Government Dropping Allegations Against Gitmo Detainees

November 3, 2008— -- The government has argued that the prisoners are among the world's most dangerous terrorists. But as the Guantanamo detainees' cases challenging their imprisonment move forward in federal court, prosecutors have begun dropping some of the central allegations they used to justify locking these men up as enemy combatants.

The reversals have raised questions about whether the government will have enough evidence to convince federal judges to continue to hold the couple hundred men still detained at the Guantanamo Bay prison, defense lawyers say.

"They've been holding these men for more than six years on the basis of these allegations and when a court looks at them they drop them," says Zachary Katznelson, a detainee defense attorney. "It sure looks to any rational observer that they must have something to hide."

In many instances, lawyers say, the government has. The vast majority of the newly filed factual returns explaining the government's central allegations against detainees have been changed and, say defense lawyers, have limited some of the assertions.

The government argues that filing such changes is necessary and that any limitation on changing the allegations "would preclude this Court from considering any wartime intelligence developed by the United States during the past four years," prosecutors wrote in court filings.

Part of the problem is that many of the allegations against detainees may rely on evidence derived from torture or other interrogation techniques that would be questionable in federal court. Others may simply have relied on untrustworthy sources.