Intercept by Patrick Robinson Page A

writ of habeas corpus. The format for the hearing had been worked out only on the previous evening by the clerk to the court, and he acquiesced to the request by James Myerson that the appeals by the four petitioners should be heard jointly and severally, rather than in four separate hearings.
    There were, however, many people occupying the seats behind the hub of the courtroom, and the entire fourth floor was in the iron-grip of the U.S. marshalls, off limits to the public, out-of-bounds even to the legal profession.
    Inside Court 11, there were probably a dozen military officers, three politicians, and six members of the CIA. The four petitioners, smartly dressed in jackets and ties but still manacled, were seated with armed army guards both between them and on the flanks.
    The most unlikely group in the entire courtroom were four anonymous representatives from the Israeli embassy, and you needed to be a real insider to understand the purpose of their attendance—that Israel wanted Ben al-Turabi and Abu Hassan at least as badly as the Navy SEALs wanted Ibrahim Sharif and Yousaf Mohammed.
    If necessary the Mossad was quite prepared to take over and haul them off to Israel for execution. What terrified them was this American judge was about to liberate Ben and Abu—liberate the two men who had killed and maimed so many people in two of the worst atrocities ever committed in Israel. The Mossad’s oft-stated motto is, We Never Forget . The unwritten one is, We Never Forgive .

    Captain Al Surprenant, the top lawyer for the Navy in the San Diego base, had flown in the previous day in company with three senior SPECWARCOM commanders.
    The SEALs had spilled a lot of blood bringing down men like Ibraham and his buddies, and each one of the U.S. Special Forces in that courtroom was hoping the steely, silver-tongued resolve of Commander Surprenant would compel the judges to see reason. Military reason, that is, which is not always the same as civilian reason.
    “All Rise!” The court officer called the room to order as Judge Stanford Osborne led the justices in. All the principal figures in the appeal were familiar with the facts.
    And the justices understood the enormous difficulty for the military to provide proof, civilian court proof , that these obvious scoundrels who were petitioning had indeed committed the crimes of which they had never really been accused.
    That of course was not the issue. Could it be fair and reasonable for the United States to act like some banana republic and lock up these men, indefinitely, without trial, without reasonable proof of guilt, and without appeal to anyone? They were, after all, members of the human race.
    James Myerson was invited to begin, and he stood before the court and argued that, despite the beliefs of the military, there were massive issues here about the burden of proof. “Maybe these men had committed crimes,” he said. “But no one saw them. No one bore witness to anything. And each of these men swears by his God that he is innocent.
    “I am not here to protest their innocence. I am here to plead that never, in all the annals of United States law, from the Founding Fathers to the twenty-first century, has it been acceptable, has it been regarded as legal, fair, or even reasonable, for a court in the United States of America to declare that it does not care one way or another whether the accused are guilty or not.
    “That’s not America, your Honor. That’s Stalin. That’s Pol Pot or whatever the hell his name was. That’s a banana republic. Not us. No, sir, not us at all. And whatever the rights and wrongs, these men have spent many years of pure hell in one of the cruelest prison camps in the Western world.
    “And with every passing month, while they endured forms of torture and deprivation, their very presence on that Godforsaken outpost of U.S. civilization has tarnished and dishonored our great nation. It has sullied us, reduced our reputation in the world,