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Washington. Hambali, the alleged Bali bomb mastermind suspected of links to Al Qaeda, filed a petition on Thursday seeking release from Guantanamo where he has been detained without charge for more than three years.

Considered the operational chief of the regional terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah until his capture in Thailand in 2003, Hambali, whose real name is Riduan Isamuddin, filed a habeas petition with the US District Court in Washington.

Hambali, accused of plotting the October 2002 attack in Bali that killed 202 people, most of them foreign tourists, was held for three years in secret CIA prisons before being transferred to Guantanamo in September 2006.

In addition to the Bali bombing he is thought to have raised funds from Al Qaeda, with whom he has denied any links, for the 2003 attack on the JW Marriott Hotel in Jakarta that left 12 people dead.

The US also accuses Hambali of orchestrating and funding an attack on an Indonesian church on Christmas Eve in 2000 that left 18 dead, and of plotting attacks on the embassies of the US, Britain and Australia in Singapore.

One of Hambali’s younger brothers, Kankan Abdul Qadir, 31, told the Jakarta Globe he had just heard Hambali had filed a habeas corpus petition challenging his detention without trial.

“If Hambali lodged the petition and he could be freed, thank God. We have been waiting to meet him since our last meeting in the 90s. We don’t believe he committed any crimes,” he said.

For years the US Congress and former President George W. Bush have sought to deny detainees the right to challenge their detention without charge at Guantanamo on the grounds that they are “enemy combatants.”

In a major setback for the Bush administration, the Supreme Court ruled in June 2008 that detainees being held at Guantanamo enjoy the constitutional right of habeas corpus, which allows them to challenge their detention.

Some detainees have since been cleared of any wrongdoing and freed, but the vast majority, including Hambali, remain high-risk prisoners awaiting trial.

US President Barack Obama is facing a growing clamor of calls to try key terror suspects still held at Guantanamo in military commissions rather than civilian courts.

Leading Democratic US Senator Jim Webb hit out in January at reported plans to try Hambali, who is sought for trial in Indonesia, at a civilian court in the Washington area.

“The Indonesian government, which has already executed three others involved in this bombing, wants to try him. I do not understand the relevance of trying him as a common criminal in the civilian courts of the United States,” he said.

When Obama signed an executive order to close Guantanamo within a year, it prompted speculation that Hambali — described by Bush as one of the most dangerous men in the world — could be returned to Indonesia for trial.

Jakarta has lodged several requests with Washington for access to Hambali. Obama appears near a compromise to allow military tribunals to move forward for the alleged Sept. 11 plotters in exchange for a deal to close Guantanamo.



AFP, JG