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Gold9472
08-19-2009, 08:11 AM
Judge orders Yemeni at Guantanamo freed

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/world_us/20090819_Judge_orders_Yemeni_at_Guantanamo_freed.h tml

By Carol Rosenberg
Miami Herald
8/19/2009

MIAMI - A federal judge has ordered the Pentagon to free a Yemeni father of two with a heart condition who has been held for 7 1/2 years at Guantanamo on suspicion of serving as Osama bin Laden's bodyguard.

Mohammed al-Adahi, 47, testified by video link in June from the prison camp in Cuba that he had met bin Laden socially during the summer before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks but never worked for him or waged jihad.

"I did not fight the American alliance. I did not deal with Taliban or al-Qaeda," he said, according to a transcript of his mostly classified hearing at federal court in Washington. ". . . I have never committed a crime."

U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler ruled Monday for his release, instructing the U.S. government to "take all necessary and appropriate diplomatic steps" to free him "forthwith."

It was unclear how soon Adahi might leave Guantanamo, where his attorneys say he suffers high blood pressure and at one point was offered angioplasty treatments by prison camp medical staff.

The United States is still negotiating a repatriation agreement with Yemen for up to 93 Yemeni citizens held among the 229 detainees at the U.S. Navy base.

Kessler's ruling raised to 29 the number of long-held Guantanamo captives whom federal judges have ordered released through unlawful-detention suits, compared with six whose detentions have been upheld.

Defense attorney Kristin Wilhelm of Atlanta said that to clear his name, Adahi collected statements from fellow Guantanamo detainees who supposedly fingered him in prison camp interrogations.

None corroborated the U.S. government allegations, Wilhelm said.

Pakistani troops captured Adahi as he fled the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan soon after Sept. 11. He was aboard a bus carrying wounded Taliban soldiers, the basis of a Pentagon claim that he had been in league with the Taliban.