At this point, asking the Department of Justice not to appeal looks to be a lost cause – the oral argument was heard today, and the case has now been submitted for decision to a D.C. Circuit Appeals Court panel of three: Chief Judge David Sentelle, David Tatel, and the notorious Janice Rogers Brown (her vote to overturn Judge James Robertson’s March decision in favor of Slahi, and thus to further detain Slahi, is a given). My title on a Seminal diary in April about Judge Robertson’s thoughtful, humane decision:“District Judge Robertson’s Slahi Guantanamo habeas ruling exposes the presidential power-aggrandizing agenda behind the Al Bihani habeas decision of D.C. Circuit Judges Brown & Kavanaugh.” [Al Bihani was a D.C. Circuit panel decision in January in the case of another detainee, in which Brown and Kavanaugh claimed the law of war (the Geneva Conventions, etc.) doesn’t constrain a U.S. President’s actions in war. Though not overturned on further appeal, the en banc D.C. Circuit recently did effectively, though informally, ‘disown’ that part of the decision, but Brown and Kavanaugh didn’t – they just reiterated their specious opinions all over again.]

I thank the AP and The Washington Post for sending reporters to cover today’s oral argument. Some important further detail to augment the AP’s description, in its two recent articles by Nedra Pickler, of what was done to Slahi – a commendable description of the abuse he suffered, especially compared to the Post article’s undetailed line or two – is provided by Andy Worthington:

After [Slahi] was seized, he was transferred by the US to Jordan — one of at least 15 prisoners rendered to Jordan by the CIA between 2001 and 2004 — where he was held for eight months, and where, he said, what happened to him was “beyond description” and he was tortured “maybe twice a week, a couple times, sometimes more.” He was then transferred to the US prison at Bagram in Afghanistan for two weeks, and arrived in Guantánamo on August 4, 2002.

[…]

This [Guanatanamo] program, which was implemented in May 2003, and augmented with further “enhanced interrogation techniques” authorized by defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, culminated, in August 2003, in an incident when Slahi was taken out on a boat, wearing isolation goggles, while agents whispered, within earshot, that he was “about to be executed and made to disappear.” As Der Spiegel explained in an article in 2008, “He was so terrified that he urinated in his pants.”

After this, as Slahi himself described it (in a letter to his lawyers dated November 9, 2006), “I yes-sed every accusation my interrogators made. I even wrote the infamous confession about me was planning to hit the CN Tower in Toronto based on SSG [redacted] advise. I just wanted to get the monkeys off my back.”

However, his treatment was so severe that, in May 2004, Lt. Col. Stuart Couch of the Marine Corps, who had been assigned his case as a prosecutor the year before, resigned rather than pursuing the case. In a meeting with the chief prosecutor, Army Col. Bob Swann, Lt. Col. Couch “told Col. Swann that in addition to legal reasons, he was ‘morally opposed’ to the interrogation techniques ‘and for that reason alone refused to participate in [the Slahi] prosecution in any manner.’”

But back to your question, bluewombat – publicity is what gets the attention of the powerful, who are otherwise sheltered from most accountability by D.C.’s corrupt culture. So if you want to write a letter, I’d suggest writing it to the newspapers. Perhaps you’d have a prayer of getting into the Washington Post (whose editors violently disagree with your/our point of view, we know), if you approvingly mention today’s coverage.

Don’t plead, though – condemn. And not just the DOJ, but the D.C. Circuit appellate court – whose members, after all the abuse detainees like Slahi have been through, still have the unmitigated gall to toy with their fate, in leisurely fashion, as though time is on Slahi’s side:

On Friday, the appeals judges suggested that other court decisions since April required them to consider al-Qaeda membership and compliance with its “command structure” in a broader, “functional, not formalistic” sense than when Robertson ruled.

“Wouldn’t it make sense” to return Slahi’s case, asked Judge David Tatel, “so we have as consistent decision-making as possible?”

Slahi’s lawyer, Theresa M. Duncan, acknowledged it might. But after the hearing Duncan said that the government is trying to justify the indefinite detention of her client by relying on “statements made under the coercive influence of some of the worst torture we know about at Guantanamo.”

More than eight years after her client was detained and five years since he sued for his release, Duncan told the judges she hoped the court’s move Friday would not require “starting from scratch,” since Robertson has since retired.

– By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 17, 2010; 8:48 PM

Or, as Nedra Pickler put it:

Still, Tatel suggested that it might be appropriate to send Salahi’s case back to the lower court considering subsequent decisions in other Guantanamo Bay cases that have set new legal standards since Robertson ruled in March. Robertson has since retired so that would mean reassigning the case to a new judge.

The D.C. Circuit’s own mishmash of (unjust and politicized) panel decisions, which, in practice, have been reversing (so far without inteference from the Supreme Court) the habeas remedy that the Supreme Court’s 2008 Boumediene decision gave these prisoners, aren’t neatly aligned enough to suit Judge Tatel’s taste – so Slahi, the human being, not the name on a case, should pay the price in more years of waiting out appeals by his pro bono lawyers(s), while locked up in Guantanamo Bay. [Just imagine what Tatel or his colleagues will be saying two-three years hence, when Slahi’s appeal finally comes around again – and yet more “inconsistent” panel decisions have intervened in the months between the next district court decision and when the appellate court decides to get around to hearing the case the second time…] That Tatel and the others can so cold-bloodedly and casually pass that buck, ignoring the human conseqences involved and the opportunity and responsibility to render speedy justice on these long-delayed habeas petitions, speaks volumes about their character.

Appellate judges don’t get mentioned much by citizens in connection with coddling torturers, in the pages of the nation’s newspapers. It might just do them good.