So much for the Shining City on the Hill, human rights, respect for law, or any of the other qualities we insist make the US different: Evidence of Innocence Rejected at Guantanamo:

U.S. District Judge Joyce Hens Green, who was privy to the classified record of the tribunal’s decision-making about [German citizen] Kurnaz in 2004, concluded in January 2005 that his treatment provided powerful evidence of bias against prisoners, and she deemed the proceedings illegal under U.S. and international law. But her ruling, which depicted the allegations against Kurnaz as unsubstantiated and as an inappropriate basis for keeping him locked up, was mostly classified at the time.

In newly released passages, however, Green’s ruling reveals that the tribunal members relied heavily on a memo written by a U.S. brigadier general who noted that Kurnaz had prayed while the U.S. national anthem was sung in the prison and that he expressed an unusual interest in detainee transfers and the guard schedule. Other documents make clear that U.S. intelligence officials had earlier concluded that Kurnaz, who went to Pakistan shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to visit religious sites, had simply chosen a bad time to travel.

The process is “fundamentally corrupted,” said Baher Azmy, a professor at Seton Hall Law School who represents Kurnaz. “All of this just reveals that they had the wrong person and they knew it.”

Kurnaz was eventually released, in August of 2006, but only after German Chancellor Angela Merkel made him a priority. There is no reason to believe his five-year plight was unique, and newly declassified documents surrounding his case make it clear that innocents at Gitmo will have a hard time indeed getting released, since the process to “try” them is so heavily biased against them. Detainees are still unable to see all the evidence against them, and in some cases are denied the right to even now who said they were terrorists. It’s Kafkaesque, and is representative of the worst impulses of a power-mad administration.