Tribunals Considered Praying Habits of Gitmo Detainee
Two U.S. military tribunals have declared a German student to be an al-Qaida ally despite evidence that intelligence experts did not consider him a terrorist.
Lawyers for Murat Kurnaz obtained documents showing the disparity in a lawsuit against the Pentagon, the Washington Post reports. Newly released portions of a ruling in Kurnaz’s case by U.S. District Judge Joyce Hens Green shows the tribunals “relied heavily on a memo written by a U.S. brigadier general who noted that Kurnaz had prayed while the U.S. national anthem was sung in the prison and that he expressed an unusual interest in detainee transfers and the guard schedule,” the Post story says.
The government considered Kurnaz’s interest in the guard schedule and the height of a basketball hoop indications that he planned an escape.
“However the record in Kurnaz is interpreted, it definitively establishes that the detainee was not provided with a fair opportunity to contest the material allegations against him,” Green wrote.
Kurnaz was released in 2006 after Germany’s chancellor met with President Bush to ask for his freedom. Kurnaz had been held for almost five years.
Kurnaz’s lawyers will argue along with lawyers for other Guantanamo detainees in a U.S. Supreme Court hearing today that the military tribunals do not provide fair and impartial hearings. Under the Constitution, federal courts must provide habeas review when the hearing process is inadequate, they argue.
The government contends that combatant status review tribunals are an adequate substitute for habeas review.
Scholars consider the consolidated Supreme Court cases, Boumediene v. Bush and Al Odah v. United States, to raise critical separation of powers issues, the Washington Post reports in a separate story.
