11-20-2008, 02:02 PM
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Judge Orders Five Detainees Freed From Guantánamo
Judge Orders Five Detainees Freed From Guantánamo
Quote:
By WILLIAM GLABERSON
Published: November 20, 2008
In the first hearing on the government’s evidence for holding detainees at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp for nearly seven years, a federal judge ruled on Thursday that five prisoners were being held an unlawfully and ordered their release.
The case, involving six Algerians detained in Bosnia in 2001, was an important test of the Bush administration’s detention policies, which critics have long argued swept up innocent men and low-level foot soldiers along with high-level and hardened terrorists.
The hearings for the Algerian men, in which all evidence was heard in proceedings closed to the public, were the first in which the Justice Department presented its full justification for holding specific detainees since the Supreme Court ruled in June that the prisoners have a constitutional right to contest their imprisonment in habeas corpus suits.
Ruling from the bench, Judge Richard J. Leon of Federal District Court in Washington said that the information gathered on the men had been sufficient to hold them for intelligence purposes, but was not strong enough in court.
“To rest on so thin a reed would be inconsistent with this court’s obligation,” he said. He directed that the five men be released “forthwith” and urged the government not to appeal.
Judge Leon, who was appointed by President Bush, had been expected to be sympathetic to the government. In 2005, he ruled that the men had no habeas corpus rights.
The decision, lawyers said, is likely to be seen as a major judicial repudiation of the Bush administration’s effort to use the detention center at the American naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as a way to avoid scrutiny by American judges. President-elect Barack Obama has said he will close the prison.
Lawyers for the detainees said the ruling was a vindication of their arguments for years. “The decision by Judge Leon lays bare the scandalous basis on which Guantánamo has been based — slim evidence of dubious quality,” said Zachary Katznelson, legal director at Reprieve, a British legal group that represents many Guantánamo detainees. “This is a tough, no-nonsense judge.”
Because of the Bush administration’s claims that most of the evidence against the men was classified, Judge Leon ordered the entire case was to be heard in a closed courtroom after brief opening statements on Nov. 5.
The government argued that the six Algerians, who were residents of Bosnia when they were first detained in 2001, were planning to go to Afghanistan to fight the United States and that one of them was a member of Al Qaeda.
The five men who the judge ordered freed included Lakhdar Boumediene, for whom the landmark Supreme Court ruling in June was named.
It was not immediately clear whether the government would appeal, but some lawyers said they considered an appeal likely.
The one detainee Judge Leon found to be lawfully held was Bensayah Belkacem, who has been described by intelligence agencies as a leading Al Qaeda operative in Bosnia.
The case has become an example of the Bush administration’s pattern of changing legal strategy in its long legal war over Guantánamo, as the courts have scrutinized its justifications for its detention policies in general and its reasons for holding individual detainees.
In 2002, President Bush made the government’s allegations against the men a showcase of his administration’s anti-terrorism approach. He said in his state of the union address that the six men had been planning a bomb attack on the United States Embassy in Sarajevo, Bosnia. Last month, though, Department of Justice lawyers said they were no longer relying on those accusations to justify the men’s detention.
The habeas corpus cases have moved slowly despite the Supreme Court’s decision in June that directed federal judges in Washington to act quickly on the cases, after nearly seven years of detention for many of the 250 men still held in Guantánamo.
Another district court judge in Washington, Ricardo M. Urbina, ordered the release of 17 other detainees last month, all ethnic Uighurs from western China. But in that case, he did not hold a hearing on the evidence, because the government conceded that the men were not enemy combatants.
The Justice Department won a stay of Judge Urbina’s release order and is appealing it. Arguments in that case are scheduled for Monday in the United States Courts of Appeals in Washington.
Separately, this week the Justice Department filed legal motions seeking to stop more than 100 of the other Guantánamo habeas corpus cases from proceeding now, in a move that detainees lawyers said was a government effort to avoid further court scrutiny.
Department of Justice lawyers argued in motions filed Tuesday that there were flaws in the ground rules of other judges for the Guantánamo cases that would require the government, among other things, to reveal classified evidence.
Detainees’ lawyers said the ruling on Thursday by Judge Leon would indicate to other judges that they should be skeptical of the government’s efforts to delay hearings.
P. Sabin Willett, a lawyer for the Uighurs, said that Judge Leon’s decision “sends a powerful message to all the other judges to get these cases moving.”
J. Wells Dixon, a detainees’ lawyer at the Center for Constitutional Rights, said the ruling made clear that Guantánamo Bay had failed. But, he said, “Justice comes too late for these five men.”
Bernie Becker contributed reporting from Washington.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/21/us...tanamo.html?hp
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Let's get these cases moving... 
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