Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-09-05051/USCOURTS-caDC-09-05051-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 530
Nature of Suit: Prisoner Petitions - Habeas Corpus
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued October 2, 2009 Decided January 5, 2010 

No. 09-5051 

GHALEB NASSAR AL-BIHANI, 

APPELLANT

v. 

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, ET AL., 

APPELLEES

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the District of Columbia 

(No. 1:05-cv-01312-RJL) 

Shereen J. Charlick argued the cause for appellant. 

With her on the briefs were Reuben Camper Cahn, Steven F. 

Hubachek, and Ellis M. Johnston, III. 

Matthew M. Collette, Attorney, U.S. Department of 

Justice, argued the cause for appellees. With him on the brief 

were Ian Gershengorn, Deputy Assistant Attorney General, 

and Douglas N. Letter and Robert M. Loeb, Attorneys. R. 

Craig Lawrence, Assistant U.S. Attorney, entered an 

appearance. 

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Before: BROWN and KAVANAUGH, Circuit Judges, and 

WILLIAMS, Senior Circuit Judge. 

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge BROWN. 

Concurring opinion filed by Circuit Judge BROWN. 

Opinion concurring in part and concurring in the 

judgment filed by Senior Circuit Judge WILLIAMS. 

BROWN, Circuit Judge: Ghaleb Nassar Al-Bihani 

appeals the denial of his petition for a writ of habeas corpus 

and seeks reversal or remand. He claims his detention is 

unauthorized by statute and the procedures of his habeas 

proceeding were constitutionally infirm. We reject these 

claims and affirm the denial of his petition. 

I 

Al-Bihani, a Yemeni citizen, has been held at the U.S. 

naval base detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba since 

2002. He came to Guantanamo by a circuitous route. It 

began in Saudi Arabia in the first half of 2001 when a local 

sheikh issued a religious challenge to Al-Bihani. In response, 

Al-Bihani traveled through Pakistan to Afghanistan eager to 

defend the Taliban’s Islamic state against the Northern 

Alliance. Along the way, he stayed at what the government 

alleges were Al Qaeda–affiliated guesthouses; Al-Bihani only 

concedes they were affiliated with the Taliban. During this 

transit period, he may also have received instruction at two Al 

Qaeda terrorist training camps, though Al-Bihani disputes this. 

What he does not dispute is that he eventually accompanied 

and served a paramilitary group allied with the Taliban, known 

as the 55th Arab Brigade, which included Al Qaeda members 

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within its command structure and which fought on the front 

lines against the Northern Alliance. He worked as the 

brigade’s cook and carried a brigade-issued weapon, but never 

fired it in combat. Combat, however—in the form of 

bombing by the U.S.-led Coalition that invaded Afghanistan in 

response to the attacks of September 11, 2001—forced the 

55th to retreat from the front lines in October 2001. At the 

end of this protracted retreat, Al-Bihani and the rest of the 

brigade surrendered, under orders, to Northern Alliance forces, 

and they kept him in custody until his handover to U.S. 

Coalition forces in early 2002. The U.S. military sent 

Al-Bihani to Guantanamo for detention and interrogation. 

After the Supreme Court held in Rasul v. Bush, 542 

U.S. 466, 483–84 (2004), that the statutory habeas jurisdiction 

of federal courts extended to Guantanamo Bay, Al-Bihani filed 

a habeas petition with the U.S. District Court for the District of 

Columbia, challenging his detention under 28 U.S.C. § 

2241(a). The district court stayed the petition until the 

Supreme Court in Boumediene v. Bush, 128 S. Ct. 2229 (2008), 

held that the section of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 

(2006 MCA), Pub. L. No. 109-366, 120 Stat. 2600 (codified in 

part at 28 U.S.C. § 2241 & note), that withdrew jurisdiction 

from the courts to entertain habeas petitions filed by 

Guantanamo detainees was an unconstitutional suspension of 

the writ. 128 S. Ct. at 2274. Boumediene held that detainees 

were entitled to proceed with habeas challenges under 

procedures crafted to account for the special circumstances of 

wartime detention. Id. at 2276. 

Soon after the Boumediene decision, the district court, 

acting with admirable dispatch, revived Al-Bihani’s petition 

and convened counsel to discuss the process to be used. The 

district court finalized the procedure in a published case 

management order. See Al-Bihani v. Bush (CMO), 588 F. 

Supp.2d 19 (D.D.C. 2008) (case management order). The 

order established that the government had the burden of 

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proving the legality of Al-Bihani’s detention by a 

preponderance of the evidence; it obligated the government to 

explain the legal basis for Al-Bihani’s detention, to share all 

documents used in its factual return, and to turn over any 

exculpatory evidence found in preparation of its case. To 

Al-Bihani, the order afforded the opportunity to file a traverse 

and supplements to the traverse rebutting the government’s 

factual return, to introduce new evidence, and to move for 

discovery upon a showing of good cause and the absence of 

undue burden on the government. The order reserved the 

district court’s discretion, when appropriate, to adopt a 

rebuttable presumption in favor of the accuracy of the 

government’s evidence and to admit relevant and material 

hearsay, the credibility and weight of which the opposing party 

could challenge. The order also scheduled status conferences 

to clarify any discovery and evidentiary issues with the 

government’s factual return and to identify issues of law and 

fact prior to the habeas hearing where such issues would be 

contested. See id. at 20–21. 

After the parties filed their cases in accordance with the 

case management order and the district court held a day and a 

half of hearings, the district court denied Al-Bihani’s petition. 

Adopting a definition that allowed the government to detain 

anyone “who was part of or supporting Taliban or al Qaeda 

forces, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities 

against the United States or its coalition partners,”1

 the district 

court found Al-Bihani’s actions met the standard. See 

Al-Bihani v. Obama (Mem. Op.), 594 F. Supp.2d 35, 38, 40 

(D.D.C. 2009) (memorandum opinion). It cited as 

sufficiently credible the evidence—primarily drawn from 

 

1 This was the initial definition offered by the government as the 

controlling standard. In its filings before this court, the government 

modified the definition in its initial habeas return to replace the term 

“support” with “substantially supported.” See Brief for Appellees at 21–22. 

The district court adopted the initial definition. See Mem. Op. at 38.   

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Al-Bihani’s own admissions during interrogation—that 

Al-Bihani stayed at Al Qaeda–affiliated guesthouses and that 

he served in and retreated with the 55th Arab Brigade. See id.

at 39–40. The district court declined to rely on evidence 

drawn from admissions—later recanted by Al-Bihani—that he 

attended Al Qaeda training camps on his way to the front lines. 

See id. at 39. 

Al-Bihani appealed the district court’s denial to this 

court under 28 U.S.C. § 2253(a), alleging numerous 

substantive and procedural defects with the order. We review 

the district court’s findings of fact for clear error, DeBerry v. 

Portuondo, 403 F.3d 57, 66 (2d Cir. 2005), its habeas 

determination de novo, id., and any challenged evidentiary 

rulings for abuse of discretion, Al Odah v. United States, 559 

F.3d 539, 544 (D.C. Cir. 2009). 

II 

Al-Bihani’s many arguments present this court with 

two overarching questions regarding the detainees at the 

Guantanamo Bay naval base. The first concerns whom the 

President can lawfully detain pursuant to statutes passed by 

Congress. The second asks what procedure is due to 

detainees challenging their detention in habeas corpus 

proceedings. The Supreme Court has provided scant 

guidance on these questions, consciously leaving the contours 

of the substantive and procedural law of detention open for 

lower courts to shape in a common law fashion. See Hamdi v. 

