Worth reflecting

Re “Russian justice on trial,” editorial, Nov. 25; “2,000 days in a cell,” Opinion, Nov. 25; and “Bin Laden’s driver is going home,” Nov. 25

It was hard to miss the irony of your editorial, when an Op-Ed article on the next page by Jonathan Hafetz calls into question American justice.

The editorial takes to task the Russian military court system, which is trying those accused of murdering journalist Anna Politkovskaya in October 2006. In the meantime, our judicial system has yet to put Ali Marri -- the subject of Hafetz’s article -- on trial since he was seized in December 2001 and was eventually declared an “enemy combatant.”

Nor does the irony end here. The same day, we read that Osama Bin Laden’s driver is going home to Qatar after more than five years of being incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay. Salim Ahmed Hamdan was sentenced to “just five months longer than the five years he had served, mostly in maximum security isolation, at the U.S. naval base in Cuba.”

It is difficult to avoid the impression that this sentence is an effort to justify a questionable incarceration, rather than an honest application of justice.

Every so often, it’s worth looking into a mirror as we expose the faults of others. Either inadvertently or by design, The Times accomplished that. Thank you.

Tadek Korn

Laguna Beach