Newly-Released Judicial Opinion Explains Decision Ordering Release of Mohamedou Salahi
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 12, 2010 CONTACT: (505) 266-5915 Ext. 1003; [email protected]
NEW YORK – A Washington D.C. federal court opinion ordering the release of Guantánamo prisoner Mohamedou Ould Salahi (sometimes spelled “Slahi”) and providing the reasons for the granting of his habeas corpus petition was made public Friday, April 9th. Federal District Judge James Robertson ruled on March 22 that the U.S. could not continue to detain Salahi, a Mauritanian citizen who has been in U.S. custody since 2001. Judge Robertson’s opinion was released today after undergoing a classification review; some portions were withheld as classified.
The American Civil Liberties Union joined attorneys Nancy Hollander and Theresa Duncan of the law firm Freedman Boyd Hollander Goldberg Ives & Duncan P.A. and Linda Moreno of Linda Moreno P.A. in challenging Salahi’s detention, arguing that the government had no reliable evidence that he was part of al-Qaeda when he was seized in 2001.
“After subjecting Mr. Salahi to illegal renditions to three countries, brutal physical and psychological torture and almost daily interrogations for most of the nine years he has been in U.S. custody, the government could not even tip the scales ever so slightly to justify Mr. Salahi’s detention,” said Hollander, the lead attorney in the case. “It is well past time for him to go home.”
“As Judge Robertson’s opinion makes clear, the allegations that Mr. Salahi participated in the so-called Millennium Plot to attack the Los Angeles airport and recruited two of the 9/11 hijackers are not supported by any credible evidence,” said Duncan. “The truth is the government was wrong when it first detained him, wrong when it tortured him and is wrong in continuing to detain him.”
After Salahi was arrested in Mauritania on suspicion of ties to al-Qaeda, the U.S. government illegally rendered him to Jordan, where he was detained, interrogated and abused for eight months. He was then rendered to Bagram, Afghanistan and finally to Guantánamo, where he has been held in U.S. custody since August 2002.
“Salahi's illegal detention for more than eight years without charge or trial embodies the most egregious abuses of Guantánamo,” said Jonathan Hafetz, staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project. “The district court’s decision invalidating that detention and ordering Salahi’s release is an important step towards restoring the rule of law.”
While at Guantánamo, Salahi was held in total isolation for months, kept in a freezing cold cell, shackled to the floor, deprived of food, made to drink salt water, forced to stand in a room with strobe lights and heavy metal music for hours at a time, threatened with harm to his family, forbidden from praying, beaten and subjected to the “frequent flyer” program, during which he was awakened every few hours to deprive him of sleep. The government falsely told him that his mother had been arrested and was being sent to Guantánamo. Salahi’s abuse was confirmed and well documented in a 2009 report by the Senate Armed Services Committee that investigated allegations of detainee abuse at Guantánamo.
Marine Corps Lt. Col. Stuart Couch, a military lawyer originally assigned to prosecute the case against Salahi in the military commissions, determined that Salahi’s self-incriminating statements were so tainted by torture that they couldn’t ethically be used against him. Couch told his supervisors that he was “morally opposed” to Salahi’s treatment and for that reason he refused to participate in the prosecution.
The original habeas challenge to Salahi’s unlawful detention was filed in 2005 in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The Department of Justice is appealing Judge Robertson’s decision.
Lawyers on the case are Nancy Hollander and Theresa Duncan of Freedman Boyd Hollander Goldberg Ives & Duncan P.A.; Linda Moreno of Linda Moreno P.A.; Jonathan Hafetz, Melissa Goodman and Jonathan Manes of the ACLU; Arthur Spitzer of the ACLU of the Nation’s Capital; Brahim Ould Ebety of Nouakchott, Mauritania; and Emmanuel Altit of Paris, France.
The ruling is available online at: www.aclu.org/national-security/salahi-v-obama-et-al-order

###

The mission of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of New Mexico is to maintain and advance the cause of civil liberties within the state of New Mexico, with particular emphasis on the freedom of religion, speech, press, association, and assemblage, and the right to vote, due process of law and equal protection of law, and to take any legitimate action in the furtherance and defense of such purposes. These objectives shall be sought wholly without political partisanship.

