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Kuwaiti Appeals Court Upholds Acquittal of Five Former Guantanamo Prisoners
Associated Press
July 22, 2006
KUWAIT CITY (AP) - A Kuwaiti court Saturday upheld the acquittal of five returnees from Guantanamo on terror-related charges.
In May, a criminal court had cleared the men of belonging to and collecting money for the al-Qaida terror network, but the prosecution appealed the ruling. Prosecution frequently appeals acquittals. It did not announce the reasons for the measure in the case of the Guantanamo returnees. Officials did not say whether they intended to appeal Saturday's ruling to a higher tribunal.
U.S. officials freed the five men from the prison in Cuba in November. On their return to Kuwait, they were arrested and put on trial.
All five -- Abdullah Saleh al-Ajmi, Abdul-Aziz al-Shimmiri, Adel Zamel Abdul-Mohsen, Saad Madhi al-Azmi and Mohammed Fnaitil al-Dehani -- had pleaded innocent when their trial opened in March.
It takes a week to 10 days for the details of rulings to be made public.
Lawyers defending the five argued that there was no evidence to convict their clients and that Kuwaiti courts did not have the jurisdiction to try them because they had not done anything illegal in Kuwait.
A Kuwaiti ex-Guantanamo prisoner who returned in January 2005 was initially acquitted of terror-related charges, but an appeals tribunal overturned the acquittal and sentenced him to five years in prison.
Six citizens of this oil-rich state are still held in Guantanamo.
Kuwait has been a major U.S. ally since the Washington-led 1991 Gulf War that liberated it from Iraqi occupation.
But some Muslim extremists oppose the American military presence in the country, and have fought alongside Muslim militants in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya and Iraq.
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