NYT:Detainee Deal Comes With Contradictions

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The compromise reached on Thursday between Congressional Republicans and the White House on the interrogation and trial of terrorism suspects is, legal experts said yesterday, a series of interlocking paradoxes.

It would impose new legal standards that it forbids the courts to enforce.

It would guarantee terrorist masterminds charged with war crimes an array of procedural protections. But it would bar hundreds of minor figures and people who say they are innocent bystanders from access to the courts to challenge their potentially lifelong detentions.

And while there is substantial disagreement about just which harsh interrogation techniques the compromise would prohibit, there is no dispute that it would allow military prosecutors to use statements that had been obtained under harsh techniques that are now banned.



http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/23/us/23legal.html?hp&ex=1158984000&en=67c4b1b5d3b085e7&ei=5094&partner=homepage