the banality of evil

[Warren Stupidity]

"Omar Khadr's confessions to interrogators will be heard as evidence in his trial, his military judge has ruled, despite efforts by Mr. Khadr's lawyers to have them suppressed because he says they were extracted under threat of torture.

"The government has met its burden" in terms of proving the evidence's reliability and admissibility, judge Colonel Patrick Parrish told the court Monday afternoon.

...

The 23-year-old Canadian's lawyers had argued that alleged incidents of torture and threats of gang rape that Mr. Khadr sustained at the hands of military interrogators in a Bagram detention centre in 2002, shortly after he was apprehended at the age of 15 in Afghanistan, has tainted the rest of his testimony.

...

In May hearings, a man then identified as Interrogator 1 said in testimony he threatened Mr. Khadr with being gang-raped to death if he did not co-operate. That interrogator was subsequently convicted of detainee abuse.

...

Although the interrogator is not being called as a prosecution witness, Mr. Khadr's lawyers argue any subsequent confessions on his part were “fruit of the poisoned tree” _ they were influenced by traumatic experience and his desire to tell military interrogators what they wanted to hear. "

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/khadrs-confessions-can-be-used-in-trial-judge-rules/article1666620/

It is ok, according to our judge, to take a confession from a person we have without doubt tortured, because the confession was not obtained by the torturer (the nabakovian interrogator1) but instead by the non-torturing interrogator-not-1.

Ah evil is so ordinary.