...Now that the Government at last faces a merits hearing before an Article III Court, the thinness of its basis for detaining Petitioners is plain. ... The Government nowhere acknowledges—and indeed, has done its utmost to avoid—the thorough investigation performed on the ground by Bosnian authorities in 2001. ... By mid-January 2002, both the prosecutor and the investigating judge had concluded that no basis had been established to hold Petitioners even for further investigation. ...Now that the Court has finally ordered the Government to provide reasons for its continued military detention of Petitioners, its assertions in 2008 bear very little relation to its reasons for Petitioners’ initial extrajudicial rendition from Bosnia in 2002. The United States’ original claim was that Petitioners were supposedly plotting a terrorist attack on the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo.Indeed, in the 2002 State of the Union Address, delivered fewer than ten days after Petitioners were flown by plane to Guantanamo, President Bush stated: “Our soldiers, working with the Bosnian government, seized terrorists who were plotting to bomb our embassy.”Notably omitted from the President’s account was the fact that the three-month investigation carried out by Bosnian authorities failed to unearth any evidence to warrant further investigation, let alone sufficient evidence to charge Petitioners with any terrorism-related crime. ... The Government’s unclassified Return makes no mention of the claim that Petitioners “were plotting to bomb our embassy.”
Mother Jones
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