A detainee at the center of a sharp new controversy over Pentagon decisions seeking to justify holding Guatnanamo Bay prisoners has filed an appeal in the Supreme Court, asking for an “original” habeas writ. The case involves Abdul Hamid Al-Ghizzawi, whom the military is holding on the basis of an accusation that he was a member of Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, a group that has had its assets frozen by U.S. authorities for terrorist acts against the Libyan government.. (The petition for the writ has not yet been cleared by security officials for public access, and does not yet have an assigned docket number. For now, a motion for leave to file under seal has been docketed as 07M5. When a public version becomes available, it will be posted on this blog.)
Al-Ghizzawi has a habeas challenge to his detention pending in U.S. District Court in Washington (docket 05-2378), a challenge to his designation as an “enemy combatant” pending in D.C. Circuit Court (docket 07-1089), and a separate appeal dealing with issues surrounding his physical illness pending at the Circuit Court (docket 06-5394).
His detention case was one of two that have become highly visible examples of what are called “do-overs” in the Pentagon system for processing Guantanamo detainees. That process is conducted by “Combatant Status Review Tribunals.” Detainee lawyers have complained in court that, if such a CSRT panel clears a Guantanamo prisoner, it is routine for the Pentagon to order a new CSRT review, to establish a basis for a combatant designation. Al-Ghizzawi is one of several individuals known to have been involved in “do-overs.” Another is Anwar Hassan, who already has an appeal pending in the Supreme Court (In re Ali, 06-1194) seeking an original habeas writ.
The original three-member military panel that examined the case against Al-Ghizzawi, found that “there was no credible evidence supporting the allegation,” according to a member of that panel. The member was an Army Reserve lieutenant colonel, Stephen E. Abraham. Since Colonel Abraham surfaced in filings in detainee cases in the Supreme Court and D.C. Circuit Court as a critic on the inside of the CSRT process, Pentagon and Justice Department officials have undertaken a campaign to challenge his complaints about that process.
Colonel Abraham did not mention Al-Ghizzawi’s name in a statement given under oath that was supplied to the Supreme Court in pending habeas cases. But, in an appearance before the House Armed Services Committee on Thursday, the Reserve intelligence officer named the detainne and reiterated what he recalled had happened in the one CSRT panel on which Abraham had sat.
That was panel No. 23. Abraham said that, “on the basis of the paucity and weakness of the information provided both during and after the CSRT hearing” for Al-Ghizzawi, the CSRT members “determined that there was no factual basis for concluding that the individual should be classified as an enemy combatant.” The colonel added: “All of us found the information presented to lack substance.” After filing its report, the CSRT was told by Pentagon officials to reconsider; it came to the same conclusion again, Abraham testified. The colonel told the lawmakers that he later learned that Al-Ghizzawi and Hassan, who had been cleared by panel No. 18, were put before a new CSRT panel, No. 32, and both were then found to be “enemy combatants.”
(Colonel Abraham’s statement Thursday before the House committee has been circulated in Washington. According to news accounts, he delivered it at a hearing at which the Pentagon official in charge of the CSRT process, retired Admiral James M. McGarrah, also testified. News stories quoted McGarrah as telling the committee that Colonel Abraham had been a part of only “a very narrow piece” of the CSRT process. The Reserve officer, McGarrah said, was only one of many working on CSRT matters, and spent most of his time “helping us build the database” for CSRT hearings.)
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