No evidence to hold Sabar Lal Melma in Guantanamo, but enough to kill him?

Image of Melma undarkened and flipped to shed menacing demeanorHard to imagine we’d come to look at Guantanamo as a lesser evil. Gitmo held terror suspects without charges, indefinitely, secretly, and tortured them, to death sometimes. At least they and their families back home were safe from the pretext of a drone strike or special ops night raid. The targeted assassination of released 5-year Guantanamo alumn ISN 801 Sabar Lal Melma in Afghanistan raises the question: what constitutes enough cause to send a death squad after a suspected illegal combatant? The US didn’t have the evidence to bring charges against Melma, who was finally released in 2007 after an outpouring of Afghan voices vouched for his innocence, yet the US military retained suspicion enough to send NATO commandos into his home this weekend to execute the former detainee in front of his kids. It would seem if Obama has a problem with Guantanamo, it’s that illegal rendition and imprisonment is not extrajudicial enough.

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