Rumsfeld, 542 U.S. 507, 522 n.1 (2004) (plurality opinion of 

O’Connor, J.) (“The permissible bounds of the [enemy 

combatant] category will be defined by the lower courts as 

subsequent cases are presented to them.”); Boumediene, 128 S. 

Ct. at 2276 (“We make no attempt to anticipate all of the 

evidentiary and access-to-counsel issues . . . and the other 

remaining questions [that] are within the expertise and 

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competence of the District Court to address in the first 

instance.”). In this decision, we aim to narrow the legal 

uncertainty that clouds military detention. 

A 

 Al-Bihani challenges the statutory legitimacy of his 

detention by advancing a number of arguments based upon the 

international laws of war. He first argues that relying on 

“support,” or even “substantial support” of Al Qaeda or the 

Taliban as an independent basis for detention violates 

international law. As a result, such a standard should not be 

read into the ambiguous provisions of the Authorization for 

Use of Military Force (AUMF), Pub. L. No. 107-40, § 2(a), 

115 Stat. 224, 224 (2001) (reprinted at 50 U.S.C. § 1541 note), 

the Act empowering the President to respond to the attacks of 

September 11, 2001. Al-Bihani interprets international law to 

mean anyone not belonging to an official state military is a 

civilian, and civilians, he says, must commit a direct hostile 

act, such as firing a weapon in combat, before they can be 

lawfully detained. Because Al-Bihani did not commit such an 

act, he reasons his detention is unlawful. Next, he argues the 

members of the 55th Arab Brigade were not subject to attack or 

detention by U.S. Coalition forces under the laws of 

co-belligerency because the 55th, although allied with the 

Taliban against the Northern Alliance, did not have the 

required opportunity to declare its neutrality in the fight 

against the United States. His third argument is that the 

conflict in which he was detained, an international war 

between the United States and Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, 

officially ended when the Taliban lost control of the Afghan 

government. Thus, absent a determination of future 

dangerousness, he must be released. See Geneva Convention 

Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War (Third Geneva 

Convention) art. 118, Aug. 12, 1949, 6 U.S.T. 3316, 75 

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U.N.T.S. 135. Lastly, Al-Bihani posits a type of “clean 

hands” theory by which any authority the government has to 

detain him is undermined by its failure to accord him the 

prisoner-of-war status to which he believes he is entitled by 

international law. 

Before considering these arguments in detail, we note 

that all of them rely heavily on the premise that the war powers 

granted by the AUMF and other statutes are limited by the 

international laws of war. This premise is mistaken. There is 

no indication in the AUMF, the Detainee Treatment Act of 

2005, Pub. L. No. 109-148, div. A, tit. X, 119 Stat. 2739, 

2741–43, or the MCA of 2006 or 2009, that Congress intended 

the international laws of war to act as extra-textual limiting 

principles for the President’s war powers under the AUMF. 

The international laws of war as a whole have not been 

implemented domestically by Congress and are therefore not a 

source of authority for U.S. courts. See RESTATEMENT 

(THIRD) OF FOREIGN RELATIONS LAW OF THE UNITED STATES § 

111(3)–(4) (1987). Even assuming Congress had at some 

earlier point implemented the laws of war as domestic law 

through appropriate legislation, Congress had the power to 

authorize the President in the AUMF and other later statutes to 

exceed those bounds. See id. § 115(1)(a). Further 

weakening their relevance to this case, the international laws of 

war are not a fixed code. Their dictates and application to 

actual events are by nature contestable and fluid. See id. § 

102 cmts. b & c (stating there is “no precise formula” to 

identify a practice as custom and that “[i]t is often difficult to 

determine when [a custom’s] transformation into law has taken 

place”). Therefore, while the international laws of war are 

helpful to courts when identifying the general set of war 

powers to which the AUMF speaks, see Hamdi, 542 U.S. at 

520, their lack of controlling legal force and firm definition 

render their use both inapposite and inadvisable when courts 

seek to determine the limits of the President’s war powers. 

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Therefore, putting aside that we find Al-Bihani’s reading of 

international law to be unpersuasive, we have no occasion here 

to quibble over the intricate application of vague treaty 

provisions and amorphous customary principles. The sources 

we look to for resolution of Al-Bihani’s case are the sources 

courts always look to: the text of relevant statutes and 

controlling domestic caselaw. 

Under those sources, Al-Bihani is lawfully detained 

whether the definition of a detainable person is, as the district 

court articulated it, “an individual who was part of or 

supporting Taliban or al Qaeda forces, or associated forces that 

are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its 

coalition partners,” or the modified definition offered by the 

government that requires that an individual “substantially 

support” enemy forces. The statutes authorizing the use of 

force and detention not only grant the government the power to 

craft a workable legal standard to identify individuals it can 

detain, but also cabin the application of these definitions. The 

AUMF authorizes the President to “use all necessary and 

appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or 

persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or 

aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, 

or harbored such organizations or persons.” AUMF § 2(a). 

The Supreme Court in Hamdi ruled that “necessary and 

appropriate force” includes the power to detain combatants 

subject to such force. 542 U.S. at 519. Congress, in the 2006 

MCA, provided guidance on the class of persons subject to 

detention under the AUMF by defining “unlawful enemy 

combatants” who can be tried by military commission. 2006 

MCA sec. 3, § 948a(1). The 2006 MCA authorized the trial of 

an individual who “engaged in hostilities or who has 

purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the 

United States or its co-belligerents who is not a lawful enemy 

combatant (including a person who is part of the Taliban, al 

Qaeda, or associated forces).” Id. § 948a(1)(A)(i). In 2009, 

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Congress enacted a new version of the MCA with a new 

definition that authorized the trial of “unprivileged enemy 

belligerents,” a class of persons that includes those who 

“purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the 

United States or its coalition partners.” Military 

Commissions Act of 2009 (2009 MCA) sec. 1802, §§ 948a(7), 

948b(a), 948c, Pub. L. No. 111-84, tit. XVIII, 123 Stat. 2190, 

2575–76. The provisions of the 2006 and 2009 MCAs are 

illuminating in this case because the government’s detention 

authority logically covers a category of persons no narrower 

than is covered by its military commission authority. 

Detention authority in fact sweeps wider, also extending at 

least to traditional P.O.W.s, see id. § 948a(6), and arguably to 

other categories of persons. But for this case, it is enough to 

recognize that any person subject to a military commission 

trial is also subject to detention, and that category of persons 

includes those who are part of forces associated with Al Qaeda 

or the Taliban or those who purposefully and materially 

support such forces in hostilities against U.S. Coalition 

partners. 

In light of these provisions of the 2006 and 2009 

MCAs, the facts that were both found by the district court and 

offered by Al-Bihani in his traverse place Al-Bihani within the 

“part of” and “support” prongs of the relevant statutory 

definition. The district court found Al Qaeda members 

participated in the command structure of the 55th Arab 

Brigade, see Mem. Op. at 40, making the brigade an Al 

Qaeda–affiliated outfit, and it is unquestioned that the 55th 

fought alongside the Taliban while the Taliban was harboring 

Al Qaeda. Al-Bihani’s evidence confirmed these points, 

establishing that the 55th “supported the Taliban against the 

Northern Alliance,” a Coalition partner, and that the 55th was 

“aided, or even, at times, commanded, by al-Qaeda members.” 

Brief for Petitioner-Appellant at 33. Al-Bihani’s connections 

with the 55th therefore render him detainable. His 

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acknowledged actions—accompanying the brigade on the 

battlefield, carrying a brigade-issued weapon, cooking for the 

unit, and retreating and surrendering under brigade 

orders—strongly suggest, in the absence of an official 

membership card, that he was part of the 55th. Even 

assuming, as he argues, that he was a civilian “contractor” 

rendering services, see id. at 32, those services render 

Al-Bihani detainable under the “purposefully and materially 

supported” language of both versions of the MCA. That 

language constitutes a standard whose outer bounds are not 

readily identifiable. But wherever the outer bounds may lie, 

they clearly include traditional food operations essential to a 

fighting force and the carrying of arms. Viewed in full, the 

facts show Al-Bihani was part of and supported a group—prior 

to and after September 11—that was affiliated with Al Qaeda 

and Taliban forces and engaged in hostilities against a U.S. 

Coalition partner. Al-Bihani, therefore, falls squarely within 

the scope of the President’s statutory detention powers.2

The government can also draw statutory authority to 

detain Al-Bihani directly from the language of the AUMF. 

The AUMF authorizes force against those who “harbored . . . 

organizations or persons” the President determines “planned, 

authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks of 

September 11, 2001.” AUMF § 2(a). It is not in dispute that 

Al Qaeda is the organization responsible for September 11 or 

that it was harbored by the Taliban in Afghanistan. It is also 

not in dispute that the 55th Arab Brigade defended the Taliban 

against the Northern Alliance’s efforts to oust the regime from 

 

2

 In reaching this conclusion, we need not rely on the evidence suggesting 

that Al-Bihani attended Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan and visited 

Al Qaeda guesthouses. We do note, however, that evidence supporting the 

military’s reasonable belief of either of those two facts with respect to a 

non-citizen seized abroad during the ongoing war on terror would seem to 

overwhelmingly, if not definitively, justify the government’s detention of 

such a non-citizen. Cf. NAT’L COMM’N ON TERRORIST ATTACKS UPON 

THE UNITED STATES, THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT 66–67. 

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power. Drawing from these facts, it cannot be disputed that 

the actual and foreseeable result of the 55th’s defense of the 

Taliban was the maintenance of Al Qaeda’s safe haven in 

Afghanistan. This result places the 55th within the AUMF’s 

wide ambit as an organization that harbored Al Qaeda, making 

it subject to U.S. military force and its members and 

supporters—including Al-Bihani—eligible for detention. 

Al-Bihani disagrees with this conclusion, arguing that 

the 55th Arab Brigade was not lawfully subject to attack and 

detention. He points to the international laws of 

co-belligerency to demonstrate that the brigade should have 

been allowed the opportunity to remain neutral upon notice of 

a conflict between the United States and the Taliban. We 

reiterate that international law, including the customary rules 

of co-belligerency, do not limit the President’s detention power 

in this instance. But even if Al-Bihani’s argument were 

relevant to his detention and putting aside all the questions that 

applying such elaborate rules to this situation would raise, the 

laws of co-belligerency affording notice of war and the choice 

to remain neutral have only applied to nation states. See 2 L.

OPPENHEIM, INTERNATIONAL LAW: A TREATISE § 74 (1906). 

The 55th clearly was not a state, but rather an irregular fighting 

force present within the borders of Afghanistan at the sanction 

of the Taliban. Any attempt to apply the rules of 

co-belligerency to such a force would be folly, akin to this 

court ascribing powers of national sovereignty to a local 

chapter of the Freemasons. 

While we think the facts of this case show Al-Bihani 

was both part of and substantially supported enemy forces, we 

realize the picture may be less clear in other cases where facts 

may indicate only support, only membership, or neither. We 

have no occasion here to explore the outer bounds of what 

constitutes sufficient support or indicia of membership to meet 

the detention standard. We merely recognize that both prongs 

are valid criteria that are independently sufficient to satisfy the 

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standard. 

With the government’s detention authority established 

as an initial matter, we turn to the argument that Al-Bihani 

must now be released according to longstanding law of war 

principles because the conflict with the Taliban has allegedly 

ended. See Hamdi, 542 U.S. at 521. Al-Bihani offers the 

court a choice of numerous event dates—the day Afghans 

established a post-Taliban interim authority, the day the United 

States recognized that authority, the day Hamid Karzai was 

elected President—to mark the official end of the conflict. No 

matter which is chosen, each would dictate the release of 

Al-Bihani if we follow his reasoning. His argument fails on 

factual and practical grounds. First, it is not clear if Al-Bihani 

was captured in the conflict with the Taliban or with Al Qaeda; 

he does not argue that the conflict with Al Qaeda is over. 

Second, there are currently 34,800 U.S. troops and a total of 

71,030 Coalition troops in Afghanistan, see N. Atl. Treaty Org. 

[NATO], International Security Assistance Force and Afghan 

National Army Strength & Laydown, at 2, Oct. 22, 2009, 

available at http://www.nato.int/ISAF/docu/epub/pdf/isaf_ 

placemat.pdf, with tens of thousands more to be added soon. 

The principle Al-Bihani espouses—were it accurate—would 

make each successful campaign of a long war but a Pyrrhic 

prelude to defeat. The initial success of the United States and 

its Coalition partners in ousting the Taliban from the seat of 

government and establishing a young democracy would trigger 

an obligation to release Taliban fighters captured in earlier 

clashes. Thus, the victors would be commanded to constantly 

refresh the ranks of the fledgling democracy’s most likely 

saboteurs. 

In response to this commonsense observation, 

Al-Bihani contends the current hostilities are a different 

conflict, one against the Taliban reconstituted in a 

non-governmental form, and the government must prove that 

Al-Bihani would join this insurgency in order to continue to 

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hold him. But even the laws of war upon which he relies do 

not draw such fine distinctions. The Geneva Conventions 

require release and repatriation only at the “cessation of active 

hostilities.” Third Geneva Convention art. 118. That the 

Conventions use the term “active hostilities” instead of the 

terms “conflict” or “state of war” found elsewhere in the 

document is significant. It serves to distinguish the physical 

violence of war from the official beginning and end of a 

conflict, because fighting does not necessarily track formal 

timelines. See id. art. 2 (provisions apply “even if the state of 

war is not recognized”), art. 118 (discussing the possibility of 

the cessation of active hostilities even in the absence of an 

agreement to cease hostilities). The Conventions, in short, 

codify what common sense tells us must be true: release is only 

required when the fighting stops. 

Even so, we do not rest our resolution of this issue on 

international law or mere common sense. The determination 

of when hostilities have ceased is a political decision, and we 

defer to the Executive’s opinion on the matter, at least in the 

absence of an authoritative congressional declaration 

purporting to terminate the war. See Ludecke v. Watkins, 335 

U.S. 160, 168–70 & n.13 (1948) (“[T]ermination [of a state of 

war] is a political act.”). Al-Bihani urges the court to ignore 

Ludecke’s controlling precedent because the President in that 

case had pronounced that a war was ongoing, whereas in this 

case the President has made no such pronouncement. We 

reject Al-Bihani’s entreaty. A clear statement requirement is 

at odds with the wide deference the judiciary is obliged to give 

to the democratic branches with regard to questions concerning 

national security. In the absence of a determination by the 

political branches that hostilities in Afghanistan have ceased, 

Al-Bihani’s continued detention is justified. 

Al-Bihani also argues he should be released because 

the government’s failure to accord him P.O.W. status violated 

international law and undermined its otherwise lawful 

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authority to detain him. Even assuming Al-Bihani is entitled 

to P.O.W. status, we find no controlling authority for this 

“clean hands” theory in statute or in caselaw. The AUMF, 

DTA, and MCA of 2006 and 2009 do not hinge the 

government’s detention authority on proper identification of 

P.O.W.s or compliance with international law in general. In 

fact, the MCA of 2006, in a provision not altered by the MCA 

of 2009, explicitly precludes detainees from claiming the 

Geneva conventions—which include criteria to determine who 

is entitled to P.O.W. status—as a source of rights. See 2006 

MCA sec. 5(a). And the citation Al-Bihani gives to support 

his theory is not controlling. The section of Justice Souter’s 

separate opinion in Hamdi in which he discusses a clean hands 

theory was part of his dissent in that case. See 542 U.S. at 553 

(Souter, J., concurring in part, dissenting in part, and 

concurring in the judgment) (“For me, it suffices that the 

Government has failed to justify [detention] in the absence of . 

. . a showing that the detention conforms to the laws of war . . . 

. [T]his disposition does not command a majority of the 

Court.”). Moreover, Justice Souter’s opinion fails to identify 

any other controlling authority that establishes or discusses this 

theory in any way. This leaves no foundation for Al-Bihani’s 

clean hands argument, and it fails to persuade. 

B 

We now turn to Al-Bihani’s procedural challenge. He 

claims the habeas process afforded him by the district court fell 

short of the requirements of the Suspension Clause and that his 

case should be remanded for rehearing in line with new, more 

protective procedures. The Supreme Court in Boumediene

held detainees are entitled to the “fundamental procedural 

protections of habeas corpus.” 128 S. Ct. at 2277. The 

Boumediene Court refrained from identifying the full list of 

procedures that are fundamental, but it did say that a petitioner 

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is entitled to “a meaningful opportunity to demonstrate that he 

is being held pursuant to the erroneous application or 

interpretation of relevant law,” and that “the habeas court must 

have the power to order the conditional release” of the 

petitioner. Id. at 2266. Meaningful review in this context 

requires that a court have “some authority to assess the 

sufficiency of the Government’s evidence against the 

detainee” and to “admit and consider relevant exculpatory 

evidence” that may be added to the record by petitioners during 

review. Id. at 2270. 

Drawing upon Boumediene’s holding, Al-Bihani 

challenges numerous aspects of the habeas procedure devised 

by the district court. He claims the district court erred by: (1) 

adopting a preponderance of the evidence standard of proof; 

(2) shifting the burden to him to prove the unlawfulness of his 

detention; (3) neglecting to hold a separate evidentiary 

hearing; (4) admitting hearsay evidence; (5) presuming the 

accuracy of the government’s evidence; (6) requiring him to 

explain why his discovery request would not unduly burden 

the government; and (7) denying all but one of his discovery 

requests. In support of these claims, Al-Bihani cites statutes 

prescribing habeas procedure for review of federal and state 

court convictions and analogizes to a number of cases 

concerning review of detentions related to criminal 

prosecutions. Brief for Petitioner-Appellant at 48–49. By 

referencing these sources, Al-Bihani traces the district court’s 

supposed errors to its failure to accord him procedural parity 

with safeguards found in review of criminal proceedings. 

Al-Bihani’s argument clearly demonstrates error, but 

that error is his own. Habeas review for Guantanamo 

detainees need not match the procedures developed by 

Congress and the courts specifically for habeas challenges to 

criminal convictions. Boumediene’s holding explicitly stated 

that habeas procedures for detainees “need not resemble a 

criminal trial,” 128 S. Ct. at 2269. It instead invited 

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“innovation” of habeas procedure by lower courts, granting 

leeway for “[c]ertain accommodations [to] be made to reduce 

the burden habeas corpus proceedings will place on the 

military.” Id. at 2276. Boumediene’s holding therefore 

places Al-Bihani’s procedural argument on shaky ground. 

The Suspension Clause protects only the fundamental 

character of habeas proceedings, and any argument equating 

that fundamental character with all the accoutrements of 

habeas for domestic criminal defendants is highly suspect. 

In considering Al-Bihani’s argument, we recognize 

that the Great Writ is not a static institution and it did not begin 

its life looking like it does today. Rather, like a tree extending 

its branches, habeas has grown over a long history to develop 

various procedures applicable to various circumstances of 

detention. See id. (“[Past cases] stand for the proposition that 

the Suspension Clause does not resist innovation in the field of 

habeas corpus.”); Developments in the Law—Federal Habeas 

Corpus, 83 HARV. L. REV. 1038, 1269 (1970) (“It is then the 

nature of the writ that it grow and adapt to new conditions . . . 

through a combination of statutory and judicial innovation.”). 

For example, federal habeas review of criminal prosecutions at 

common law began as a cursory review of the legitimacy of a 

court’s jurisdiction. See United States v. Hayman, 342 U.S. 

205, 211 (1952). Congress expanded this review authority in 

1867 to reach a determination of actual facts, id., likely 

motivated by a desire to rein in what it viewed as recalcitrant 

law enforcement in the former Confederate states during 

Reconstruction. See Evan Tsen Lee, The Theories of Federal 

Habeas Corpus, 72 WASH. U. L.Q. 151, 182 (1994). As the 

twentieth century progressed, the protections and rules of 

criminal habeas expanded further to account for a growing 

number of recognized constitutional and statutory rights and to 

manage the sheer number of petitions coursing through the 

federal courts. See, e.g., 28 U.S.C. § 2246 (prescribing a right 

for petitioner to propound interrogatories or file answering 

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17

affidavits); 18 U.S.C. § 3771(b)(2) (guaranteeing certain rights 

to crime victims in habeas proceedings); 28 U.S.C. § 2255 

(providing alternate forum to streamline habeas petition 

review); Act of Sept. 28, 1976, Pub. L. No. 94-426, 90 Stat. 

1334 (adopting rules governing § 2254 and § 2255 

proceedings); Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 321–24 

(1979) (holding that federal court reviewing state court 

conviction must determine whether sufficient evidence existed 

to justify conviction beyond a reasonable doubt); Holiday v. 

Johnston, 313 U.S. 342, 352–54 (1941) (requiring review of 

habeas petitions be conducted by judges). Rules governing 

habeas petitions apart from the criminal sphere—such as those 

challenging post-removal-period detention in the immigration 

context, see, e.g., Zadvydas v. Davis, 533 U.S. 678, 701 (2001) 

(establishing scheme of presumptions and burden shifting), 

and those filed pursuant to the Force Act of 1833, ch. 57, § 7, 4 

Stat. 632, 634–35 (creating additional penalties for defying 

court’s jurisdiction to review such petitions)—developed 

separately. This brief account of habeas’ evolving nature 

serves to make clear that, in the shadow of Boumediene, courts 

are neither bound by the procedural limits created for other 

detention contexts nor obliged to use them as baselines from 

which any departures must be justified. Detention of aliens 

outside the sovereign territory of the United States during 

wartime is a different and peculiar circumstance, and the 

appropriate habeas procedures cannot be conceived of as mere 

extensions of an existing doctrine. Rather, those procedures 

are a whole new branch of the tree. 

Al-Bihani, however, argues his case does not rest on 

that branch. He points to one of the seven concurring 

opinions in Al-Marri v. Pucciarelli, 534 F.3d 213, 269 (4th Cir. 

