The Defense Intelligence Agency has a DVD showing the final interrogation of Jose Padilla as an “enemy combatant” at the U.S. Navy brig in Charleston, S.C. Or at least it did. Now that Padilla faces trial in Florida, the U.S. Attorney’s Office handling the case says that the DIA can’t seem to find the video.

As Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball report, “The disclosure that the Pentagon had lost a potentially important piece of evidence in one of the U.S. government’s highest-profile terrorism cases” has been met with “claims of incredulity by some defense lawyers and human-rights groups monitoring the case.” Human Rights Watch lawyer John Sifton puts a fine point on it: “This is the kind of thing you hear when you’re litigating cases in Egypt or Morocco or Karachi.”