Now:
A plan to storm the House of Commons, take politicians hostage and behead Prime Minister Stephen Harper is among the sensational allegations to emerge yesterday after 15 men and youths charged in an anti-terrorism sweep appeared in court.
Back then:
After two years during which Jose Padilla has been imprisoned in a windowless cell in a navy brig on American soil without charges—and in the final days of the Supreme Court's arriving at a decision in his case—Deputy Attorney General James Comey suddenly hurled a list of detailed accusations against this "enemy combatant" as designated by George W. Bush.
Comey was not speaking in a court-room but rather in a nationally televised press conference. Padilla could not reply to those denunciations in his own defense. Nor could his lawyers. The government had at last allowed them to speak to their client twice after the Supreme Court had surprised the Bush team by taking Hamdi's case. But their meetings with their client were listened to and videotaped by the government.
Moreover, one of Padilla's lawyers, Andrew Patel, tells me that the government has ruled that Padilla's attorneys cannot tell anyone what Padilla would say in answer to any government accusations because everything he told his lawyers is classified. Nor could his lawyers ask him about what he said in his interrogations.
Can we at least not go down that particular road?
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