Judge Orders Five Gitmo Detainees Released

By Jeralyn, Section Terror Detainees
Posted on Thu Nov 20, 2008 at 01:05:34 PM EST
Tags: Guantanamo, detainees (all tags)

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U.S. District Court Judge Richard J. Leon today ordered the release of five of the six habeas defendants in Boumediene v. Bush/Al Odah v. U.S (pdf). The opinion will be out later today.

In the first case of its kind, U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon said the government's evidence linking the five Algerians to al-Qaida was not credible as it came from a single, unidentified source. Therefore, he said the five could not be held indefinitely as enemy combatants, and should be released immediately.

"To allow enemy combatancy to rest on so thin a reed would be inconsistent with the court's obligation," Leon told the crowded courtroom.

[More....]

The government initially detained Boumediene and the other Algerians on suspicion of plotting to bomb the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo in October 2001. They were transferred to Guantanamo in January 2002.....The Bosnian government already has agreed to take back the detainees, all of whom immigrated there from Algeria before they were captured in 2001.

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Judge Orders Five Gitmo Detainees Released | 7 comments (7 topical)

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Courageous judge. (none / 0) (#1)
by oculus on Thu Nov 20, 2008 at 01:54:53 PM EST

P.S. Good to see you surfacing Jeralyn.

Good News (none / 0) (#2)
by squeaky on Thu Nov 20, 2008 at 02:30:08 PM EST

The judge was a Bush I appointee, who had been expected to be sympathetic to the government. "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 Obama has said he will close the prison."
A friend notes on today's developments, "The judge, a Bush appointee who was widely believed to have fast-tracked this set of habeas hearings with the notion of giving Bush an early win before others come in, apparently made a pretty emotional appeal to the government not to appeal his decision ....
.. In other words - interpreting - this judge, not exactly the most predisposed toward the defense, emotionally appealed to the government just to let these poor five fellows, who were detained in the first place under very very suspicious circumstances, go after so many years of unjustified imprisonment."

war & piece

: Bush the First... (none / 0) (#4)
by kdog on Thu Nov 20, 2008 at 02:40:15 PM EST

ended up making some decent appointments in the judiciary...though I'm sure it was by accident.
Dylan and the Band....I wish I had sound right now.

A Welcome Decision (none / 0) (#3)
by scribe on Thu Nov 20, 2008 at 02:35:52 PM EST

and a well-deserved slap in the face to the Administration.

I think, from reading over at SCOTUSBlog and the CCR announcement, that Judge Leon's statement to the government about not appealing his order to release the 5 was less "emotional" and more "you'd better not try any more of your chicanery to keep these guys in jail". He's been noted to have become progressively less enamored of the government's tactics - all of which have had the singular purpose of stringing this case out.

"Seven years is enough."

Far too much, if you ask me.

The opinion is up (none / 0) (#5)
by scribe on Thu Nov 20, 2008 at 04:36:35 PM EST

here (warning - 14 page .pdf, several MB long) . It strikes me as neither fish nor fowl - I suspect the core of the case was in the classified materials (I won't call it evidence, because it wasn't), which we won't get to see.

DoJ is putting on a brave face, trumpeting their win on one and disagreeing with the judge on the ones they lost. There's no small amount of "activist judge" subtext, about the rules and such, though (if you actually read the opinion you'll see) the judge was required by the prior S.Ct. decisions in Hamdi and Boumedienne to set rules for how to proceed. More of DoJ and their lying liars and the lies they love to lie.

That, and the wholesale irony that the judge was rejecting the ad hoc make up the rules on the fly which was the whole abortion that is Bush's Black Hole called Gitmo.

Bush will stall until Obama is inaugurated (none / 0) (#6)
by Jacob Freeze on Thu Nov 20, 2008 at 09:22:28 PM EST

Bush will stall the release of these prisoners and all others until after the inauguration of President Obama.

Then the onus, if any, of releasing these prisoners will fall on the new President.

If they have learned to hate the United States during so many years of abuse and imprisonment, will they seek revenge against their tormentors?

Republicans are probably already planning how to attack the new administration if any former prisoners at Guantanamo commit crimes against the United States in the future, however unlikely any of these unfortunate people may have been to commit such crimes before they were unlawfully imprisoned and abused.

Meaning of "forthwith" under Cheney-Bush (none / 0) (#7)
by sysprog on Thu Nov 20, 2008 at 10:23:42 PM EST

On Tuesday, October 7, Judge Ricardo Urbina ordered the 17 Uighur detainees to be released by Friday, October 10.

They're still in Gitmo.

Their next appeal (Kiyemba v. Bush, Circuit docket 08-5424) is scheduled for 9:30 AM, Monday, November 24.

There are several dozen prisoners at Guantánamo who are, as the government says, "approved for transfer" (which really means approved for RELEASE but the goverment won't use that word) and some of them were "approved for transfer" years ago.