5 at Guantanamo Ordered Released

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Judge Orders Release of 5 Terror Suspects

A federal judge on 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 of keeping terror suspects locked up without charges. (Nov. 20)

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Attorneys for the Algerians said they would like the men returned to their families in Bosnia, where they were legally living when they were captured. Bosnian officials have indicated they would take them back and have said their own investigation has cleared them of connections to terrorism.

Robert Kirsch, a lawyer for the detainees, said the ruling was "a relief. The judge did what he had to do." He added that his team would appeal Leon's decision involving the sixth Algerian, Belkacem Bensayah.

Leon issued his ruling in the D.C. federal courthouse's large ceremonial courtroom, which was filled with lawyers and law clerks hoping to witness a historic ruling. As he read his decision, Leon patiently waited for an Arabic interpreter to translate his words for the detainees, who were listening via audio-link at Guantanamo Bay. Their attorneys hugged after Leon left the courtroom.

The Algerians were detained for years on allegations that they had been plotting to blow up the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo when they were picked up by Bosnian authorities and later turned over to U.S. officials. Bush mentioned the bomb plot in his 2002 State of the Union Address. But the government withdrew those allegations last month without explanation. The most serious remaining allegations concerned Bensayah, who was accused of being an al-Qaeda facilitator who sought to arrange travel for others to fight U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

The other five -- Lakhdar Boumediene, Mohamed Nechle, Mustafa Ait Idir, Hadj Boudella and Saber Lahmar -- were accused of planning to go to Afghanistan to fight.

Leon said the direct evidence against those five was skimpy and came from one unnamed source in a classified document. On top of that, Leon ruled, the government did not provide him with enough information to evaluate the source's credibility.

"The court has no knowledge as to the circumstances under which the source obtained the information," Leon said, adding that the government did not give him "adequate corroborating evidence" to support the source's allegations.

"To rest on so thin a reed would be inconsistent with the court's obligations," he said.

Leon did not fault the government for picking up the men in the first place, noting that the evidence "was undoubtedly sufficient for the intelligence purposes for which it was prepared."

In the case of Bensayah, Leon said, the government proved by a preponderance of the evidence that he was an enemy combatant. He said the government relied on the same unnamed source but provided "other intelligence reports based on a variety of sources and evidence" to corroborate the allegations.