Going Home

Mohamed Mohamed Hassan Odaini, the young Yemeni man who has been a War on Terra prisoner for eight years—more than a quarter of his life—is apparently at last going home.

As recently set forth here, Federal District Court Judge Henry H. Kennedy, in ruling on Odaini’s petition on habeas corpus, found that there was “no evidence” Odaini “has any connection to Al Qaeda,” that “holding Odaini in custody at such great cost to him has done nothing to make the United States more secure,” and “emphatically” ordered him released “forthwith.”

Judge Kennedy allowed the Justice Department until June 25 to appeal his decision. The Justice Department apparently did not do so. On June 26, anonymous “administration officials” told the Washington Post that the government would not contest Judge Kennedy’s order, and that Odaini would be repatriated to Yemen.

As Kennedy’s opinion made clear, government officials first concluded in June of 2002, eight years ago this month, that Odaini was innocent. He has several times before been cleared for release, but that release has never come. Most recently, the Obama Justice Department, as part of its review of the status of all War on Terra prisoners bequeathed it by the George II administration, determined in June of last year that Odaini should be freed. However, following the sadsack “attack” of Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, the so-called “Christmas underwear bomber”—who had trained in a Badness Camp in Yemen—the Obama administration allowed itself to be bested by bedwetters in Congress and the media, and suspended the return of any War on Terra prisoners to Yemen.

“The general suspension is still intact, but this is a court-ordered release,” an unnamed administration official told the newspaper on condition of anonymity.

[A]nother administration official warned that the move “should not be viewed as a reflection of a broader policy for other Yemeni detainees.”

There remain 90 Yemeni prisoners in the Guantanamo Bay gulag. Before it imposed the bedwetting ban, the Obama administration had cleared 29 Yemenis to return home, and “conditionally cleared” an additional 30. One administration official told the Post that the courts may order up to 20 other Yemenis released, due to “insufficient evidence” in their cases. The official did not explain why, if the evidence in their cases was insufficient, prosecutors in the Justice Department did not dismiss those cases, as is their duty and obligation, under the United States Constitution, more than 800 years of Anglo-American jurisprudence, and the dictates of simple human decency.