2008) (Traxler, J., concurring in the judgment), to support his 

contention that the Supreme Court did not authorize less 

demanding procedures for a case like his. See Brief for 

Petitioner-Appellant at 50. Judge Traxler’s opinion reasoned 

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18

the Hamdi Court blessed lower procedural standards only upon 

a showing of undue hardship by the government, but such 

hardship was especially clear when a petitioner was seized on a 

foreign battlefield where the prospect of high evidentiary 

standards might interfere with military operations. See 

Al-Marri, 534 F.3d at 270–71. Because the petitioner in 

Al-Marri was seized by federal law enforcement in Illinois, 

Judge Traxler concluded that as a general rule he was “entitled 

to the normal due process protections available to all within 

this country,” absent a satisfactory showing by the 

government. Id. at 273. We do not express an opinion on 

whether or when different habeas procedures are appropriate 

for petitioners seized domestically pursuant to the AUMF; 

those questions are for another case. It is enough for us to 

point out that Judge Traxler’s opinion is of no help to 

Al-Bihani; he falls squarely in the category of petitioners that 

Judge Traxler and the Supreme Court in Hamdi deemed 

deserving of leaner procedures.3

 

Unlike either Hamdi or Al-Marri, Al-Bihani is a 

non-citizen who was seized in a foreign country. Requiring 

highly protective procedures at the tail end of the detention 

process for detainees like Al-Bihani would have systemic 

effects on the military’s entire approach to war. From the 

moment a shot is fired, to battlefield capture, up to a detainee’s 

day in court, military operations would be compromised as the 

government strove to satisfy evidentiary standards in 

anticipation of habeas litigation. Al-Bihani suggests no such 

danger is posed in his case because the evidence presented in 

the government’s return consisted mainly of records of 

interrogations that took place at Guantanamo and not of 

evidence procured from the battlefield. See Brief for 

 

3

 Both Hamdi and Al-Marri involved American citizens or legal residents; 

the procedures to which Americans are entitled are likely greater than the 

procedures to which non-citizens seized abroad during the war on terror are 

entitled. 

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Petitioner-Appellant at 49–50. Logically, however, had the 

district court imposed stringent standards of evidence in the 

first instance, the government may well have been obligated to 

go beyond Al-Bihani’s interrogation records and into the 

battlefield to present a case that met its burden. That the 

district court’s tailored procedure prevented such a scenario 

cannot possibly make the procedure constitutionally infirm. 

With Al-Bihani’s limited procedural entitlement 

established as a general matter, we turn to the specific 

procedural claims warranting serious consideration. The 

question of what standard of proof is due in a habeas 

proceeding like Al-Bihani’s has not been answered by the 

Supreme Court. See Boumediene, 128 S. Ct. at 2271 (“The 

extent of the showing required of the Government in these 

cases is a matter to be determined.”). Attempting to fill this 

void, Al-Bihani argues the prospect of indefinite detention in 

this unconventional war augurs for a reasonable doubt standard 

or, in the alternative, at least a clear and convincing standard. 

Brief for Petitioner-Appellant at 48. The government 

disagrees, arguing that Hamdi’s plurality opinion indirectly 

endorsed a preponderance standard when it suggested due 

process requirements may have been satisfied by a military 

tribunal, the regulations of which adopt a preponderance 

standard. Brief for Appellees at 55–56, citing U.S. Dep’ts of 

the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, and the Marine Corps, 

Army Regulation 190-8, Enemy Prisoners of War, Retained 

Personnel, Civilian Internees and Other Detainees § 1-6(e)(9) 

(Oct. 1, 1997), available at http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/ 

awcgate/law/ar190-8.pdf. 

We believe the government’s argument stands on more 

solid ground. In addition to the Hamdi plurality’s approving 

treatment of military tribunal procedure, it also described as 

constitutionally adequate—even for the detention of U.S. 

citizens—a “burden-shifting scheme” in which the 

government need only present “credible evidence that the 

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20

habeas petitioner meets the enemy-combatant criteria” before 

“the onus could shift to the petitioner to rebut that evidence 

with more persuasive evidence that he falls outside the 

criteria.” Hamdi, 542 U.S. at 533–34. That description 

mirrors a preponderance standard. We emphasize our opinion 

does not endeavor to identify what standard would represent 

the minimum required by the Constitution. 4 Our narrow 

charge is to determine whether a preponderance standard is 

unconstitutional. Absent more specific and relevant 

guidance, we find no indication that it is. 

As already discussed, traditional habeas review did not 

entail review of factual findings, particularly in the military 

context. See In re Yamashita, 327 U.S. 1, 8 (1946) (“If the 

military tribunals have lawful authority to hear, decide and 

condemn, their action is not subject to judicial review merely 

because they have made a wrong decision on disputed facts.”). 

Where factual review has been authorized, the burden in some 

domestic circumstances has been placed on the petitioner to 

prove his case under a clear and convincing standard. See 28 

U.S.C. § 2254(e)(1) (regulating federal review of state court 

factual findings). If it is constitutionally permissible to place 

that higher burden on a citizen petitioner in a routine case, it 

follows a priori that placing a lower burden on the government 

defending a wartime detention—where national security 

interests are at their zenith and the rights of the alien petitioner 

at their nadir—is also permissible. 

We find Al-Bihani’s hearsay challenges to be similarly 

unavailing. Al-Bihani claims that government reports of his 

interrogation answers—which made up the majority, if not all, 

 

4

 In particular, we need not address whether a some evidence, reasonable 

suspicion, or probable cause standard of proof could constitutionally suffice 

for preventative detention of non-citizens seized abroad who are suspected 

of being terrorist threats to the United States. See Zadvydas, 533 U.S. at 

696; cf. Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act, 2001, c. 24, §§ 21, 23 

(Eng.) (adopting a reasonable suspicion standard in Britain; later 

overturned as inconsistent with European Union law). 

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21

of the evidence on which the district court relied—and other 

informational documents were hearsay improperly admitted 

absent an examination of reliability and necessity. Brief for 

Petitioner-Appellant at 47, 50–52. He contends, in fact, that 

government reports of his interrogation answers were “double 

hearsay” because his answers were first translated by an 

interpreter and then written down by an interrogator. 

Petitioner-Appellant Rule 28(j) Letter, Sept. 28, 2009. We 

first note that Al-Bihani’s interrogation answers themselves 

were not hearsay; they were instead party-opponent 

admissions that would have been admitted in any U.S. court. 

See FED. R. EVID. 801(d)(2)(A). That they were translated 

does not affect their status. See United States v. Da Silva, 725 

F.2d 828, 831–32 (2d Cir. 1983) (holding that government 

employee translation of defendant’s statement was not 

hearsay). However, that the otherwise admissible answers 

were relayed through an interrogator’s account does introduce 

a level of technical hearsay because the interrogator is a third 

party unavailable for cross examination. Other information, 

such as a diagram of Al Qaeda’s leadership structure, was also 

hearsay. 

But that such evidence was hearsay does not 

automatically invalidate its admission—it only begins our 

inquiry. We observe Al-Bihani cannot make the traditional 

objection based on the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth 

Amendment. This is so because the Confrontation Clause 

applies only in criminal prosecutions, see U.S. CONST. amend. 

