Security shroud tossed over
appeal by Gitmo detainees
The government has imposed a muzzle on the judges who ruled on an appeal by a group of detainees held at Guantanamo Bay. Their opinion is classified.
http://tinyurl.com/MysteryCourtOpinion

However, a slightly less censored version appears on lawfareblog
http://www.lawfareblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Latif-order.pdf
where it is learned that a district court's decision had been overruled and the case handed back to that court for more proceedings.

The name of the district judge is omitted and so it is not clear whether the matter concerns a writ of habeas corpus granted last year to a captive held at the Guantanamo Bay military prison, Cuba. In July 2010, Judge Henry Kennedy Jr. granted the petition for Adnan Latif, now 34, and instructed the Obama administration to “take all necessary and appropriate diplomatic steps to facilitate Latif's release forthwith.”

Though the government web page does not indicate the classification authority, nor the statute under which the opinion is classified, in the past judges have been muzzled by the Justice Department and Pentagon.

The appeal's content, like the decision's, is censored.

The lead plaintiff, Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif, then 25, was seized by Pakistan security forces in 2001 and turned over to the United States military for a $5,000 bounty.

Witnesstorture.org
http://www.witnesstorture.org/Adnan-Farhan-Abdul-Latif
gives the following account:

Latif spent the first three years of his captivity at the Guantanamo detention center in total isolation, enduring "physical and mental torture." During this period, he was interrogated hundreds of times and held without charge or hearing before a judge.

Not until 2004 did the United States conduct a “status” hearing, permitting attorney Mark Falkoff to take on Latif's case. As Falkoff writes in the journal of his meetings with Latif, "when I first saw the accusations, I thought they looked serious." But "when I looked at the government’s evidence, I was amazed. There was nothing there.”

Latif remains in custody, despite the 2004 Defense Department determination that Latif “is not known to have participated in combatant/terrorist training” and a 2007 determination that Latif should be transferred away from Guantánamo Bay “subject to the process for making appropriate diplomatic arrangements for his departure."

On Oct. 8, the Associated Press reported that a Guantanamo Bay detainee who says he was waterboarded lost a legal battle when a federal appeals court ruled that the Obama administration can keep information secret that the prisoner wanted to make public.

The decision came in the case of Djamel Ameziane, an Algerian seeking his release from the Guantanamo Bay prison, where he has been held since 2002.

In a 3-0 decision, the appeals court said U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle had failed to give substantial deference "to the government's assessment of its foreign relations and national security interests" if certain information were to be revealed. Huvelle had declared that "I don't understand how" revealing the information "will interfere in anything."

The government's argument provided a detailed and logical explanation of the impact disclosure would have, appeals Judge Janice Rogers Brown wrote.

Other backround on Latif is available at
http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/AMR51/066/2009/en/779940e7-6c40-4f97-80d9-cbe2c6314d46/amr510662009en.html

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