Al - Jazeera cameraman freed from Guantanamo after 6 years

This is shocking! They just let him go free - but he'd been in Guantanamo for six years. Guantanamo holds "the worst of the worst" so he must have done something to deserve that. True, he was never actually charged with anything, but there must have been some reason to hold him there incommunicado for so long.

Lucky he's emaciated and stretcher-ridden, or he'd no doubt be running berserk blowing things up.

Why was he imprisoned? Why was he released?

A nice topic, NNN. Apparently, "The military alleged he was a courier for a militant Muslim organization, an allegation his lawyers denied."

Also from NNN's article: "What has happened to American justice?"

There is a history of having it suspended during wartime. Here is one column on the subject, from last year:

Stretching Executive Power in Wartime

Interesting. As the article implies, I guess much depends on one's definition of "wartime". But - setting aside legal, moral and constitutional issues - has imprisoning Sami al-Haj made the US any safer?

There seems to be a fair case against the internment of Japanese-Americans in World War Two simply on pragmatic grounds. There's surely a much stronger case against the imprisonment of Sami al-Haj in terms of 'realpolitik'. What damage to the US had he done, or could he possibly have done, versus what damage has been done by treating him so unfairly?