administration. But with Obama stating his intention to shut down the prison, this travesty of justice might come to an end sooner rather that later.

-- Dylan Blaylock