Latest Gitmo releasee: Al-Qaeda operative accused of taking part in anthrax plot

from Jihad Watch

He also was accused of aiding terrorist-charities and repeatedly meeting with Osama bin Laden. All rubbish, insists his lawyer; as for his meetings with bin Laden, well, they were all merely "chance encounters."

"U.S. Decides to Release Detainee at Guantánamo," by William Glaberson for the New York Times, March 31:

The Justice Department announced Monday that the administration had decided to release a detainee at the prison at Guantánamo Bay, a Yemeni doctor who the Bush administration once claimed had taken part in an anthrax program of Al Qaeda.

The government had backed away from the anthrax accusations but had continued to hold the detainee, Dr. Ayman Saeed Abdullah Batarfi, asserting that he had worked for a charity that had terrorist ties and that he had met with Osama bin Laden.

The decision to release Dr. Batarfi came in the third case the Obama administration has reviewed under new procedures the president put in place to analyze the cases of military detainees in preparation for closing the Guantánamo prison in Cuba.[...]

Captured in Afghanistan in 2002, Dr. Batarfi has been detained for nearly seven years. The Justice Department did not say whether Dr. Batarfi, 38, who once practiced medicine in Afghanistan, would be freed, monitored or prosecuted if another country agreed to accept him.

His lawyer, William J. Murphy of Baltimore, said that under an agreement the court case could be reopened if his client objected to the conditions of his release. Mr. Murphy said that the meetings with Mr. bin Laden had been chance encounters and that the Justice Department decision had vindicated his client...