US fights order to release Guantanamo detainee

[sabra]

Source: AP

WASHINGTON — The government is asking an appeals court to throw out a judge's order to release a Guantanamo Bay prisoner accused of recruiting Sept. 11 hijackers.

The 9/11 commission report described Mohamedou Ould Salahi as a significant al-Qaida operative who instructed hijackers how to reach Afghanistan to train for jihad. Salahi says he falsely admitted under abusive interrogation to arranging travel for some of the hijackers.

Salahi has been held without charge for eight years at the Navy-run prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and remains there as lawyers prepare to argue over his release before a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington on Friday.

U.S. District Judge James Robertson ruled this spring that the evidence against Salahi was "tainted by coercion and mistreatment" and based on classified material that could not support a criminal prosecution.

...

Salahi says he was held in isolation for months, kept in a freezing cold cell, shackled to the floor, deprived of food, made to drink salt water, forced to stand in a room with strobe lights and heavy metal music for hours at a time, threatened with harm to his family, forbidden from praying, beaten and deprived of sleep. His abuse was documented in a 2009 report by the Senate Armed Services Committee that investigated allegations of detainee abuse at Guantanamo.

...

Robertson said that although the evidence shows Salahi was an al-Qaida sympathizer who gave sporadic support to its members, he would not allow Salahi to be imprisoned indefinitely on suspicion that he could become a terrorist upon his release.

Read more: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hzO2X5UUQtZDvYwh6OWxksMz_mMQD9I9MJ980

[ladjf]

1. Why? nt

[Soylent Brice]

2. so, don't let him go because you're suspicious he'll become something

that he was detained for in the first place, that it turns out he wasn't because he was actually coerced into a confession.

wonderful.

[RaleighNCDUer]

3. I'm reminded of John Garfield - They Made Me A Criminal.

The mis-treatment of a prisoner turns the suspect into exactly the criminal they mistakenly accused him of being.

Turn a 'sympathizer who gave sporadic support' into someone who could become a real terrorist on his release.

[hughee99]

4. I thought Guantanamo prisoners were released a long time ago.

I clearly remember Obama signing documents to that effect just after taking office, and I've seen a number of people list this as one of his accomplishments.

[Dragonfli]

5. Sometimes people lie /nt