The New York Times: Juez impide regreso a su país de preso en Guantánamo

Judge Halts Transfer of Guantánamo Detainee

By WILLIAM GLABERSON
Published: October 10, 2007
In what appears to be the first ruling of its kind, a federal judge has barred the Bush administration from sending a Guantánamo detainee to his home country, where he claims he would face torture, according to an order unsealed yesterday in Washington.

The judge, Gladys Kessler of United States District Court for the District of Columbia, issued an injunction prohibiting the planned transfer of the detainee to Tunisia, which has been criticized by American and international officials for human rights abuses.

Saying that the detainee, Mohammed Rahman, claimed that such a transfer would amount to a death sentence, Judge Kessler said “it would be a profound miscarriage of justice” if she allowed the government to send him to Tunisia.

“At that point, the damage would have been done,” she wrote, adding that Mr. Rahman faced a 20-year sentence after a conviction at a terrorism trial the Tunisian government held while he was at Guantánamo.

Advocates for detainees and human rights groups said the ruling was an important development in the legal battle over Guantánamo. They said it could reshape what have been frequent legal conflicts over administration plans to send detainees to countries where they say they face torture or mistreatment.

“It is the only time a court has said the government does not have the unfettered right to do what they will with these people,” said one of Mr. Rahman’s lawyers, Joshua W. Denbeaux.
The ruling was the latest illustration of the hurdles the government faces in its effort to reduce the number of detainees at Guantánamo. State Department officials have said their efforts to repatriate many of the remaining 330 Guantánamo detainees have been hampered by resistance from some countries and by the government’s own concerns about human rights issues.

In other cases, lawyers for detainees have tried to block transfers based on human rights concerns but have failed. Detainees’ lawyers said yesterday that they knew of no other case in which a judge had barred a transfer. Some lawyers said yesterday that they expected an appeal and that it was far from clear how appeals judges would view the ruling. Erik Ablin, a Justice Department spokesman, said the department had argued that the judge lacked the power to issue the injunction. The government, he said, is “reviewing the district court order and considering its options.”

Cynthia Smith, a Defense Department spokeswoman, said officials worked to ensure that mistreatment of transferred detainees did not occur and investigated accusations of mistreatment. “Detainees are not repatriated to countries where it is more likely than not that they will be tortured,” Ms. Smith said.

Judge Kessler, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton, said she was acting because of the Supreme Court’s decision in June to review whether the Guantánamo detainees can bring habeas corpus suits, which are broad challenges to a detainee’s confinement. She said that the Supreme Court’s decision to hear the case “cast a deep shadow of uncertainty” over previous rulings restricting detainees’ rights.

If the Supreme Court were eventually to decide that the detainees had such rights, Judge Kessler said, it would be too late for Mr. Rahman if he had been returned to Tunisia. She said the injunction was “necessary to ensure his survival until the Supreme Court rules.” Mr. Rahman’s lawyers said he suffered from serious heart, kidney and other health problems.
Officials at the Tunisian Embassy were not available for comment, an employee in the ambassador’s office said.

Jennifer Daskal, the senior counterterrorism counsel at Human Rights Watch, said the ruling was notable in part because the administration sent two other detainees to Tunisia in June. One claimed abuse by Tunisian interrogators, including threats against his wife.

“The court,” Ms. Daskal said, “has rejected the administration position that it can unilaterally decide when, where and how it transfers detainees out of Guantánamo without any independent assessment.”

Last week, Judge Kessler issued another unusual order on detainee issues. In that case, she directed the government not to transfer a detainee held in American custody in Afghanistan without giving 30 days’ notice to his lawyer.

Yesterday, Mr. Denbeaux, Mr. Rahman’s lawyer, said Judge Kessler’s order would give his client the chance to fight what he said were vague assertions by the military that Mr. Rahman “associated with several terrorists.”

The Wall Street Journal: Magistrados del Supremo excécpticos en caso de fraude contable y responsabilidad de terceros

Roberts, Alito Appear Skeptical Of Plaintiffs' Arguments in Stoneridge

By JESS BRAVIN and KARA SCANNELLOctober 10, 2007; Page A4
WASHINGTON -- A long-shot claim by class-action lawyers to hold third parties liable for stock fraud looked even more dicey after Supreme Court arguments yesterday.
BEFORE THE COURT

Only two justices, David Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, showed much sympathy for the theory that private investors should be able to seek compensation from suppliers or others for helping a public company mislead the market.

Since the mid-1990s, Congress has been raising the bar for private shareholder lawsuits, and the court has followed Capitol Hill's direction, construing securities laws to limit class-action suits in favor of enforcement by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department.

In a 1994 case, the court ruled that "aiders and abettors" couldn't be held liable in private lawsuits for another party's stock fraud if they didn't directly mislead the public. Plaintiffs' lawyers yesterday argued that a middle category of defendants, neither principals nor aiders and abettors, played an important role in the scheme and therefore should be liable, even if they didn't make misleading public statements.

