Fight looms over Cuba detainees

WASHINGTON -- A federal judge on Friday ordered the government to explain why a Libyan national detained at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, should not be released immediately -- setting up a showdown next week between the court and the Bush administration over the fate of alleged enemy combatants locked up on the island.

Separately, the Pentagon announced Friday that preliminary hearings will be held next month for four other detainees, marking the first steps toward military tribunals that will be conducted in a newly built courtroom at Guantanamo Bay.

Military authorities also said Friday that they were beginning annual reviews for many of the 600 detainees in Cuba to determine whether some should be sent home, a process the Pentagon established in response to criticism that the detainees lack due process. The first such "combatant status review" was held involving an unnamed detainee. No decision was disclosed.

The developments come just weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that foreign nationals held at Guantanamo Bay, as well as Americans being held as enemy combatants without charges filed against them, have the right to challenge the legality of their confinement.

In Washington, U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton, a Bush appointee who took the bench shortly after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, ordered the government to explain by Tuesday why Salim Gherebi should not be released. If the government cannot show that Gherebi is a security risk, Walton said, he will order the 46-year- old Libyan immediately released. That would mark the first time the administration was forced to free any of the captives taken in the war on terror.

Stephen Yagman of Los Angeles is Gherebi's lawyer but said he has never met his client nor spoken to him because of strict restraints imposed by the military. He was hired by Gherebi's brother, Belaid Gherebi of San Diego, to help win his release. Because of Walton's involvement in the case, Yagman said, the military most likely now will let him visit his client in Cuba.

"I want to get down there as quickly as I can, but they say it may take two to three weeks to arrange it," Yagman said.He said that Salim Gherebi had moved to Afghanistan and was working as a mechanic there for about four years when he was captured in February 2002. Yagman denied that Gherebi was a terrorist or had fought against U.S. forces in Afghanistan after Sept. 11. Rather, he said, Gherebi was like many other Guantanamo Bay detainees who were "scooped up" after the U.S. military offered large bounties for enemy combatants.

"People were just running around grabbing people for the bounties," Yagman said. "But he was working as an auto mechanic in Kabul. He needed a job and couldn't get a good job in Libya so he moved to Kabul. He was working there for a long time before all this stuff happened."

Terry Henry, a Justice Department attorney handling the case, declined to discuss the matter. But he filed a notice Friday, saying that the government plans to present a formal request asking the judge to dismiss his order demanding that the government explain Gherebi's status.

Some suspect that one reason the government is unwilling to release Gherebi is that his brother worked as an instructor at a flight school in San Diego where two of the Sept. 11 hijackers inquired about flying lessons.

Contributing: John Hendren.

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