Lawyers representing Kuwaiti and Yemenite detainees at the military-run prison at Guatanamo Bay, Cuba say American interrogators have been telling the inmates they shouldn’t trust their attorneys “because they’re Jewish.” According the NY Times article, “having an interrogator urge someone to distrust his lawyer would be unconstitutional in the United States, where due process and the right to a lawyer are guaranteed. But whether and to what extent the Constitution applies at Guantanamo and its detention center have always been murky.”
While these prisoners are considered “enemies of the state” and may or may not be subject to the same rights as, say, an American accused of terrorism, such anti-Semitic tactics will surely work against the guys in green. Perhaps they think they’ll scare these guys out of a fair trial, but surely even the craziest Islamic fundamentalist knows that the best American lawyers are Jewish.