The stakes are high, because the case could determine whether investors can seek damages from third parties when the principal company -- for instance, Enron Corp. -- is bankrupt.
The case before the court, Stoneridge Investment Partners LLC v. Scientific-Atlanta Inc., involves a scheme to pump up the stock price of Charter Communications Inc., a St. Louis cable provider. The cable-television company allegedly overpaid suppliers for equipment, and the suppliers in turn used the overpayments to buy advertisements on Charter's cable system, thereby inflating the company's income. The suppliers made no public statements about their actions. The question is whether their silence leaves them as aiders and abettors -- and thus immune from private liability.

Stanley Grossman, representing investors, told the court that the suppliers, Scientific-Atlanta, now a unit of Cisco Systems Inc., and Motorola Inc., were "not passive bystanders," but rather "integral to the scheme." The distinction, he argued, was that the suppliers had facilitated the fraud through deception, unlike the 1994 case in which the defendant, a bank, hadn't been proven to commit a deceptive act.

The high court had few buyers, however. "I see absolutely no difference between your test and the elements of aiding and abetting," said Justice Samuel Alito.

"There are any number of kickbacks and mismanagements and petty frauds that go on in the business, and business people know that any publicly held company's shares are going to be affected by its profits," said Justice Anthony Kennedy, "so I see no limitation to your proposal for liability."

Justice Souter, while otherwise sympathetic to investor claims, asked if there was any "real world" difference between fraud committed to deceive the public and that for other purposes. Mr. Grossman offered this example: "'Do me a favor,' says the sales manager. 'I want to make my numbers for this period so I can take my wife on a trip to Hawaii that the company will give me.' So the company gives him a phony order, thinking that's the purpose of it...to help this guy along."

The defendants' lawyer, Stephen Shapiro, took a simple tack. In effect, if a company wasn't a principal in the fraud, it must be an aider and abettor, and thus free from private liability. Congress, he argued, had decided that SEC enforcement was the "better mousetrap" for protecting the public.

The Bush administration, overruling the SEC, agreed with the defendants. Deputy Solicitor General Thomas Hungar argued that the pivotal question for private lawsuits was whether the defendant had "spoken to the market" to mislead investors. He observed that the government had more latitude to pursue fraud cases, as long as the alleged misconduct was "in connection with" a securities transaction.

Justice Ginsburg suggested that such a rigid rule would leave many victims of stock fraud with no recovery.

Mr. Hungar insisted that there were sufficient federal remedies.

Write to Jess Bravin at jess.bravin@wsj.com and Kara Scannell at kara.scannell@wsj.com

Washington Post: Tribunal Supremo se niega a revisar "secuestros" de la CIA

Supreme Court Won't Review Alleged CIA Abduction

By Robert Barnes Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, October 10, 2007; Page A04
The Supreme Court declined yesterday to open U.S. courts to a German citizen who said he was abducted, imprisoned and tortured by the CIA because he was mistakenly identified as a terrorist.

The government had invoked its "state secrets" privilege and said there was no way for Khaled el-Masri to bring his lawsuit, or for the government to defend itself, without the disclosure of information that would endanger national security.

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A federal district judge and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit had dismissed Masri's suit, and the Supreme Court's denial of review of those actions came without comment or dissent.

Masri, who is of Lebanese descent, has said he was detained by Macedonian police while on vacation on Dec. 31, 2003, and handed over to the CIA a few weeks later under a secret program that transfers terrorism suspects to other countries for interrogation. He said he was taken to a secret CIA-run prison in Afghanistan and physically abused before he was flown back to the Balkans without explanation in May 2004 and dumped on a hillside in Albania.

German officials said they were later informed privately by their U.S. counterparts that Masri was detained in a case of mistaken identity, apparently confused with a terrorism suspect of a similar name. The case has drawn wide attention in Europe, although U.S. officials have not publicly admitted any guilt or responsibility in the case.

The American Civil Liberties Union had taken up Masri's case, and lawyer Ben Wizner said the Supreme Court's decision not to hear it "has provided the government with complete immunity for its shameful human rights and due-process violations."

ACLU lawyers that "the entire world already knows" the information the government said it is seeking to protect. But government lawyers said comments from officials are different from the specific details the administration would need to expose in order to litigate the case. Solicitor General Paul D. Clement called Masri's lawsuit an "extravagant request" that would overturn the precedent set by the court more than 50 years ago in denying a lawsuit brought during the Cold War about a downed warplane.

German authorities had tried to extradite 13 CIA agents they claimed were involved in Masri's abduction, but they dropped the effort last month.

Masri was committed to a psychiatric institution in May after he was arrested in the southern German city of Neu-Ulm on suspicion of arson. His attorney in Germany blamed his troubles on the CIA, saying the kidnapping and detention had left Masri a "psychological wreck."