What Good Is It to Validate Gitmo and Defend Renditions if Obama Is Going to Release the Terrorists Anyway?

We are going to need a Friday night news-watch on this administration.

According to the New York Times, the British government has announced that it has struck an agreement with the Obama administration to release the terrorist Binyam Mohammed.  Mohammed is an Ethiopian-born jihadist whose rendition (and alleged torture) is at the heart of the civil lawsuit in which, last week, the Obama administration backed the assertion of state-secrets privilege by the Bush administration. 

The brief Times report takes pains to recite that Mohammed “was detained in Pakistan in April 2002 and then secretly sent to Morocco, according to officials from both countries and court documents. He says he was tortured while in Morocco, including having his genitals cut with a scalpel.” Naturally, the paper skips over the serious terrorism allegations against Mohammed: the fact that he was apprehended while enroute to the United States to conduct terrorist attacks with (now convicted terrorist) Jose Padilla, after meeting personally with bin Laden and other top al Qaeda figures and receiving extensive terrorist training in Afghanistan and Pakistan. At The Long War Journal and the Weekly Standard, Tom Joscelyn has recounted those apparently irrelevant details (see here).

Mohammed, who lived in Britain for about seven years (and in the U.S. for two years before that) prior to joining al Qaeda in Afghanistan in 2001, has been an irritant for U.S./U.K. relations for years  He was held at Gitmo and charged by the U.S. with war crimes. Though those charges were dismissed for procedural reasons, military prosecutors believe they have a very strong case against him — and the fact that they charged it is some indication that they’re not terribly worried about Mohammed’s torture claims.  (To be clear, I’m not saying he wasn’t abused — I don’t know if he was or he wasn’t.  My point is that if the case was reliant on “torture” evidence, the prosecutors wouldn’t be looking to bring it.)  In the U.K., human rights activists concerned only about Mohammed’s treatment but utterly unconcerned about the atrocities he was planning to commit against innocent people, have agitated for his release — and the Brits don’t want the case tried because they’re worried about the public perception of whatever involvement they had in his extradition. 

To say this whole thing has the stench of a set-up is an understatement. On February 5, a British court reluctantly denied a demand from Mohammed’s supporters that classified information about his rendition and interrogation be released. A few days later, the Obama administration reaffirmed the Bush state-secrets claim, ensuring that the classified information would not be released here, either.  Great . . . except now the two governments have quietly gotten together and agreed that the terrorist himself will no longer be detained, much less tried — he’ll be sent to Britain where he’ll be freed.

A couple of Fridays ago, the Obama administration promised families of the 9/11 and Cole bombing victims that justice against terrorists would be swift and sure. Well, this certainly is swift, isn’t it?