Info Withheld from Defense on Gitmo Detainee Batarfi
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge on Tuesday accused the Bush administration of hiding evidence in the case of a Yemen man who has been held as a terror suspect at Guantanamo Bay for six years.
U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan said he was forced to delay ruling on whether to free Aymen Saeed Batarfi because as many as 10 documents of classified information were withheld from the court until recently.
“I think it’s unfair, I think it’s disingenuous,” Sullivan said during an hourlong hearing. He added: “This government, especially, hides the ball when it suits this government’s purpose.”
Sullivan also presided over last fall’s trial of former Sen. Ted Stevens, when prosecutors broke rules requiring them to turn over evidence favorable to the Alaska Republican.
In Tuesday’s case, Justice Department attorneys admitted that at least some of the recently revealed documents dated back to September. But Justice attorney John Henebery said the government did not believe the information had to be turned over immediately.
William J. Murphy, a Baltimore lawyer representing Batarfi, said the Yemeni was on a humanitarian aid mission on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border when he was injured and swept up by Northern Alliance forces, who turned him over to the U.S. Batarfi’s lawyers maintain he was not assisting al-Qaida.
However, Justice Department attorney Chris Hardee said Batarfi was at one of al-Qaida’s major battles. “He wasn’t just a charity worker,” Hardee told Sullivan.
At least some of the evidence against Batarfi is hearsay, Sullivan said, although he added: “There’s some pretty powerful allegations.”GN/AP
The Ted Steven story referenced is a doozy. The poor guy who came forward needs whistleblower protection. Some addtional background on Batarfi from Long War Journal:
Al Matrafi’s ties to these senior terrorists gave al Wafa access to al Qaeda’s most sensitive projects, including Yazid Sufaat’s anthrax program.
One of al Matrafi’s employees, a Yemeni named Ayman Saeed Abdullah Batarfi, is currently held at Guantánamo. It is not clear what the U.S. Government plans to do with him, but Batarfi is allegedly a long-time mujahideen, having first traveled to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets in the late 1980s. After training in an al Qaeda camp and participating in the first jihad in Afghanistan, Batarfi graduated from medical school in Pakistan and, according to the New York Times, “pursued postdoctoral studies there.” Batarfi even became an orthopedic surgeon.
Batarfi used his expertise to become the medical advisor to al Wafa. It was in this capacity, the government alleges, that Batarfi “met a Malaysian microbiologist in Kandahar” while staying at an al Qaeda guesthouse in August 2001. “This microbiologist wanted to equip a lab and train the Afghans to test blood” and “was involved in developing anthrax for al Qaida.” Batarfi told another al Wafa member “to purchase four to five thousand United States Dollars worth of medical equipment for the Malaysian microbiologist.” Although the microbiologist is not named in the government’s unclassified files, he is most certainly Yazid Sufaat.
