This should seen as a major defeat for the Bush admin. Many will remember the name Boumediene because of his case going to the US Supreme Court leading to the first defeat of Bush and his Gitmo policys. The Judge rules as any competent Judge should when he found out the only evidence against this 5 detainees was the word of one unnamed source.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A federal judge Thursday ordered the release of five Algerians held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the continued detention of a sixth in a major blow to the Bush administration's strategy to capture terror suspects without charges.
In the first case of its kind, U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon said the government's evidence linking the five Algerians to al-Qaida was not credible as it came from a single, unidentified source. Therefore, he said the five could not be held indefinitely as enemy combatants, and should be released immediately.
"To allow enemy combatancy to rest on so thin a reed would be inconsistent with the court's obligation," Leon told the crowded courtroom.
As a result, "the court must and will grant the petitioners and order their release," he said.
Here is more from the SCOTUSblog w/ a ht InsultComicDog
The judge, in an unusual added comment, suggested to senior government leaders that they forgo an appeal of his ruling on freeing the five prisoners. While conceding that the government had a right to appeal that part of his ruling, Leon commented that he, too, had "a right to appeal" to leaders of the Justice Department, Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies to look at the evidence regarding the five he was ordering released. "Seven yeears of waiting for our legal system to give them an answer to their legal question is enough," he commented.
Senior leaders of the government, he went on, will have "more than enough opportunity" to test the novel issues at stake in defending against on appeal of his ruling in the case of ben Sayah. He said he was appealing to those leaders "to end this process" for the five.
http://www.scotusblog.com/...
Since the gov. of Bosnia has already agreed to accept these men back in their country there is absolutely no excuse to continue to hold them as they are the Chinese that were ordered released a few weeks ago.
Because of my health I'm not up to a long diary but I want to be the one to diary this since I have written so many diarys on Gitmo and torture. It feels great to be able to report this new even if we do not yet know if the Bush admin. will fight the release. Here is the link to the AP story. http://hosted.ap.org/...