Did Justice Move to Wonderland?

In “Alice in Wonderland,” the Queen of Hearts dispensed justice with an even hand. For all accused, she insisted on “sentence first, verdict afterward.” The queen was keen on the ends of justice and saw the means as a tiring inconvenience. Increasingly, the U.S. Justice Department seems to be taking a lead from the jurisprudence of the Red Queen and, if the case of Lotfi Raissi is any indication, it is rivaling Lewis Carroll in its ability to spin a tale.

This week, Raissi was released by a British court after five months of incarceration during which the U.S. Justice Department sought his extradition. The U.S. government now stands accused of misleading the court and withholding exculpatory evidence. In the ultimate reversal of fortunes, the man once identified as the “mastermind” of terrorists has emerged as a sympathetic character.

Raissi was accused of training Hani Hanjour, who is believed to have piloted the airplane into the Pentagon. Extradition should have been a perfunctory matter given the clarity of his alleged involvement and the accommodating stance of English courts.

In its appearances before British Judge Timothy Workman, the U.S. government assured the court that there was a “web of circumstantial evidence” revealing Raissi as a co-conspirator and an Al Qaeda operative. Workman held six hearings to try to induce the U.S. government to support its claims with this evidence. Finally, the U.S. admitted that it had no such evidence.

Initially, there was good reason to suspect Raissi, who attended the same flight training school with one of the Sept. 11 trainers. However, with time, the government appeared unwilling to reconsider the evidence, particularly after it publicly identified him as a key figure in the conspiracy behind that day’s tragic events.

It now appears that the FBI had found no credible evidence to confirm the claims made before Workman. In the initial hearings, for example, the government claimed to have a videotape of Raissi with one of the hijackers and extensive telephone records of calls to the hijackers. It was later revealed that the videotape was actually Raissi and his cousin at Raissi’s apartment and the government mysteriously dropped the claim that it had incriminating telephone records.

Furthermore, Raissi’s lawyer produced an affidavit from an FBI agent stating that the FBI had determined that there is “no evidence to suggest that Raissi and Hanjour had ever trained together.” A pilot who allegedly flew on a particular day with the two men denied that Hanjour was on the flight with Raissi. Logs indicate that Hanjour flew on a different day than Raissi.

For months, Raissi’s family denied any connection to terrorism and submitted evidence of a long anti-terrorism stance of the family. His wife insisted that if Raissi were an Islamic fanatic, she probably would have noticed since she is a cabaret dancer and a Catholic.

The U.S. government, however, did not go quietly into the night. It is now seeking Raissi’s extradition based on the fact that he failed to mention that he had a bad knee (from a tennis injury) to the Federal Aviation Administration and failed to disclose an earlier conviction for petty theft in 1993.

Again, the U.S. government has been accused of misleading the court. It appears that Raissi had disclosed his knee injury to the FAA doctor in a prior examination and that FAA rules apparently do not require disclosure of a petty theft conviction in Britain.

Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft publicly has admitted to casting a broad net in gathering suspects and witnesses. This strategy is defended as increasing the chances that an actual terrorist might be immobilized. Justice, however, demands more than the law of averages. Unlike dropping a 500-pound bomb on a gathering of Afghans in the hope of nailing a few terrorists, justice does not allow us the luxury to prosecute them all and let God sort them out.

In its misleading statements and its failure to correct the record, the government fulfilled the stereotype of a vengeful nation unhinged from its most fundamental legal principles. A nation of laws is defined not by the ends of justice but by the means used to secure it. This is why our conduct in Britain deserves investigation to determine if the world’s greatest democracy returned to the courts of our ancestors and adopted practices that would make the Red Queen blush.