Judicial Reversal Keeps Detainee At Guantanamo

From Creeping Sharia:

Reversal Upholds al Qaeda Prisoner’s Detention at Gitmo


Posted on July 14, 2010 by creeping

Clinton-appointed judge overturned on seemingly obvious al Qaeda trainee, via Reversal Upholds Guantanamo Prisoner’s Detention – NYTimes.com.



WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld the detention of a Yemeni man at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, reversing a District Court judge who had ordered the prisoner freed on the grounds that there was “no reliable evidence” that he was a member of Al Qaeda.



The ruling was the first by an appeals court to overturn a decision, in a habeas-corpus lawsuit, that a Guantánamo detainee must be released. Writing for a three-judge panel, Judge A. Raymond Randolph said the District Court judge, Gladys Kessler, had incorrectly analyzed the evidence when she ruled that the government had failed to prove that the detainee, Mohammed Al-Adahi, was a terrorist.



“In all, there can be no doubt that Al-Adahi was, more likely than not, part of Al Qaeda,” Judge Randolph wrote, characterizing Judge Kessler’s contrary conclusion as “manifestly incorrect — indeed startling.”



Much more on the decision from Leagle.com, AL-ADAHI v. OBAMA



When the government shows that an individual received and executed orders from al-Qaida members in a training camp, that evidence is sufficient (but not necessary) to prove that the individual has affiliated himself with al-Qaida.



…



His attendance at an al-Qaida military training camp is therefore — to put it mildly — strong evidence that he was part of al-Qaida. In Al-Bihani, we stated that if a person stays in an al-Qaida guesthouse or attends an al-Qaida training camp, this constitutes “overwhelming” evidence that the United States had authority to detain that person. 590 F.3d at 873 n.2.

One of the oddest things about this case is that despite an extensive record and numerous factual disputes, the district court never made any findings about whether Al-Adahi was generally a credible witness or whether his particular explanations for his actions were worthy of belief. The court’s omissions are particularly striking in light of the instructions in al-Qaida’s training manuals for resisting interrogation. For those who belong to al-Qaida, “[c]onfronting the interrogator and defeating him is part of your jihad.” To this end al-Qaida members are instructed to resist interrogation by developing a cover story, by refusing to answer questions, by recanting or changing answers already given, by giving as vague an answer as possible, and by claiming torture. Put bluntly, the instructions to detainees are to make up a story and lie. Despite this the district court displayed little skepticism about Al-Adahi’s explanations for his actions. To the extent the court expressed any doubts, it addressed them to the government’s case and did so on the mistaken view that each item of the government’s evidence needed to prove the ultimate issue in the case.



We could go on, but what we have written thus far is enough to show that the district court clearly erred in its treatment of the evidence and in its view of the law. CJ. Barhoumi v. Obama, No. 09-5383, slip op. at 12-13 (D.C. Cir. June 11, 2010); Awad, slip op. at 17. The court’s conclusion was simply not a “permissible view[] of the evidence.” See Anderson v. City of Bessemer City, N. C., 470 U.S. 564, 573-74 (1985). And it reached this conclusion through a series of legal errors, as we have discussed. We have already mentioned the suggestion in Al-Bihani that attendance at either an al-Qaida training camp or an al-Qaida guesthouse “would seem to overwhelmingly, if not definitively, justiQ” detention. 590 F.3d at 873 n.2. The evidence against Al-Adahi showed that he did both — stayed at an al-Qaida guesthouse and attended an al-Qaida training camp. And the evidence showed a good deal more, from his meetings with bin Laden, to his knowledge of those protecting bin Laden, to his wearing of a particular model of Casio watch, to his incredible explanations for his actions, to his capture on a bus carrying wounded Arabs and Pakistanis, and so on. One of the most damaging and powerful items of evidence against him is classifiede[ 5 ] In all there can be no doubt that Al-Adahi was more likely than not part of al-Qaida. We therefore reverse and remand with instructions to the district court to deny Al-Adahi’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus.[ 6 ]



So Ordered.



Sanity restored, for the time being