Five Algerian terror suspects who have been held for seven years at the U.S. prison at Guantánamo Bay have been freed by Federal District Judge Richard Leon.
From Voice of America:
Washington attorney Annemarie Brennan has been following the trial for Amnesty International and its Counterterror with Justice program.
“Although the information was likely sufficient for intelligence purposes, it was not legally sufficient to hold them as enemy combatants within the US legal system,” she said.
Attorneys for the Algerians had argued that the prisoners should not be considered enemy combatants because they had not actually been captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan.
If Thursday’s court order is upheld, Brennan says the five detainees would likely be repatriated either to Algeria, if security and conditions ensuring their safety permit, or to Bosnia, where she says some of them maintain residency, or to another destination where they will be allowed to move on with their lives.
Point 1: Ms. Brennan’s statement gives us insight into the naiveté of the proposition that terror suspect should be treated with the same rights as American citizens accused of crimes. If all terror suspects must meet the American civil and criminal legal standards before the government may lawfully detain them, then we may as well close Guantánamo today and begin to resign ourselves to never holding enemy combatants again.
Here’s one shining example of a federal government releasing a terror suspect on the grounds of “insufficient evidence”:
In 1985, the as part of a group of suspects in the murder of American Achille Lauro passenger Leon Klinghoffer, Abu Abbas was captured by Italian authorities. Abbas’s co-conspirators were sentenced to long prison terms, but he himself was freed by the Italian authorities, who said they had insufficient evidence to detain him. He was then convicted in absentia in an Italian court for the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro and sentenced to life in prison in 1986. His arrest came 18 years later when he was caught in a U.S. raid in Baghdad.
Point 2: The Algerians’ attorneys’ argument for consideration of the detainees as non-enemy combatants is inane. The 9 terrorists who hijacked airliners on September 11, 2001 were not on a battlefield in any military theater either. Are we therefore to consider them not enemy combatants?
Point 3: While the Left will herald the announcement that these men will now be allowed to “move on with their lives,” the rest of us are consigned to wonder if those lives will include terrorist activity against the United States. The new reports thus far have given no insight as to their activities prior to capture, which I suspect is no accident. It would be interesting (and newsworthy) to read a pre-capture biography of these men. Good luck finding a truthful one. Terrorists lie.
Shafiq Rasul … is best known for being a detainee held at Guantanamo Bay by the United States, which treated him an unlawful combatant.
…He was released in March 2004, shortly after his return to the United Kingdom, more than three months before Rasul v. Bush was decided.
In August 2004 Rasul, Asif Iqbal, and Ruhal Ahmed, all from Tipton, compiled a report on their alleged abuse and humiliation while in US custody.
In 2007 Ruhal Ahmed participated in “Lie Lab”: a scientific programme on the United Kingdom’s Channel 4. Contrary to the account of his presence in Afghanistan to the press and as depicted in The Road to Guantanamo, Ahmed has now confessed to visiting an Islamist training camp, where he handled weapons and learned how to use an AK47. Rasul refused to take the lie detector tests.
Civil and criminal justice should be blind. Should the justice of warfare be? I’m in favor of the second panel of this cartoon.
HotAir blog post on Michael Mukasey’s assessment of Congress’s role in the release of Gitmo detainees.
