El Gharani was arrested in Pakistan in 2001 at a mosque by local police, and turned over to United States forces in 2002. He was one of the first Guantanamo Bay detainees and also one of the youngest.
Katznelson said el Gharani now has spent a third of his life in military prison in Cuba. "He never should have been in prison in the first place," Katznelson said.
He was accused of receiving military training from al-Qaida in Afghanistan and serving as a courier for several high-ranking members. He also is accused of fighting against U.S. and coalition forces at the battle of Tora Bora in Afghanistan in late 2001 and of being a member of an al-Qaida cell based in London in 1998.
El Gharani denied all of the accusations.
The government's only evidence is statements made by two other Guantanamo Bay detainees whose credibility and reliability has been called into question by "government personnel," Leon said.
For example, El Gharani's lawyers pointed out that he would have been 11 in 1998, when he is accused of being part of an al-Qaida cell in England.
And "putting aside the obvious and unanswered questions as to how a Saudi minor from a very poor family could have even become a member of a London-based cell, the government simply advances no corroborating evidence for these statements it believes to be reliable from a fellow detainee, the basis of whose knowledge is _ at best _ unknown," Leon said.
