By Nedra Pickler
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A U.S. appeals court last week overturned a judge's order for the release of a Guantanamo Bay detainee accused of helping al-Qaida recruit two men who became Sept. 11, 2001 hijackers.
A lower court judge had ruled Mohamedou Ould Salahi should be freed after eight years at Guantanamo because he was abused by interrogators at the U.S. military prison in Cuba and that tainted the evidence against him. Other classified information was insufficient to support a criminal prosecution, the judge ruled.
Salahi, a Muaritanian now 40 years old, later retracted his confession to persuading the two men to travel to Afghanistan to train for jihad.
A three-judge panel rejected the Obama administration's request to order Salahi's continued detention. But the judges unanimously agreed the lower court must reconsider the case, given new legal opinions in other Guantanamo lawsuits.
"That court, lacking the benefit of these recent cases, left unresolved key factual questions necessary for us to determine as a matter of law whether Salahi was part of al-Qaida when captured," wrote Judge David Tatel in an opinion supported by judges David Sentelle and Janice Rogers Brown.
Salahi admits he joined al-Qaida in the early 1990s as a college student to fight communists in Afghanistan. But he says he stopped fighting for the organization before it turned against the United States.
The Sept. 11 commission report described Salahi as a significant al-Qaida operative who helped hijackers reach Afghanistan to train for jihad.
The Justice Department says that in October 1999, Salahi convinced Ramzi bin al Shibh, Marwan al Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah to change their plans to travel to Chechnya to wage jihad against Russian forces and instead to go to Afghanistan to receive military training. Once in Afghanistan, they were picked by al-Qaida for roles in the Sept. 11 plot -- Al Shehhi and Jarrah became hijackers and Bin al Shibh helped coordinate the attack.
The Justice Department argues that Salahi still was a member of al-Qaida when he was arrested on Sept. 29, 2001, because he swore an Islamic oath, or "bayat," when he joined and continued to associate with and support its members.
Salahi acknowledges that he stayed in touch with friends who continued to support al-Qaida, including his brother-in-law, who was a high-ranking spiritual adviser to al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.
Salahi's lawyers say after his capture in his home country of Mauritania, he was sent to Jordan and abused for eight months before being moved to Bagram Air Field in Afghanistan and finally to Guantanamo in 2002.
Salahi's treatment was documented in a 2009 report by the Senate Armed Services Committee that investigated allegations of detainee abuse at Guantanamo. It described how in July 2003, Salahi was isolated, questioned by a masked interrogator, forced to stand for long periods of time, threatened with death and torture and exposed to flashing strobe lights and the blaring metal song "Bodies" by Drowning Pool.
The Justice Department acknowledges that much of the evidence against Salahi is tainted and that it is relying on his statements given after the abuse occurred over the summer of 2003 and other evidence against him.
U.S. District Judge James Robertson ruled in March that the "extensive and severe mistreatment" Salahi suffered left all his statements in doubt. Robertson has since retired so the case must be reassigned to a new district court judge.
Published: Tue, Nov 9, 2010
