I predict we'll see more and more news stories like this. It's a scandal, really.

After 9/11, the U.S. Department of Justice made a lot of noise about terrorist arrests, particularly al Qaeda “sleeper cells“ in Detroit and Albany. But then, at trial, we find out these people might not be terrorists. The government apparently made some evidence up, and hid some that would have helped the defence. So, guess what? The case gets thrown out.

The Detroit case is one of several high-profile setbacks for the Justice Department in recent months. It lost a case last month in Iowa against a college student that who was on trial for using the Internet to recruit and raise money for terrorist causes. In mid-August, federal prosecutors acknowledged possible flaws in key evidence of evidence used in their case against two leaders of an Albany mosque charged with supporting terrorism. And CNN reported last week that Brandon Mayfield, a Muslim from Oregon, who was falsely accused by the FBI of involvement in March's Madrid train bombings, announced that he planned to sue the US government.

This also reminds me of the 1,600 or so people (mostly Muslim men) taken into custody after September 11th. Most of them were held for 2 years, but released without charges.

How long will people put up with the government arresting people without evidence? The traditional method of law enforcement - gather evidence, make a case, arrest, go to trial - might be slow but it works. The new model - arrest, gather evidence, try to bypass a trial and go striaght to sentencing - might be more efficient from the government's perspective, but it appears like 95% of the people arrested for terrorism are released. So what good does that do us?