"It's a totally fishy maneuver that suggests that the government wants, at the 11th hour, to get its ducks in a row," said Jonathan Hafetz, an attorney representing several detainees.
Having ignored legal advice for over five years, the Bush administration is trying to shift the goal posts again, albeit in a new and flagrant fashion. Realizing that federal judges will now be reviewing "secret" evidence against Guantanamo detainees, prosecutors want to do a rewrite.
The government has stood behind the evidence for years. Military review boards relied on it to justify holding hundreds of prisoners indefinitely without charge. Justice Department attorneys said it was thoroughly and fairly reviewed.
Now that federal judges are about to review the evidence, however, the government says it needs to make changes.
The decision follows last week's Supreme Court ruling, which held that detainees have the right to challenge their detention in civilian court, not just before secret military panels.
Prosecutors don't just want to "update" the old, secret evidence, now that it's about to be reviewed in a civilian court. They want to add "new" evidence, evidence that presumably got lost in the prosecution's deep, kangaroo pockets.
