I've posted on this before, but it's worth repeating: namely McClatchy's fine reporting on Guantanamo, back in the Bush days. McClatchy found that true Al Qaeda members enjoyed considerable priviliges in US custody, because knowing why they were there, they were less angry, confused and insubordinate than innocent prisoners. One of the privileges they had was the right to walk through the camp and converse with their less fortunate, usually innocent, fellow-prisoners. The result was indoctrination under the nose of the non-Arab speaking US military.

So through the US's doing, people who were not in any way dangerous may have become so. And these are the people who will remain in custody with no right to a trial, precisely because they would win such a trial, having done nothing wrong.

One can imagine the political dilemma. Release them, and you release people who have every reason to hate the US, and who moreover have been physically forced - by the US! - to listen to Al Qaeda propaganda for years on end. Refuse to release them, and you commit a huge injustice and an even bigger constitutional and human rights violation. A principled person, or even just someone with a longer-term view, wouldn't hesitate to release the innocent. Because in the end you can't hold people just because maybe they'll be dangerous; you'd have to hold a quarter of the population then. The real reason these particular people continue to be held while others not only walk free but also freely purchase weaponry, is because of the political fallout if they avenge their wrongful detention. To put it even stronger: they are not more dangerous than thousands of other people who (at present) are not preventively detained; it's just the political risk which is larger.

This, perhaps, is what ondelette means when she says: "Torture and enforced disappearance are things that once they take hold are very difficult to uproot without enormous political and social upheaval." Actually, I disagree with that: they're very easy to uproot, all it takes is executive power. Accompanied with a little principle, and perhaps some courage.

Germany, which does not have a death penalty, provided evidence for the trial on the condition that it could not be used to support a death sentence.

Thank you for that one. It's a pretty big story, or at least could become one. I don't see how US prosecutors will be able to tell the jury, "Now this evidence can be used to reach a guilty verdict, but not to impose the death penalty." The US will necessarily break its promises to Germany. And this evidence, too, will be tainted.

Worse (from a US point of view), this matter will remind everyone that the US is one of the rare democracies that still imposes the death penalty - which by European standards is a serious breach of human rights. Add the torture, the broken promises, the fact that many in Guantanamo won't get a trial - let alone a civil one -, and the KSM trial is hardly likely to become a show case for US adherence to the rule of law. Quite the opposite: it will highlight the brutality of the US criminal system, particularly (though not only) post-9/11.

While I certainly hail the Lithuanian initiative, it's worth remembering that it is very much the work of one individual, be it the president of the country, and we don't yet know how far the investigation will go. The Poles also investigated the CIA black holes and ran up against a local variant of the state secrets doctrine. The Rumanians didn't do much more than a halfhearted attempt to investigate. The European Parliament's investigation didn't, and couldn't, overcome obstruction on the national level.

What I'm trying to say is that however praiseworthy Mrs Grybauskaité's initiative may be, Europe's institutional checks and balances appear to fail when the human rights violation is committed by a powerful country. Both Lithuanian and European institutional safeguards are relatively young, and came into existence in NATO's shadow (or, if one prefers, under NATO's umbrella). Methinks the best hope of getting to the bottom of all this remains the tried-and-true British judicial system.

That's the missing link. It's why such glaring truths about the effects of US policies are ignored. It's a myth, but a powerful one. I remember Friedman writing about the Iraqi insurgents and wondering when Iraqis would start to love their children too much to send them into harm's way. (To which one sane commenter replied that it was the US, not Iraq, which was sending hundreds of thousands of its sons and daughters abroad into harm's way.)

It's like Israel equating Sderot with Gaza, and then finding even that "unfair" and pressuring the PA into opposing the Goldstone report. "Palestinian lives don't really count, don't you agree, Mr Abbas?"

Somehow the Western elites - particularly the anglosaxon ones - tend to believe that people over there will agree that their lives don't count for much. Reading how US officials treated bereaved Iraqis inquiring into the deaths of their loved ones sends chills down your spine. All that's lacking is the words, "You think you feel bad? How about me? Do you realize what this is doing to my promotion chances?"

Same thing about the drone attacks. There is a tendency to think Afghan mothers don't really grieve, that Afghan fathers don't really get angry, that Afghan brothers can somehow be convinced that their siblings' deaths were all for the good cause.

In short, it's the epitome of racism: not only does one think the victim is inferior, but one also expects the victim to agree.

Living in France, I haven't met any parents who preferred boys to girls - the opposite, sometimes - except Arab parents, Asian parents and, more rarely, Jewish parents. Over here having one daughter and one son is called "le choix du roi": what the king would choose.