Court Martial Lawyer – France takes in detainee from U.S.
Justices’ landmark ruling held he could petition courts.
By Peter Finn and Julie Tate – Washington Post
WASHINGTON – A Guantanamo Bay detainee who lent his name to a landmark Supreme Court case was flown out of the military base in Cuba yesterday to France.
After seven years in the U.S. prison camp, Lakhdar Boumediene, a 43-year-old Algerian native, arrived yesterday in France, French Foreign Ministry spokesman Eric Chevallier said.
The French government has arranged for medical care if needed, Chevallier said. Boumediene has been on a hunger strike since 2006 and was force-fed at the prison camp, his lawyers say.
Boumediene has relatives in France, which led the government to accept him as a gesture to the Obama administration.
He was released as President Obama announced yesterday that he was reviving Bush-era military tribunals for a small number of Guantanamo detainees, with several new legal protections for the terror suspects.
Of the 240 held in Guantanamo, fewer than 20 are expected to be tried, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Boumediene was arrested with five compatriots in Bosnia in 2001. The six Algerians were accused of involvement in a plot to bomb the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo, but the Justice Department dropped the allegation and in November a U.S. federal judge ordered five of the six released.
Three of the six were flown in December to Bosnia, where they are naturalized citizens. The fate of Sabir Lahmar, 39, who was ordered released but does not have Bosnian citizenship, is undecided. He remains in Guantanamo.
The courts have ordered the release of 25 detainees, including 17 Chinese Uighurs.
Robert Kirsch, one of Boumediene’s civilian lawyers, said he and a French diplomat flew to Guantanamo on Wednesday and met Boumediene. The diplomat gave Boumediene travel papers for France, Kirsch said, using a photo of the detainee taken from the Internet for the paperwork.
Boumediene asked the diplomat to bring French food. But because Boumediene’s stomach might not be able to tolerate French cuisine, Kirsch and the diplomat brought beans and rice from a restaurant on the military base. It was the first solid food Boumediene had eaten since starting his hunger strike.
“We welcome [France's] decision to take him in,” said Jean-Marie Fardeau, director of the Paris office of Human Rights Watch, who had lobbied the French government to take in Guantanamo inmates.
A U.S. military group objected to the release.
“Boumediene has admitted to associating with al-Qaeda,” said Kirk S. Lippold, a senior military fellow at Military Families United and former commander of the USS Cole, which was struck by al-Qaeda in Yemen, leading to the deaths of 17 American service members.
“He has lied to the authorities on numerous occasions as to the relationships he has with high-level al-Qaeda leadership. But instead of detaining Boumediene and holding him accountable for his actions, the Obama administration has released him in France on the U.S. taxpayers’ dime.”
The Supreme Court ruled, 5-4, in June that detainees at Guantanamo have the right to petition federal District Courts to review their detention. The case known as Boumediene v. Bush extended the constitutional privilege of habeas corpus to all detainees.
Boumediene is the second prisoner transferred to a third-party country by the Obama administration. In February, Binyam Mohamed, a native of Ethiopia who had lived in Britain, was returned to the United Kingdom.
The Obama administration has begun diplomatic negotiations with European and other states to resettle dozens of detainees who have been cleared for release but cannot be returned to their home countries because of the fear of torture or execution.
Most European governments insist the Obama administration settle some detainees in the United States first. Opposition has been growing on Capitol Hill to resettlement on American soil.
The decision to revive military commissions, which followed intense internal debate, represents a reversal by the president. He said during the campaign that military courts martial or the federal courts offered a better route to successful prosecution because military commissions were an “enormous failure.”
In recent weeks, the administration appears to have bowed to fears articulated by the Pentagon that bringing some detainees before regular courts presented enormous legal hurdles and could risk acquittals.
Military commissions “are appropriate for trying enemies who violate the laws of war, provided that they are properly structured and administered,” Obama said in a statement.
The administration will seek a second continuance of proceedings at Guantanamo Bay to complete changes to the military commissions system, including a ban on the use of evidence obtained from coercive interrogations and protections for defendants who refuse to testify, Obama said.
Despite these changes, civil-liberties groups were dismayed.
“Military commissions are designed to provide lesser due-process protections for terrorism suspects than our federal courts do,” said Virginia Sloan, president of the Constitution Project, a Washington think tank.
Conservative lawmakers, who had condemned Obama’s decision to start a one-year clock on closing the prison in Guantanamo, cheered his latest move.
“Today’s action will afford us the opportunity to reform the military commission system and produce a comprehensive policy regarding present and future detainees,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) said in a statement. “I applaud the president’s actions.”
Michael Waddington is a court martial lawyer – court martial attorney that defends military personnel worldwide as well as deployed civilian contractors subject to the UCMJ. He defends Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine, Coast Guard, and civilian contractor court martial cases. He has successfully defended military personnel as a court martial lawyer Army Navy Marine & Air Force court martials in Germany, England, Italy, Iraq, Kuwait, Korea, Okinawa, Japan, Yokota, and throughout the United States. military-defense-lawyer-recentcases.htm.
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