Carefully burnishing our reputation

Before the presidency of George W. Bush, would a German court reject evidence provided by the U.S. on this basis?

The complex at times case strained Berlin's Washington ties as it tested how far the United States was willing to go in providing sensitive evidence to allies seeking to prosecute terror suspects.

It declined, on security grounds, to let the court question three captured al Qaeda prisoners being held at secret locations including a key member of the Hamburg cell, although it did hand over summaries of statements they had made under interrogation.

"The point is we would have liked to have questioned them ourselves," Schudt said in remarks critical of the U.S. stance.

He said the prisoners' statements did not constitute "sufficient proof in either direction" and there was no way for the court to check their veracity or to judge whether the information had been extracted under torture.

He called this "an unsatisfactory situation" and said it was no comfort that U.S. courts were in the same situation. [emphasis addd]

As the cool kids on the internets are fond of saying, "Just askin'."