The latest from Carol Rosenberg of The Miami Herald, who is doing us all the great good service of monitoring how the U.S. government is blundering around trying to run courtrooms in which inmates at Guantanamo are being tried for various terrorist acts including the bombing of the USS Cole, which, I would remind you, took place in October of 2000. One of these defendants—Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri—was picked up in Dubai almost 16 years ago. Since then, he was shuttled between CIA black sites and tortured in several locations. (The videos of al-Nashiri’s torture were among those destroyed by CIA officials.) He’s been on trial since 2011 before a military commission.

In October, all three of his lawyers quit. Rosenberg now explains why that happened. From the Herald:

Lawyers for the alleged USS Cole bombing mastermind quit the capital case after discovering a microphone in their special client meeting room and were denied the opportunity to either talk about or investigate it, the Miami Herald has learned. The narrative, contained in a 15-page prosecution filing obtained by the Herald, is the first authoritative description of the episode that caused three civilian defense attorneys to resign from the death-penalty case of Abd al Rahim al Nashiri on ethical grounds: Rick Kammen, a seasoned death-penalty defender, and Rosa Eliades and Mary Spears. In fact, the prosecution says the listening device that lawyers discovered in an early August inspection of their special meeting room was a legacy of past interrogations — and, across 50 days of ostensibly confidential attorney-client meetings, was never turned on.

It [the prosecution narrative obtained by the Herald] says that, after the three lawyers quit the case in October, prison workers “removed flooring, walls, and fixtures” in an attorney-client meeting site exclusively used by Nashiri and his lawyers and “confirmed that legacy microphones, which were not connected to any audio listening/recording device nor in an operable condition, were removed.”

The lawyers in question are not buying this benign explanation from the government prosecutors.

Kammen, reached by the Herald, called the prosecution account “outrageous” and “really grotesque selective declassification” designed to permit “some portion of the truth to seep out, but only in ways that the government feels will help it.” At the time of their resignations, Kammen said he was only allowed to say that something had occurred, which he could not describe; that he sought discovery from the judge in order to investigate the episode as well as a hearing, and the requests were denied it. The judge’s denial is classified. “Our concerns were much greater than what they appear to admit was there,” he said. He added, however, that even the portion the prosecution now permits the public to know “demonstrates that either Colonel Spath was lied to by the government or in many of his statements he was lying to the public, the press and the victims in a way that was absolutely shameful and disgraceful — by casting it as fake news.”

This is just a mess. This guy should have been tried in some obscure federal civilian court in Virginia years ago and, if he’s guilty, he should be in his ninth or tenth year of languishing in some obscure federal prison. But, of course, because we subcontracted his torture to folks in Poland and Thailand, an awful lot of the evidence the government could present would be inadmissible. And it would not be possible for civilian prosecutors to declare that, even if he’s acquitted, we are holding onto al-Nashiri anyway, as the military prosecutors already have said will be the case. Now, there’s no possible reason for any defense attorney to believe that the government will act in good faith.

By comparison, it took two years for the civilian criminal justice system to capture, try, convict, and execute Timothy McVeigh. It took two years for the civilian criminal justice system to capture, try, convict, and sentence Omar Abdel-Rahman, the blind sheikh behind the first attack on the World Trade Center. It took only five years for the civilian criminal justice system to indict and convict Zacharias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker in the 9/11 conspiracy, and that trial was just about as wild as a criminal case can get. Here, we’re into year 16 with this one guy, and the military can’t get out of its own way, and the whole thing ultimately may be a show trial anyway. There is no reason for this except cowardice on the part of civilian politicians far from the long strands of barbed wire.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io