One year ago, the Supreme Court told the Bush administration that in America, even detainees swept up in the war on terror and held at the military’s Guantanamo Bay prison camp were entitled to a day in court to contest their imprisonment.
Faruq Ali Ahmed is still waiting. A young Yemeni picked up in Pakistan in 2001, he has been held since then despite his insistence that he was doing nothing but teaching the Quran to children when war broke out. He is detained in part on the basis of accusations from a camp snitch who a military officer has denounced as a liar.