Who's telling the truth?

It is a devastating indictment of what our government became under george w. bush, but it is undeniable: when a Gitmo detainee says one thing and our government says another, I tend to believe the detainee.

Jack Tapper on ABC online reports an interview with Lakhdar Boumediene, a 43 yrear old Algerian who was caught up in a post-9/11 sweep, accused of plotting to blow up US and British embassies in Sarajevo, and spent 7 1/2 years at Guantanamo.

Boumediene, who worked for the Red Crescent Society (equivalent of the International Red Cross in Muslim countries), was arrested by Bosnian police in October 2001. Tapper reports:

"They search my car, my office, nothing. Cell phone, nothing. Nothing. Nothing," he said.

The charges were dropped, and the Bosnian courts ordered him and five others freed. But under pressure from the Bush administration, the Bosnian government handed him over to the U.S. military.

He was shackled, put on a military plane, and shipped to Guantanamo.

Two weeks later, in his State of the Union address, President Bush touted the arrests in Bosnia to show early progress in the war on terror.

"Our soldiers, working with the Bosnian government, seized terrorists who were plotting to bomb our embassy," Bush said in his address. To this day, officials of the Bush administration have provided no credible evidence to back up that accusation.

Boumediene says he tried to be cooperative with his interrogators, figuring that if he told them the truth, it would quicken his release. He trusted the fairness of the Americans. But, he says, the fact that he had nothing to tell them was taken as a sign of uncooperativeness.

Further, he says they never asked him about any plots to blow up the embassies. They were only interested in what he knew about al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, which was nothing. Nevertheless, he endured harsh treatment for 7 1/2 years and has only been released recently after a court order.

It was the Supreme Court's 5/4 ruling that gave Guantanamo detainees the right to challenge in court their detention that led to Boumediene's suit against Bush and his eventual release. He was held for 7 1/2 years but never charged with a crime, and no evidence was ever offered that he had committed one.

A family man who has lost seven years of his life, Boumediene didn't even recognize his two daughters, who were small children when he last saw them. His family has been reduced to poverty. Even so, he has apparently not been "radicalized" by his treatment and does not resent the American people. He is even understanding about the post-9/11 anxiety that led to our over-reaction:

"The first month, okay, no problem, the building, the 11 of September, the people, they are scared, but not 7 years. They can know who's innocent, who's not innocent, who's terrorist, who's not terrorist," he said.

"I give you 2 years, no problem, but not 7 years."

Those are not the words of a terrorist. He says he wants to try to forget Guantanamo, but his lawyer believes that compensation is owed him and plans to sue the government.

In the Supreme Court's 5/4 decision to grant habeas corpus, Antonin Scalia wrote a scathing dissent, saying that "allowing federal judges, rather than military officials, to release terror suspects could have disastrous consequences."

I would argue, rather, that what has led to disastrous consequences in this and many other cases is the bending, or outright flauting, of the law by members of the executive branch. It then becomes the duty of the judiciary to over-rule them. This decision was properly decided, and the margin is frightenly slim, meaning we're one vote away from giving a war-time president unlimited powers.

Our government presented no credible evidence against this man. His story rings true. I believe him. And I am ashamed of what my government did to him in my name.

Ralph