Court Likens Gitmo Case to Absurd Poem

Lewis Carroll cited in mocking decision to void detention
By Jason Farago,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 1, 2008 6:24 AM CDT
Court Likens Gitmo Case to Absurd Poem
The detainee in question is a member of China's Uighur Muslim minority.   (AP Photo/Murad Sezer)

In ruling that a Gitmo detainee has been improperly held for 6 years, a federal appeals court deemed the government's standard of evidence on par with an absurdist poem of the 19th century. The DC Court of Appeals voided the detention of Huzaifa Parhat last week, but yesterday it released the unclassified text of its unanimous decision, which contains sharp rebukes to the Bush administration and the Pentagon, reports the New York Times.

The government claimed that the court should accept its accusations at face value because they were repeated in three different secret documents. But the court mocked this argument, comparing it to Lewis Carroll's poem "The Hunting of the Snark," in which "what I tell you three times is true." It remains unclear what will now happen to Parhat, a member of China's ethnic Uighur Muslim minority. (More Guantanamo prisoners stories.)

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