U.S. court throws out al Qaeda publicist's conspiracy conviction
By Lawrence Hurley
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A divided U.S. appeals court on Friday threw out the last remaining conviction of a Yemeni man prosecuted in an American military court at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. naval base in Cuba for serving as a publicist for al Qaeda.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled 2-1 in favor of Ali Hamza al Bahlul, who made videos for Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda organization.
Writing on behalf of the appeals court, Judge Judith Rogers said Bahlul's 2008 conviction had to be put aside because the special military tribunal, or commission, at Guantanamo did not have the authority to convict Bahlul of a conspiracy charge. Conspiracy is not ones of the crimes recognized under the international law of war, Rogers said.
The ruling is likely to limit the ability of the U.S. government to prosecute people via special military tribunals for offenses not internationally recognized as war crimes. Those cases could instead be heard in civilian courts.
The United States has used military commissions, first created during the administration of former President George W. Bush, to put on trial a number of foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo for alleged war crimes rather than prosecuting them in regular military courts or civilian courts.
Bahlul, who will remain in detention at Guantanano despite the ruling, recorded recruiting videos and taped the wills of some of the hijackers who flew commercial jetliners into New York's World Trade Center, the Pentagon outside Washington and a Pennsylvania field on Sept. 11, 2001.
Three months after those attacks, Bahlul was captured in Pakistan and transferred to the Guantanamo Bay facility. A military commission convicted him of three crimes and sentenced him to life in prison at the detention center there.
In July 2014, the appeals court threw out Bahlul's other convictions for providing material support for terrorism and solicitation of others to commit war crimes.
Lawyers for Majid Khan, a Guantanamo detainee turned government cooperating witness, said the ruling would impact his case as well.
Wells Dixon, a lawyer at the Center for Constitutional Rights, said two of the five charges to which Khan has pleaded guilty have now been invalidated by federal appeals courts in other cases.
Lieutenant Colonel Myles Caggins, a Defense Department spokesman, said the government is "exploring all legal options" following Friday's ruling.
The case is Bahlul v. United States, U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, No. 11-1324.
(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; additional reporting by David Rohde; Editing by Will Dunham)
