Government Opposition to Cert in Uthman

The government has, unsurprisingly, filed a brief in opposition to Uthman Abdul Rahim Mohammed Uthman's cert petition. Uthman, a Guantanamo habeas petitioner, had asked the Supreme Court to review this decision by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals affirming the legality of his detention. The government presents the question in the case as follows:

 Whether the court of appeals correctly held that petitioner is subject to military detention under the Authorization for Use of Military Force . . . as part of al-Qaida, where the evidence established that (1) petitioner attended a school in Yemen that was a recruiting ground for al-Qaida, (2) he traveled to Afghanistan along a route used by al-Qaida recruits, (3) he was seen at an al-Qaida guesthouse in Afghanistan, (4) he went into the mountains in the vicinity of Tora Bora during al-Qaida's last stand there, (5) he was captured in the company of a Taliban fighter and two of Usama bin Laden's bodyguards, all of whom he knew from school in Yemen, and (6) he put forward wholly incredible cover stories to explain his actions.