ALBUQUERQUE, NM - In a case brought by the ACLU of New Mexico (ACLU-NM), U.S. District  Judge M. Christina Armijo ruled today that Albuquerque’s regulation banning sex offenders from public libraries is unconstitutional. The court determined that the ban infringed too broadly upon the First Amendment right to receive information and creates “an unacceptable risk of the suppression of ideas.”
“No one questions the City’s purpose of ensuring public safety, but this regulation sacrificed library access for too many people who present no threat to library goers,” said ACLU-NM Executive Director Peter Simonson.  “A regulation like this must be narrowly tailored if it is going to infringe on a right as fundamental as the public’s ability to receive information.  For many people, public libraries are, as one court put it, ‘the quintessential locus of the receipt of information.’”
In the decision handed down today, the court reached this conclusion:
“This Court has struggled in this case to strike the proper legal balance between competing interests… On one side of the equation here is the City, which no reasonable person could or would contend does not have a legitimate and compelling interest in…protecting children from harm, danger and crime, especially crimes of a sexual nature. On the other side of the equation is a group of individuals that, no matter how reviled, nevertheless possesses certain constitutional rights. When those rights are burdened or, in this case, wholly extinguished by an action of government, this Court has an obligation to scrutinize the facts and the law closely, carefully, and objectively to ensure that, whatever the end result, it is just. In this case, having done just this, the Court concludes that the City’s regulation, as currently written and in its present form, cannot stand.”
The court’s order enjoins the City of Albuquerque from enforcing the regulation as currently written.
UPDATE (5/7/10): Albuquerque Mayor Richard Berry has reinstated the ban for all libraries except the main branch on Thursdays and Saturdays. Read more about the new ordinance and ACLU-NM's response.

###

The mission of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of New Mexico is to maintain and advance the cause of civil liberties within the state of New Mexico, with particular emphasis on the freedom of religion, speech, press, association, and assemblage, and the right to vote, due process of law and equal protection of law, and to take any legitimate action in the furtherance and defense of such purposes. These objectives shall be sought wholly without political partisanship.
Related Documents:

Albuquerque v. Doe Opinion

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: February 10, 2010
CONTACT: Micah McCoy, (505) 266-5915 Ext. 1003 or [email protected]
LAS CRUCES, NM – The ACLU of New Mexico (ACLU-NM) and Disability Rights New Mexico (DRNM) settled their lawsuit against the Doña Ana County Detention Center (DACDC), securing essential mental health services for detainees. The settlement marks the end of a lawsuit brought as a class action by detainees who alleged that DACDC failed to provide adequate treatment for inmates with mental health disabilities. Under the terms of the settlement, DACDC will improve its intake screening process and provision of treatment, and it will modify segregation cell use as well as seclusion and restraint procedures to comply with constitutional standards and the Americans with Disabilities Act.
“We are very pleased that Doña Ana County has agreed to take these important steps towards providing detainees with adequate mental health care,” said ACLU-NM Executive Director Peter Simonson. “These reforms will go a long way towards ensuring that detainees with mental disabilities are diagnosed and given proper care. We expect these changes to make the Doña Ana County Detention Center a safer and healthier facility.”
The settlement agreement mandates that DACDC implement standard screening procedures in its intake process in order to identify at the outset which detainees require treatment for mental disabilities. This will ensure that detainees receive immediate attention and avoid a deterioration of their condition that could put themselves, security staff and other detainees at risk. The agreement also requires that detainees with significant mental health disabilities be housed in a specialized mental health unit within the detention center and that they be supervised by corrections officers who have undergone special training regarding mental health issues.
A key achievement of the settlement was an assurance that placement in isolation cells — used inappropriately throughout the nation when dealing with detainees or inmates with mental disabilities — will not be used for detainees with mental disabilities unless all other less restrictive options have been exhausted. In addition, when physical restraint becomes necessary, corrections officers will only hold detainees until a trained medical professional is able to diagnose and administer treatment.
“Disability Rights New Mexico has been responding to concerns about inadequate mental health care in DACDC since 2004,” said Nancy Koenigsberg, DRNM Legal Director.  “DACDC is now required to maintain an adequate level of mental health services staffing.  It also has a continuum of care of mental health services in the facility, as well as provisions for transferring detainees to acute care out of the facility when clinically indicated.  These are very important services for detainees with mental disabilities. We also hope this may help with recidivism.”
A neutral expert in prison mental health care will be agreed upon by both parties and contracted to monitor and evaluate DACDC progress in the implementation of these reforms over the next two years. DRNM will oversee the monitoring process.
ACLU-NM Staff Attorney Brendan Egan, Disability Rights New Mexico Attorneys Nancy Koenigsberg and Tim Gardner, the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law and ACLU-NM Cooperating Attorneys George Bach, Peter Cubra and Michael Lilley represented the plaintiffs in this case.

###

Related Documents:

Bravo Settlement