The state indicts based on unverifiable speculation about religious change while ignoring equal counter-speculation.

Evidence

That doesn’t really make a difference, simply because I can’t speak to his allegiance to the Northern Alliance today. All I know is that he has had training as a mujahedin. I am not aware of the information in the classified SIR. The classified SIR may be more specific as to where he was training … The fact is that there is a lot of people who trained in various groups. The essentials are the knowledge that they have acquired and their contacts and activities today and their allegiances today. … For all I know, Mr. Almrei could have changed his mind and become more religious. Adhered to a stricter interpretation of Islam. A lot of time has gone by since he last claims to have been in Afghanistan and his world outlook may have changed dramatically. I can’t say that Mr. Almrei’s training in a Northern Alliance camp, if that occurred would prevent him from being a supporter of Al Qaeda today.’ — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 104

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The asymmetry — speculating about radicalization only in one direction, never the reverse — is a dense, subtle illustration of how prosecutorial imagination is structured by race; hard to capture in one sentence, worth sitting with.
• XREF: Directly parallels the reader’s lived-interest theme but also the logic of the noise book: a perpetually-denied alternate explanation being the structural point.
• SEED: The ‘one-directional speculation’ angle — legal reasoning that only imagines hypotheses of guilt, never innocence — could power an essay on how procedure encodes prejudice.