On several occasions over the last few months, I found myself face to face with captives, victims of circumstance anxious to escape their confinement and looking to me for assistance. So, after a bit of deliberation and planning, I helped these hapless creatures gain their freedom. No, I did not facilitate a prison break. (I’m not that daring or reckless.) I merely sprung a family of raccoons from the dumpster adjacent to my home.

These woodland visitors, who reside in the conservation area that abuts my building, have apparently mistaken the receptacle for the all-night buffet at Denny’s. The aroma and easy accessibility of the haute cuisine contained therein is too powerful for them to ignore. Like stoned college students with a case of the midnight munchies, the raccoons return again and again for a repast.

Unfortunately, sometimes the buffet has been emptied, and a jaunt for delectable discards becomes a long—and, I imagine, terrifying—night of imprisonment. The sounds of the raccoons’ plaintive calls and futile scrabbling against the smooth and now towering walls of the dumpster oft drift into my bedroom at night. Their obvious distress unsettles me. It is clear that even supposedly lesser mammals experience some measure of fear and anguish when unexpectedly confronted with captivity. In good conscience, I cannot ignore their plight.

Thus, when daybreak arrives after such a night, I step outside and peer cautiously into the dumpster. This morning, there were nine raccoons inside, huddled together against the early autumn frost. As I have done multiple times now, I went and fetched a handy length of 4×4 board and gently propped it at an angle against the interior of the dumpster. Moments later, one by one, the raccoons crawled up and out of confinement and then scurried eagerly into the woods towards home.

I recount this tale, having just read an article by Carol D. Leonnig in today’s Washington Post that details the unfortunate—and apparently unjust—captivity of a young man named Abdul Rahim, who like too many others languishes without reprieve in the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. An excerpt follows:

Coerced Confession Traps Detainee, Lawyers Say

Young runaway Abdul Rahim endured cigarette burns, electric shocks and repeated beatings at the hands of Taliban soldiers who captured him in 2000, he said—all because he refused to fight for al-Qaeda.

In one of the bizarre twists of war, the 22-year-old college student was taken from the Taliban prison to another prison run by Americans after the invasion of Afghanistan. And the U.S. military’s chief reason for holding Rahim for the past five years, according to newly declassified records, is the false confession Rahim gave to placate his Taliban torturers.

Rahim’s American lawyers filed the records in federal court in Washington this week, along with the results of their own investigation corroborating Rahim’s claims of innocence, adding sworn statements from witnesses. They are asking a judge to order the military to admit that it made a mistake and release Rahim, who is being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The filings outline a chain of unfortunate circumstances. Rahim left his family home in the United Arab Emirates after a quarrel with his strict father and was captured by Taliban fighters as he crossed into Afghanistan. They took him to an al-Qaeda training camp, and when he tried to flee, soldiers put him in prison and tortured him, the records say.

While in a cell in Kandahar, Rahim said, he gave his captors what they wanted to hear: He falsely confessed on videotape that he was a spy for the United States and promised to renounce the West and wage jihad. Among the people who tortured him, he said, was one of America’s most notorious enemies: al-Qaeda operative Muhammad Atef, who was killed in 2001.

Rahim’s account of being imprisoned and tortured by the Taliban is supported by newspaper accounts about Rahim and fellow prisoners whom the Taliban abandoned when U.S. forces began bombing Afghanistan in the fall of 2001. It is also supported by documents from impartial agencies that had contact with Rahim, notably the International Committee of the Red Cross. [full text]

Nonetheless, despite such evidence, Rahim remains a prisoner at Guantánamo. “His lawyers say the case raises alarms about the U.S. military’s willingness to fairly assess decisions to indefinitely detain foreign nationals.� I concur and wonder how those in positions of authority and leadership can in good conscience permit such injustice, can stand idly by while their hapless fellows endure the terror and anguish of undeserved captivity. It is simply unacceptable.

Decades ago, the famed Russian novelist, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, wrote: “Justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole of humanity. Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually recognize also the voice of justice.� Solzhenitsyn, of course, knew more than a little about justice and injustice, having been “arrested [in 1945] for criticising Joseph Stalin in private correspondence with a friend and sentenced to an eight-year term in a labour camp, to be followed by permanent internal exile.�

The imposition and enforcement of such undue punishment was what one might have expected of the Soviet Union back then. Injustice befits a repressive, totalitarian government. However, it does not befit—and never has or will—a nation that espouses democratic ideals and proclaims “liberty and justice for all.� The political and military leaders of the United States appear unable or unwilling to clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience. Thus, they permit and even perpetrate injustice. As a result, it falls to the citizenry—to you and I—to speak out, to make loud the voice of justice, to demand fairness and compassion and decency and to expect nothing less, of both ourselves and our leaders.

I know it isn’t always easy. To follow your conscience rather than your leaders can take you astray from the pack, sometimes into desolate and unforgiving territory. But, despite the challenges, such a journey can ultimately bring you closer to the ideal of “liberty and justice for allâ€?—and, therefore, to the whole of humanity. All it takes is a keen ear, a clear voice, a gallant heart, and perhaps a handy length of 4×4 board.