The Nation: Gitmo Justice

[babylonsister]

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070416/huq

Gitmo Justice

Aziz Huq


A man who the government claims fought "on the front line" of terrorism is given a door to freedom: Australian Guantánamo detainee David Hicks has entered a plea deal before one of the military commissions created by the Military Commissions Act, and agreed to serve nine months with immediate transfer to Australia.

Yet on April 2, the Supreme Court consigned almost 400 other detainees who have never been able to be heard in court, and who are charged with no crime, to years more of toilsome litigation by denying them a chance to present their cases.

These vastly disparate outcomes are hard to square--unless you ask how the chips fall politically. For although we cannot peek behind the green curtain of Defense Department policy-making, the government's decisions reek of politics of the worst sort.