Deleted:Bensayah Belkacem

Bensayah Belkacem
220px JTF-GTMO image of Bensayah Belkacem
Occupation	clergyman

Bensayah Belkacem is a citizen of Bosnia, currently held in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba. He was born in Algeria, and arrested in his home in Bosnia, on October 8, 2001, shortly after the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Bensayah Belkacem arrived at the Guantanamo detention camps on January 21, 2002, and has been held there for Template:For year month day. He has been held without trial or charge since.

Belkacem and five other men, charity workers, who were colleagues of his, who were also born in Algeria, were under suspicion of plotting to bomb the American embassy in Bosnia. American intelligence officials had grown alarmed by an increase in the "chatter". After his extrajudicial capture it was reported that a search of his home turned up pro-jihadist material.

Main article: Algerian Six

Detention in Cuba

Bensayah was one of the first Guantanamo detainees who was able to get a letter out describing the conditions there. In a letter his wife received in June 2002 he said that the detainees no longer had to defecate and urinate into plastic bags. The camp authorities had provided them with toilets.

Writ of habeas corpus

A writ of habeas corpus was submitted on behalf of the Algerian Six, including Bensayah Belkacem. On 12 October 2004 the Department of Defense released 40 pages of unclassified documents related to his Combatant Status Review Tribunal.

Continued detention

On 21 October 2008 US District Court Judge Richard J. Leon ordered the release of five of the Algerians held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but the continued detention of Belkacem.

Appeal of Judge Leon's ruling

On September 15, 2009 a three judge panel from the DC Circuit Court of Appeals started to review Leon's ruling. The panel ruled that their hearings would be held entirely in-camera.

According to The Blog of Legal Times, a partially declassified brief to the appeal court by Marc Fleming, one of Belkacem's lawyers, of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, had challenged Leon's reasoning because he had relied on “unfinished, conclusory intelligence reports and uncorroborated assertions from anonymous sources.” Fleming's brief had challenged Leon's ruling because he had not required the government to search for exculpatory evidence. Fleming asserted that when the government had conducted its search the classified evidence it provided to him in April 2009 eroded the government's allegations.^{[citation needed]}

On June 28, 2010, the panel reversed Leon's ruling, holding that Belkacem could not be considered a member of al-Qaeda. Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg, writing for the panel, said that the U.S. Government had presented "no direct evidence of actual communication between Bensayah and any al Qaeda member". Ginsburg noted that the Obama administration had backed away from several arguments the Bush administration had made to Leon, including claims he'd communicated with Abu Zubaydah.

External links

• Guantánamo and Habeas Corpus: Prisoners Win 3 out of 4 Cases, But Lose 5 out of 6 in Court of Appeals (Part Two) Andy Worthington July 27, 2010
• Judge Ginsburg ruling from June 28,2010
• Bosnian government seen covering up naturalized citizens, terrorist suspects
• Human Rights First; Habeas Works: Federal Courts’ Proven Capacity to Handle Guantánamo Cases (2010)
• "Bin Laden suspect held in Bosnia". CNN. Fall 2001. http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/10/26/inv.bosnia.arrests/. Retrieved 2007-10-10. 
• Ian Fisher (January 28, 2002). "Qaeda Suspect's Bosnian Wife Says He's No Terrorist". New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A06E1D6153AF93BA15752C0A9649C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print. Retrieved 2007-10-10. 
• "German troops 'posed' as media". United Press International. December 22, 2005. http://www.upi.com/Security_Terrorism/Analysis/2005/12/22/german_troops_posed_as_media/5141/. Retrieved 2007-12-24.