corrente

For those who came in late, Nick Berg's parents filed suit in the Eastern District court in Philadelphia to get him out of an Iraqi jail (Berg et al v. Rumsfeld, back). And after the filed the suit, the very next day Nick Berg was released from jail. Coincidence?

So I got the docket number and other information that would enable a copy of the suit to be found, and asked if any alert readers could find it, since the Federal courts have a pretty good electronic filing system. Alert readers Xan, enrico, and upyernoze both tried, and came up empty. Here's what upyernoze (who has the required password access to the Eastern District's database) said:

i checked and i found exactly the same thing as enrico. the only pdf is the notice that the suit is moot. a habius petiton is also listed on the docket, but there is no pdf file of the document. under the eastern district's rules, all filings are supposed to be accompanied with a pdf, but apparently this one did not make it into the public database

Which is interesting.

The "moot" stuff is there presumably, because Nick Berg was released, and the parents dropped the suit.

But why is the original suit not there? My first thought was that it was just a production problem, and that the original suit would come along in the next batch of PDFs, whenever that is. But the moot document got in right away.

Maybe it's just tinfoil hat time for me, but I'd really like to trace that suit and get a copy of it. It's a big loose end, and with the Bush administration, a "hermeneutic of suspicion" is warranted at all times.

Can an alert reader with authority on the Federal District Court system clarify whether the missing copy of the lawsuit is a cause for concern?