LOS ANGELES: This week, Raissi was released by a British court after five months of incarceration during which the US Justice Department sought his extradition.

The US government now stands accused of misleading the court and withholding exculpatory evidence. In the ultimate reversal of fortunes, the man once identified as the ”mastermind” of terrorists has emerged as a sympathetic character.

Raissi was accused of training Hani Hanjour, who is believed to have piloted the aeroplane into the Pentagon.

Extradition should have been a perfunctory matter given the clarity of his alleged involvement and the accommodating stance of English courts.

In its appearances before British Judge Timothy Workman, the US government assured the court that there was a “web of circumstantial evidence” revealing Raissi as a co-conspirator and an Al Qaeda operative.

Workman held six hearings to try to induce the US government to support its claims with this evidence. Finally, the United States admitted that it had no such evidence.

It now appears that the FBI had found no credible evidence to confirm the claims made before Workman. In the initial hearings, for example, the government claimed to have a videotape of Raissi with one of the hijackers and extensive telephone records of calls to the hijackers.

It was later revealed that the videotape was actually Raissi and his cousin at Raissi’s apartment and the government mysteriously dropped the claim that it had incriminating telephone records.

Raissi’s lawyer produced an affidavit from an FBI agent stating that the FBI had determined that there is “no evidence to suggest that Raissi and Hanjour had ever trained together.” A pilot who allegedly flew on a particular day with the two men denied that Hanjour was on the flight with Raissi. Logs indicate that Hanjour flew on a different day than Raissi. Raissi’s wife insisted that if Raissi were a religious fanatic, she probably would have noticed since she is a cabaret dancer and a Catholic.

In its misleading statements and its failure to correct the record, the government fulfilled the stereotype of a vengeful nation unhinged from its most fundamental legal principles. A nation of laws is defined not by the ends of justice but by the means used to secure it.

This is why the conduct in Britain deserves investigation to determine if the world’s greatest democracy returned to the courts of its ancestors and adopted their cruel practices . —Dawn/LAT-WP News Service (c) Los Angeles Times.