VI, and is not directly relevant to the habeas setting, cf. 28 

U.S.C. § 2246 (granting discretion to habeas judge to admit 

affidavits into evidence). The Confrontation Clause seeks to 

ensure the reliability of evidence, but it also seeks to eliminate 

the ephemeral perception of unfairness associated with the use 

of hearsay evidence. See Coy v. Iowa, 487 U.S. 1012, 

1017–19 (1988) (“The Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of 

face-to-face encounter . . . serves ends related both to 

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22

appearances and to reality . . . [and] contributes to . . . the 

perception as well as the reality of fairness.”). Al-Bihani, 

however, does not enjoy a right to the psychic value of 

excluding hearsay and whatever right he has is not an 

independent procedural entitlement. Rather, it operates only 

to the extent that it provides the baseline level of evidentiary 

reliability necessary for the “meaningful” habeas proceeding 

Boumediene requires under the Suspension Clause. See 128 

S. Ct. at 2266. 

Therefore, the question a habeas court must ask when 

presented with hearsay is not whether it is admissible—it is 

always admissible—but what probative weight to ascribe to 

whatever indicia of reliability it exhibits. This approach is 

evident in the relevant caselaw. Boumediene did not say 

exactly how a habeas court should treat hearsay, but it broadly 

required that a court be able to “assess the sufficiency of the 

Government’s evidence.” Id. at 2270. In Hamdi, the 

Supreme Court said hearsay “may need to be accepted as the 

most reliable available evidence” as long as the petitioner is 

given the opportunity to rebut that evidence. See 542 U.S. at 

533–34. Hamdi pointed to a declaration from a government 

official describing his expertise regarding the facts of the case 

as an example of reliable hearsay. Id. at 538. And a panel of 

this court in the related context of DTA review did not reject 

hearsay evidence as inadmissible, but rather considered it and 

deemed it insufficient to support detention because the panel 

could not “assess the reliability” of its “bare assertions” in the 

absence of contextual information. Parhat v. Gates, 532 F.3d 

834, 847 (D.C. Cir. 2008). 

A procedure that seeks to determine hearsay’s 

reliability instead of its mere admissibility comports not only 

with the requirements of this novel circumstance, but also with 

the reality that district judges are experienced and 

sophisticated fact finders. Their eyes need not be protected 

from unreliable information in the manner the Federal Rules of 

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23

Evidence aim to shield the eyes of impressionable juries. See 

FED. R. EVID. 103(c) (requiring courts to “prevent inadmissible 

evidence from being suggested to the jury by any means”); 

JAMES BRADLEY THAYER, A PRELIMINARY TREATISE ON 

EVIDENCE AT THE COMMON LAW 266 (1898) (describing the 

law of evidence as “the child of the jury system” that excludes 

probative evidence because of possible adverse effects on a lay 

jury). Where the touchstone of a proceeding is 

“meaningfulness,” empowering a district court to review and 

assess all evidence from both sides is a logical process. It is 

one that bolsters the traditional power of the habeas court to 

“cut[] through all forms and go[] to the very tissue of the 

structure” of a proceeding and “look facts in the face.” Frank 

v. Mangum, 237 U.S. 309, 346, 349 (1915) (Holmes, J., 

dissenting). The habeas judge is not asked, as he would be in 

a trial, to administrate a complicated clash of adversarial 

viewpoints to synthesize a process-dependent form of 

Hegelian legal truth. See Blakely v. Washington, 542 U.S. 

296, 313 (2004) (“[T]he Framers' paradigm for criminal justice 

[was] not the civil-law ideal of administrative perfection, but 

the common-law ideal of limited state power accomplished by 

strict division of authority between judge and jury.”). Rather, 

in a detainee case, the judge acts as a neutral decisionmaker 

charged with seizing the actual truth of a simple, binary 

question: is detention lawful? This is why the one constant 

in the history of habeas has never been a certain set of 

procedures, but rather the independent power of a judge to 

assess the actions of the Executive. This primacy of 

independence over process is at the center of the Boumediene

opinion, which eschews prescribing a detailed procedural 

regime in favor of issuing a spare but momentous guarantee 

that a “judicial officer must have adequate authority to make a 

determination in light of the relevant law and facts.” 

Boumediene, 128 S. Ct. at 2271; cf. id. at 2270 (“Even when 

the procedures authorizing detention are structurally sound, the 

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Suspension Clause remains applicable and the writ relevant.”). 

In Al-Bihani’s case, the district court clearly reserved 

that authority in its process and assessed the hearsay 

evidence’s reliability as required by the Supreme Court. First, 

the district court retained the authority to assess the weight of 

the evidence. See CMO at 21 (“The Government bears the 

ultimate burden of persuasion . . . [and t]he Court will 

determine, as to any evidence introduced by the Government, 

whether a presumption of accuracy and/or authenticity should 

be accorded.”); Mem. Op. at 39 (judging admissions presented 

by government to be “credible and consistent”). Second, the 

district court had ample contextual information about evidence 

in the government’s factual return to determine what weight to 

give various pieces of evidence. See Government’s Classified 

Factual Return (Nov. 21, 2008). Third, the district court 

afforded Al-Bihani the opportunity in a traverse to rebut the 

evidence and to attack its credibility. See CMO at 21. 

Further, Al-Bihani did not contest the truth of the majority of 

his admissions upon which the district court relied, enhancing 

the reliability of those reports. We therefore find that the 

district court did not improperly admit hearsay evidence. 

The rest of Al-Bihani’s procedural claims can be 

disposed of without extended discussion. His claim that the 

burden of proof was placed on him is based on a strained 

reading of the hearing transcript that twists and magnifies 

questions asked by the judge. This claim has no merit and we 

need not consider it further. Likewise, Al-Bihani’s claim that 

an evidentiary hearing was denied to him in violation of his 

right to a hearing is groundless. First, while courts reviewing 

state or federal court decisions have the discretion to grant fact 

hearings upon a proper showing by a petitioner, see 28 U.S.C. 

§ 2254(e)(2); Newfield v. United States, 565 F.2d 203, 207 (2d 

Cir. 1977) (explaining that courts retain discretion under 28 

U.S.C. § 2255 to grant fact hearings), Al-Bihani cites no 

authority that a petitioner in his position is entitled to such a 

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25

hearing as of right. Second, it is clear from the CMO and the 

transcript of the full habeas hearing that the district court did 

hear the facts of Al-Bihani’s case and provided ample 

opportunity in conference and in a hearing for the parties to air 

concerns over evidence. See CMO at 20–21; Classified 

Hearing Transcript, P.M. Session (Jan. 15, 2009). To the 

extent that Al-Bihani possesses any right to a hearing to 

develop facts or argue evidentiary issues, it was satisfied by the 

district court’s procedure. 

Finally, regarding Al-Bihani’s challenge to the 

discovery procedures adopted by the district court and to the 

denial of most of his discovery requests, we are inclined to find 

the procedures were permissible and the court’s denial was not 

an abuse of discretion. However, we need not reach these 

issues. Even assuming error, the errors were harmless 

because discovery would not have changed the outcome of the 

case. None of the discovery requests that were denied would 

have had any impact on the factual basis on which the district 

court found Al-Bihani to be properly detained. All of the 

discovery requests pertained to the disputed facts surrounding 

whether Al-Bihani attended Al Qaeda training camps. The 

district court assiduously avoided those facts in its decision. 

See Mem. Op. at 39. 

III 

Al-Bihani’s detention is authorized by statute and there 

was no constitutional defect in the district court’s habeas 

procedure that would have affected the outcome of the 

proceeding. For these reasons, the order of the district court 

denying Al-Bihani’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus is 

Affirmed.

