News
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Appeals court overturns release of Gitmo detainee
* Detainee says he left his home in southern Yemen in 2001 to seek better life in Europe with about $2,000 he earned doing odd jobs, selling narcotic plant
WASHINGTON: A federal appeals court overturned on Friday an order that had released a Yemeni detainee from Guantanamo Bay and ruled that circumstantial evidence of terrorist ties can be enough to keep a prisoner behind bars.
Government attorneys argued Hussain Salem Muhammad Almerfedi stayed at an al Qaeda-affiliated guesthouse based on the testimony of another Guantanamo detainee. A lower court judge found the testimony unreliable and ordered Almerfedi released, but the US Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington said the judge erred in finding the testimony unreliable.
The circumstances of Almerfedi’s capture were not clearly explained in court records. He was apprehended in the Iranian capital, Tehran, after the terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001, and Iranian officials turned him over to Afghan authorities in March 2002 in a prisoner exchange. In May 2003, US forces moved him to Guantanamo Bay, where he has remained since.
Almerfedi said he left his home in southern Yemen in 2001 to seek a better life in Europe with about $2,000 he earned doing odd jobs and selling a narcotic plant called Qat. He said he bribed a guard at the Pakistan Embassy to get a visa and went to Lahore, Pakistan, and stayed several weeks at the headquarters of Jama’at Tablighi, which the United States has designated as a terrorist support entity.
He said he paid most of his life savings to another Arabic speaker he met at the headquarters to smuggle him into Iran, then Turkey and eventually to Greece. The pair went to the Iranian border and bribed the guards to let them across. Instead of heading for Turkey, however, they went 805 kilometres east in the opposite direction to Mashad, Iran, where they spent a month.
Almerfedi said he was simply following his travelling companion and eventually complained so they moved on to Tehran, where he was apprehended carrying about $2,000 cash. The appeals court also found Almerfedi’s own explanations for his travel unconvincing and agreed with the government that his stay at the Jama’at Tablighi headquarters, his route away from Europe and his unexplained $2,000 cash when he was captured suggested he was part of al Qaeda.
“We consistently have found such circumstantial evidence damning,” the appeals court ruling said. The opinion was issued by Judges Laurence Silberman and Brett Kavanaugh. Judge Janice Rogers Brown wrote a concurring opinion that agreed Almerfedi can be detained, but using a different interpretation of the law to reach that conclusion. ap
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk