Legal Commentary

U.S. to Release Physician-Detainee From Guantanamo

By Jeralyn

After seven years, the U.S. has agreed to release Yemeni Doctor Ayman Saeed Abdullah Batarfi from Guantanamo Bay. A petition that circulated by his supporters on the internet described Dr. Batarfi this way: [More...]

Dr Batarfi is a 37 year old Yemeni orthopaedic surgeon currently held in Guantanamo Bay whose only crime would appear to be trying to treat civilian casualties in a war zone.

After his post-graduate studies in Pakistan, and inspired by the Afghan trauma victims he had dealt with, he decided to work for a non-governmental organisation to renovate a hospital in Kabul in spring 2001. With the chaos after the onset of the Afghan conflict in late 2001, he was "sold" to the US military by the Northern Alliance.

Why now? Dr. Batarfi's habeas petition is scheduled to be heard in federal court April 6.

The hearing was one of the first scheduled for a decision by a federal judge of more than 200 such cases filed on behalf of Guantánamo detainees.

It's not clear where Dr. Batarfi will be going. His lawyer (and my good friend) Billy Murphy, Jr. of Baltimore says:

[U]nder an agreement the court case could be reopened if his client objected to the conditions of his release. Mr. Murphy said that the meetings with Mr. bin Laden were chance encounters and that the Justice Department decision had vindicated his client.

“As a doctor,” Mr. Murphy said, “there was no basis under international law for the U.S. government to hold him.”

Full post as published by TalkLeft on March 30, 2009 (boomark / email).