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BROWN, Circuit Judge, concurring: The Supreme 

Court in Boumediene and Hamdi charged this court and others 

with the unprecedented task of developing rules to review the 

propriety of military actions during a time of war, relying on 

common law tools. We are fortunate this case does not 

require us to demarcate the law’s full substantive and 

procedural dimensions. But as other more difficult cases 

arise, it is important to ask whether a court-driven process is 

best suited to protecting both the rights of petitioners and the 

safety of our nation. The common law process depends on 

incrementalism and eventual correction, and it is most 

effective where there are a significant number of cases brought 

before a large set of courts, which in turn enjoy the luxury of 

time to work the doctrine supple. None of those factors exist 

in the Guantanamo context. The number of Guantanamo 

detainees is limited and the circumstances of their confinement 

are unique. The petitions they file, as the Boumediene Court 

counseled, are funneled through one federal district court and 

one appellate court. See Boumediene, 128 S. Ct. at 2276. 

And, in the midst of an ongoing war, time to entertain a process 

of literal trial and error is not a luxury we have. 

While the common law process presents these 

difficulties, it is important to note that the Supreme Court has 

not foreclosed Congress from establishing new habeas 

standards in line with its Boumediene opinion. Having been 

repeatedly rebuffed, see id. at 2240 (holding that the DTA’s 

procedures were an inadequate substitute for habeas and that 

the MCA therefore operated as an unconstitutional suspension 

of the writ); Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, 548 U.S. 557, 576–77 

(2006) (holding that the DTA’s withdrawal of federal habeas 

jurisdiction did not apply to petitions pending at the time of the 

DTA’s enactment), Congress may understandably be reluctant 

to return to this arena to craft appropriate habeas standards as it 

has done for other habeas contexts in the past. But the 

circumstances that frustrate the judicial process are the same 

USCA Case #09-5051 Document #1223587 Filed: 01/05/2010 Page 26 of 34
2

ones that make this situation particularly ripe for Congress to 

intervene pursuant to its policy expertise, democratic 

legitimacy, and oath to uphold and defend the Constitution. 

These cases present hard questions and hard choices, ones best 

faced directly. Judicial review, however, is just that: re-view, 

an indirect and necessarily backward looking process. And 

looking backward may not be enough in this new war. The 

saying that generals always fight the last war is familiar, but 

familiarity does not dull the maxim’s sober warning. In 

identifying the shape of the law in response to the challenge of 

the current war, it is incumbent on the President, Congress, and 

the courts to realize that the saying’s principle applies to us as 

well. Both the rule of law and the nation’s safety will benefit 

from an honest assessment of the new challenges we face, one 

that will produce an appropriately calibrated response. 

Absent such action, much of what our Constitution 

requires for this context remains unsettled. In this case, I 

remain mindful that the conflict in which Al-Bihani was 

captured was only one phase of hostilities between the United 

States and Islamic extremists. The legal issues presented by 

our nation’s fight with this enemy have been numerous, 

difficult, and to a large extent novel. What drives these issues 

is the unconventional nature of our enemy: they are neither 

soldiers nor mere criminals, claim no national affiliation, and 

adopt long-term strategies and asymmetric tactics that exploit 

the rules of open societies without respect or reciprocity. 

War is a challenge to law, and the law must adjust. It 

must recognize that the old wineskins of international law, 

domestic criminal procedure, or other prior frameworks are 

ill-suited to the bitter wine of this new warfare. We can no 

longer afford diffidence. This war has placed us not just at, 

but already past the leading edge of a new and frightening 

paradigm, one that demands new rules be written. Falling 

back on the comfort of prior practices supplies only illusory 

comfort. 

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WILLIAMS, Senior Circuit Judge, concurring in part and 

concurring in the judgment: I agree with the majority’s 

decision to affirm the district court’s denial of Al Bihani’s 

petition for a writ of habeas corpus. I take a slightly different 

view of the central substantive issue in this case, and a 

significantly different view as to the necessity of reaching any 

of Al Bihani’s procedural arguments. For purposes of both 

my analysis and the majority’s, the petitioner has conceded 

facts that render his detention lawful—thereby obviating any 

need to discuss the constitutionality of the district court’s 

factfinding process. 

* * *

The petitioner’s detention is legally permissible by virtue 

of facts that he himself has conceded.

He argues that he cannot be detained on the basis of his 

relationship with the 55th Brigade, for two reasons. First, Al 

Bihani says, the Authorization for the Use of Military Force, 

Pub. L. 107-40 § 2(a) (2001) (“AUMF”)—properly 

interpreted in light of applicable law-of-war principles—

cannot be read to have authorized the U.S. government to 

conduct hostilities against the 55th Brigade. Second, even if 

the 55th Brigade were the kind of organization targeted by the 

AUMF, he himself was not a part of the 55th Brigade, nor was 

his involvement with the unit enough to subject him to the 

lawful exercise of U.S. force. Neither argument is persuasive.

The AUMF authorizes the President 

to use all necessary and appropriate force against those 

nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, 

authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that 

occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such 

organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future 

USCA Case #09-5051 Document #1223587 Filed: 01/05/2010 Page 28 of 34
2

acts of international terrorism against the United States 

by such nations, organizations or persons.

Pub. L. 107-40 § 2(a). Al Bihani acknowledges that both 

before and after 9/11, the 55th Brigade fought alongside the 

Taliban in Afghanistan in its fight against the Northern 

Alliance, Petitioner-Appellant’s Unclassified Br. at 3-4, 33, 

and he cannot reasonably dispute that the Taliban “harbored” 

al Qaeda, which committed the 9/11 attacks, see Boumediene 

v. Bush, 128 S.Ct. 2229, 2241 (2008). 

Noting, however, that under Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 542 U.S. 

507 (2004), the laws of war have—even in the government’s 

view—a role to play in the interpretation of the AUMF’s grant 

of authority, Appellees’ Unclassified Br. at 23 (citing 542 

U.S. at 521), Al Bihani says that under recognized principles 

of “co-belligerency” and the law of neutrality the United 

States would not have been permitted in the weeks after 9/11 

to take hostile action against the 55th Brigade—which had 

conducted hostilities against a soon-to-be U.S. ally, the 

Northern Alliance, but not against the United States itself. In 

support of this position he cites a number of authorities 

suggesting that pursuant to the laws of war, a state’s merely 

being an ally of a party to a conflict does not, without more, 

allow that state to take aggressive action against its ally’s 

adverse parties. Unclassified Reply Br. at 12 (citing inter alia 

Parry and Grant Encyclopaedic Dictionary of International 

Law 84 (John P. Grant & J. Craig Barker eds., 2d ed. 2004)).

But the AUMF clearly authorized the President to attack 

the 55th Brigade. By its terms, the AUMF allows force 

against “organizations” that “harbored” those who were 

responsible for the 9/11 attacks. The 55th Brigade fought to 

preserve the Taliban regime in Afghanistan even as the 

Taliban was harboring al Qaeda in Afghanistan. This makes 

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3

the 55th Brigade, itself, an organization that “harbored” al 

Qaeda within the meaning of the AUMF. 

No contrary interpretation of the AUMF is plausible. If 

the AUMF did not authorize U.S. force against an 

organization fighting in Afghanistan to stabilize and protect 

the Taliban’s power after 9/11, then the American military 

campaign that started on October 7, 2001, was illegal—under 

domestic law—to the extent that it targeted not just Taliban 

forces fighting the Northern Alliance, but also 55th Brigade 

forces fighting with the Taliban against the Northern Alliance. 

