WASHINGTON - A Federal judge has ordered the release of a Guantanamo Bay detainee described in the 9/11 commission report as a significant al-Qaida operative who provided advice to three of the Sept. 11 hijackers.
The 9/11 Commission report says Salahi was known to U.S. and German intelligence a decade ago and living in Germany when he gave instructions to four men about how to reach Afghanistan to train for jihad. (and for that, he was detained illegally, tortured for 9 years.
Lt. Col. Stuart Couch, a former military prosecutor who prosecuted terrorism planners and financiers for the Marine Corps for three years, has said Salahi was one of the men he was assigned to prosecute.
Couch told a University of Georgia audience last year that he discovered interrogators had obtained much of the evidence against Salahi through torture and refused to press charges. (but, isn't torture a war crime?)
Couch said he tried to resign, but was told he would be demoted to captain and sent into combat in Iraq if he quit. He dropped the Salahi case and stayed on as a prosecutor until his assignment ended, when he was named an appellate judge.
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