European Press Review: Back to Justice

[struggle4progress]

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Several of France’s papers devoted their attention to the release of French nationals from Guantanamo Bay. Four of seven French citizens captured by US forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan were handed over and on Tuesday flown back to France, where they were immediately taken into custody. "What’s to be done with the Frenchmen from Guantanamo," asked the Paris daily Le Figaro in its main headline. The release of the four men marks "the beginning of a long judicial process" as France waits to see if they will be charged or released through its own legal system, the paper wrote.

Another French daily, Liberation, headlined the handing over of the detainees: "Return to the law zone," it wrote, commenting that the least they deserve after their two-year detention without charge in Guantanamo is to be presumed innocent until proven guilty. The four were in the wrong place at the wrong time and with the wrong people -- Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda foreign legionnaires -- but that is not a crime, the paper wrote. And one thing is certain: If the US had had the slightest evidence against them, it would never have released them, according to the paper. It criticized the Bush administration for setting aside the law and lowering the standard of personal liberty and says France must therefore refuse to follow that example and offer the four alleged militants “the most scrupulous legal guarantees.”

Le Monde adopted an equally critical stance, saying that the fate of the four will in the end depend on justice. France may have an anti-terrorist justice system, but at least it is one that adheres to the rule of law and bases its decisions on tangible facts, the paper wrote. If the men are acquitted, it will be a fresh blow for the credibility of George Bush’s 'war on terror' that is being fought in contempt of the law -- both national and international -- and of morality, the paper concluded.
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http://www.dw-world.de/english/0,3367,7549_A_1278487_1_A,00.html



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