The French government has found itself in the uncomfortable position of defending Guantanamo Bay's prison after a court discovered that their investigators interrogated detainees at the American detention center. Reuters reports that government lawyers argued that their interrogation helped to prevent terrorist attacks on France:

Responding to the report that French intelligence agents had interviewed six men on trial in France for links with a network plotting terrorist attacks while they were held at Guantanamo, the French Foreign Ministry said it had made no secret of three visits to the camp between 2002-2004.

"These missions, which were of an administrative nature, were aimed at identifying precisely French citizens who might have been at Guantanamo and at assessing their situation in a general manner," it said in a statement dated Wednesday.

It added that the aim was also to gather information needed to allow France to prevent terrorism and that representatives of other government officials had taken part in these missions to help achieve both these goals.

France received its citizens almost exactly two years ago, and they have held all of them since, implicit recognition of the potential threat they posed. Now we find out that the government felt it necessary to interrogate them while in American custody to prevent further terrorism. That, of course, corroborates what we have said all along -- that the men held at Gitmo present a danger to us and to the West and have information that we need to prevent further attacks.

Will the national news media report this? I doubt it. The New York Sun's excellent blog, It Shines For All, picked this up from the wires, but I suspect most other outlets will let this one hit the bit bucket.

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» Playing To Type from PostWatch
Ed Morissey at Captain's Quarters points to a New York Sun blog item about French officials having interrogated prisoners at Guantanamo. Apparently it's not only Evil Americans who believe these prisoners pose a threat; these gentleman were returned to... [Read More]

Tracked on July 6, 2006 1:34 PM

» Manger la Corneille from Hard Starboard
Sacre bleu! Zees is a strainge use to wheech to put zee "Americain gulayg," no? Eet is elmost like le Français were theenkeeng of Gitmo as zee Americains have zold it all along - a place to hold berzerkair terroreests indéfiniment so zay cannot launc... [Read More]

Tracked on July 6, 2006 9:57 PM