[JURIST] The US District Court for the District of Columbia [official website] late last week made public two previously unreleased rulings relating to habeas corpus claims by Guantanamo detainees. In a decision ordering the release of Mohamedou Ould Slahi [NYT materials], Judge James Robertson held that the government had to release Slahi because it was unable to prove that he was part of, or provided support to, al-Qaeda [GlobalSecurity backgrounder] at the time of his capture. Applying a test articulated by Judge John Bates in Hamlily v. Obama [decision, PDF; JURIST report], which limited the detention of terrorism suspects who are not actual members of terrorist groups under the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) [text, PDF], and rejected the Obama administration's "substantial support" standard, Robertson explained:

[A] habeas court may not permit a man to be held indefinitely upon suspicion, or because of the government's prediction that he may do unlawful acts in the future – any more than a habeas court may rely upon its prediction that a man will not be dangerous in the future and order his release if he was lawfully detained in the first place. The question … was whether, at the time of his capture, [Slahi] was "part of" al-Qa[e]da. On the record before me, I cannot find that he was.

The government plans to appeal [WP report] the decision. On Thursday, the court released the decision [text, PDF] of another judge in the habeas petition of Guantanamo detainee Muktar Yahya Najee al Warafi [NYT materials]. The court rejected Warafi's claim that his detention violated the AUMF and Article 24 of the Fourth Geneva Convention [text]. The court found that the government did have enough proof to hold him under the AUMF, and that the Geneva Conventions may not be invoked in a habeas proceeding. Also on Thursday, a third district court judge rejected [order, PDF] the habeas petition of Yasin Qasem Muhammad Ismail [NYT materials], but the full decision has yet to be released.

The court originally ordered the release [JURIST report] of Slahi in March. Slahi was once considered a key al-Qaeda leader and prosecutors had sought the death penalty against him [WSJ report]. A prominent government prosecutor stepped down from the case [PBS interview] because he did not support the alleged abusive treatment used against Slahi, which was investigated in a 2008 Senate Armed Services Committee report [text, PDF]. Last May, Judge Gladys Kessler applied the "substantially supported" standard [JURIST report] for reviewing habeas petitions filed by detainees, making no reference to the "enemy combatant" [JURIST news archive] classification used previously. Last April, Judge Reggie Walton adopted [JURIST report] the "substantially supported" standard for authorizing and reviewing the detention of terrorism suspects at Guantanamo.