Whatever the appropriate role of the laws of war in 

determining what powers the President derived from the 

AUMF, it cannot be to render unlawful the President’s use of 

force in Afghanistan in the fall of 2001—which the Supreme 

Court has repeatedly acknowledged was permitted under the 

AUMF. See Boumediene, 128 S.Ct. at 2240-41. Under the 

best reading of the AUMF, then, Congress authorized that 

military campaign, aimed at removing the Taliban from the 

seat of government and minimizing its ongoing influence in 

Afghanistan, including the attacks on ancillary forces aiding 

the Taliban.

Because the 55th Brigade was properly the target of U.S. 

force in Afghanistan pursuant to the AUMF, it follows that 

members of the 55th Brigade taken into custody on the 

battlefield in Afghanistan in the fall of 2001 may be detained 

“for the duration of the particular conflict in which they were 

captured.” See id. at 2241. In addition to detention based on 

a person’s having been “part of” an AUMF-targeted 

organization, the government asserts that Congress authorized 

force against, and therefore detention of, someone who 

provided “substantial support” to such a group. Appellees’ 

Unclassified Br. at 16. 

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4

Al Bihani argues, by contrast, that he was not a part of

the 55th Brigade at all, but merely “a cook’s assistant . . . near 

the front lines.” Petitioner-Appellant’s Unclassified Br. at 31. 

To be sure, the people he was cooking for were the members 

of the 55th Brigade, as his counsel acknowledged at oral 

argument. Oral Argument Tr. at 4 (Oct. 2, 2009) (referencing 

“the brigade for which he cooked”). Al Bihani maintains, 

though, that notwithstanding his cooking, and his having been 

provided a weapon, Petitioner-Appellant’s Unclassified Br. at 

4, he was effectively a “civilian contractor” rather than a bona 

fide member of the brigade, id. at 32. In support of this 

contention, he cites principally a document produced by the 

International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), entitled 

Interpretive Guidance on the Notion of Direct Participation in 

Hostilities Under International Humanitarian Law. That 

work, in his view, says that “individuals who accompany . . . 

armed forces and provide food” are properly viewed as 

civilians. Unclassified Reply Br. at 17. As a result, such 

food-providers can’t permissibly be detained unless they 

themselves take hostile acts directly against their would-be 

detainers. Id.

The question whether a person was a “part of” an 

informal, non-state military organization like the 55th Brigade 

overlaps significantly with the question whether that person 

“supported” or indeed “substantially” or “materially” 

supported the organization. Both these terms are highly 

elastic, ranging from core membership and support to vague 

affiliation and cheerleading. But whatever their range, it 

seems hard to imagine how someone could be shown to be a 

member of such a group (for purposes of detention under the 

AUMF) without evidence that he also significantly supported 

it (for those purposes). 

Regardless, however, of whether the operative inquiry 

probes membership in the unit, or support of the unit, or 

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substantial or material support of the unit, or some 

combination of these considerations, Al Bihani’s involvement 

with the 55th Brigade—cooking for and carrying arms 

provided by the 55th Brigade, and doing so near the front 

lines of hostilities between the Taliban and the Northern 

Alliance—was ample to make him properly subject to U.S. 

force directed at the 55th Brigade pursuant to the AUMF. 

Purely on the basis of these activities, he was sufficiently 

enmeshed with the brigade to fall into the category of persons 

whom the AUMF allowed the U.S. military to target.1 The 

alternative conclusion—which would have it that the 

President was authorized to use force against the fighting 

members of the 55th Brigade on the front lines in northern 

Afghanistan, but not against the armed people who enabled 

them to fight—is senseless. Because Al Bihani was 

effectively part of the 55th Brigade, and a sufficient supporter 

of same, his detention for the duration of the hostilities in 

which he was captured is lawful. See Boumediene, 128 S.Ct. 

 

1

 While Al Bihani’s concessions put him squarely among 

persons who may be lawfully detained, he has not in fact 

conceded that the 55th Brigade was commanded by Al Qaeda 

personnel. See Maj. Op. at 9 (quoting Al Bihani’s brief for 

the proposition that the 55th was “‘aided, or even, at times, 

commanded, by al-Qaeda members.’”). The phrase is in fact 

quite clearly part of a contingent argument (“Even if I lose on 

proposition A, I win on proposition B.”): “Rather, the 55th, 

whether it was aided, or even, at times, commanded, by alQaeda members, was focused in its mission to fight frontal 

military operations against the Northern Alliance.” PetitionerAppellant’s Unclassified Br. at 33. 

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at 2241 (citing Hamdi, opinions of O’Connor, J., and Thomas, 

J.).

The ICRC document does not alter this analysis. The 

work itself explicitly disclaims that it should be read to have 

the force of law. “[W]hile reflecting the ICRC’s views,” the 

authors write, “the Interpretive Guidance is not and cannot be 

a text of a legally binding nature.” Interpretive Guidance 6. 

Even to the extent that Al Bihani’s reading of the Guidance is 

correct, then, the best he can do is suggest that we should 

follow it on the basis of its persuasive force. As against the 

binding language of the AUMF and its necessary implications, 

however, that force is insubstantial. 

Within the portion of the opinion addressing the 

petitioner’s substantive argument that his activities in 

Afghanistan do not put him in the class of people whom the 

President may detain pursuant to the AUMF, the majority 

unnecessarily addresses a number of other points. Most 

notable is the paragraph that begins “Before considering these 

arguments in detail,” and that reaches the conclusion that “the 

premise that the war powers granted by the AUMF and other 

statutes are limited by the international laws of war . . . is 

mistaken.” See Maj. Op. at 6-7. The paragraph appears hard 

to square with the approach that the Supreme Court took in 

Hamdi. See 542 U.S. at 521 (O’Connor, J.) (plurality 

opinion) (“[W]e understand Congress’ grant of authority for 

the use of ‘necessary and appropriate force’ to include the 

authority to detain for the duration of the relevant conflict, and 

our understanding is based on longstanding law-of-war 

principles.”); id. at 548-49 (Souter, J., opinion concurring in 

part and dissenting in part) (advocating a more substantial role 

for the laws of war in interpretations of the President’s 

authority under the AUMF). In any event, there is no need for 

the court’s pronouncements, divorced from application to any 

particular argument. Curiously, the majority’s dictum goes 

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well beyond what even the government has argued in this 

case. See Appellees’ Unclassified Br. at 23 (“The authority 

conferred by the AUMF is informed by the laws of war.”).

* * *

Because the petitioner’s detention is lawful by virtue of 

facts that he has conceded—a conclusion that the majority 

seems not to dispute—the majority’s analysis of the 

constitutionality of the procedures the district court used (i.e., 

Maj. Op., Section II B) is unnecessary. Nothing in this case 

turns on the questions whether “preponderance of the 

evidence” is a constitutionally permissible standard of proof 

in Guantanamo detainees’ habeas proceedings, whether the 

district court’s approach to the admission of hearsay evidence 

is consistent with the minimum requirements of the 

Suspension Clause as the Supreme Court construed it in 

Boumediene, 128 S.Ct. 2229, or whether petitioners in Al 

Bihani’s circumstance do or don’t enjoy only a “limited 

procedural entitlement . . . as a general matter,” Maj. Op. at 

19. These matters are analytically irrelevant to the outcome of 

this appeal, since the facts that Al Bihani says are correct 

readily yield a ruling that his detention is legally permissible.

* * *

I join the majority’s opinion to the extent it is consistent 

with the preceding arguments and observations.

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