A federal appeals court has slammed the reliability of U.S. government intelligence documents, saying just because officials keep repeating their assertions does not make them true.
A three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington likened the Bush administration's case to a line in an 1876 nonsense poem by Lewis Carroll: "I have said it thrice: What I tell you three times is true."
Portions of the court's findings were released a week ago, including a ruling that a Chinese Muslim accused of being a foreign fighter was wrongly imprisoned. The full ruling was released Monday.
Hazaifa Parhat is being held by the U.S. military at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba. In its ruling, the court ordered that Parhat be released or transferred, or that a hearing be held quickly to determine whether he is being held properly.
The judges criticized the government for offering unsubstantiated evidence, and referred to Carroll's poem,"The Hunting of the Snark," in which the line is uttered by a pompous character called the Bellman.
"The government suggests that several of the assertions in the intelligence documents are reliable because they are made in at least three different documents," wrote Judge Merrick Garland. "We are not persuaded. Lewis Carroll notwithstanding, the fact the government has 'said it thrice' does not make the allegation true. In fact we have no basis for concluding that there are independent sources for the documents' thrice-made assertions."
The court also ruled the military improperly labeled Parhat as an "enemy combatant," marking the first time a Guantanamo Bay detainee has been given an opportunity in a civilian court to seek his release. The decision throws into serious doubt the underlying reasons for keeping Parhat in custody for more than six years.
The Carroll poem is similar to many of his other works, nonsensical in nature, described by the author as an account of "the impossible voyage of an improbable crew to find an inconceivable creature." Carroll, who lived from 1832 to 1898, is best known for the children's fantasy "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland."
The ruling came 18 days after the Supreme Court concluded that the approximately 270 men held at Guantanamo have a basic constitutional right to challenge their detention in federal courts, another setback for the Bush administration's anti-terror and war policies.
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