Latif v. Obama

• Citation: 677 F.3d 1175
• Decision Date: 27 April 2012
• Docket Number: No. 10–5319.,10–5319.
• Parties: Adnan Farhan Abdul LATIF, Detainee, Camp Delta, et. al., Appellees v. Barack OBAMA, President of the United States, et al., Appellants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — District of Columbia Circuit

677 F.3d 1175

Adnan Farhan Abdul LATIF, Detainee, Camp Delta, et. al., Appellees

v.Barack OBAMA, President of the United States, et al., Appellants.

No. 10–5319.

United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit.

Argued March 15, 2011.Decided Oct. 14, 2011.Reissued April 27, 2012.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Columbia (No. 1:04–cv–01254).August E. Flentje, Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice, argued the cause for appellants. With him on the briefs were Ian Heath Gershengorn, Deputy Assistant Attorney General, and Robert M. Loeb, Attorney.

Philip A. Scarborough argued the cause for appellees. On the brief were S. William Livingston, Roger A. Ford, and David H. Remes. Brian E. Foster entered an appearance.

Before: HENDERSON, TATEL and BROWN, Circuit Judges.

Concurring opinion filed by Circuit Judge HENDERSON.

Dissenting opinion filed by Circuit Judge TATEL.

BROWN, Circuit Judge:

The United States appeals the district court's grant of the writ of habeas corpus to detainee Adnan Farhan Abd Al Latif. Three errors in the district court's analysis require us to vacate that decision. First, the court failed to accord an official government record a presumption of regularity. Second, the district court failed to determine Latif's credibility even though the court relied on his declaration to discredit the Government's key evidence. See Al–Adahi v. Obama, 613 F.3d 1102, 1110 (D.C.Cir.2010). Third, the court's unduly atomized approach to the evidence is one we have rejected. See id. We remand so the district court can evaluate Latif's credibility as needed in light of the totality of the evidence, including newly available evidence as appropriate.

I

Latif is a Yemeni national who was apprehended near Pakistan's Afghan border in late 2001 and transferred to Guantanamo Bay in January 2002. The parties agree that Latif commenced his travels at the suggestion of a man named Ibrahim and that Latif set off from Yemen to Quetta, Pakistan, and from there to Kabul, Afghanistan. The parties also agree that after returning to Pakistan, Latif was seized by the Pakistani military without a passport. What the parties disagree about is the nature of Latif's trip. The Government says Latif was recruited and trained by the Taliban and then was stationed in Kabul on the front line against the Northern Alliance. Latif says he left Yemen in search of medical care and has never had anything to do with the Taliban.

The Government's case against Latif is based on a heavily redacted [redacted] (“Report”) According to the story attributed to Latif in the Report, Ibrahim Al–Alawi began recruiting Latif for jihad in 2000. At Ibrahim's urging, Latif left home in early August 2001 and travelled to Afghanistan via Sana'a, Yemen; Karachi, Pakistan; and Quetta, Pakistan. Latif met Ibrahim at the Grand Mosque in Kandahar, Afghanistan, and stayed with him and his family for three days. From Kandahar, Ibrahim took Latif to the Taliban. The Taliban gave him weapons training and stationed him on the front line against the Northern Alliance, north of Kabul, under the command of Afghan leader Abu Fazl. While there, Latif reportedly “saw a lot of people killed during the bombings, but never fired a shot.” While with the Taliban, Latif met Abu Hudayfa of Kuwait, Abu Hafs of Saudi Arabia, and Abu Bakr of the United Arab Emirates or Bahrain. Latif retreated to Pakistan via Jalalabad with fleeing Arabs, guided by an Afghan named Taqi Allah.

Among other un-redacted identifying details, the Report indicates that Latif's mother's name is Muna, that he lived in the village of 'Udayn in Ibb, Yemen, and that his only prior trip out of that country was to Jordan with a friend “for medical treatment of an injury to his hand.” [redacted] In the district court, the Government did not produce the notes on which this Report was based. The Government now claims to have located the notes, which it says confirm the Report. Since this case was briefed, those notes have been disclosed to Latif's counsel in some form.

Latif does not deny being interviewed [redacted] Nor does he allege his statements were coerced or otherwise involuntary. But Latif says his statements were misunderstood or, alternatively, [redacted] were misattributed to him. In a declaration filed with the district court in 2009, Latif denies ever being part of the Taliban and offers an innocent explanation for his journey. Latif says he left Yemen in 2001 on a quest for medical treatment for head injuries he suffered in a 1994 car accident. He went to Pakistan to get help from Ibrahim, a Yemeni he had met at a charitable organization in Yemen. When Latif arrived in Quetta, Ibrahim had already left Pakistan, so Latif followed him to an Islamic studies institute in Kabul, Afghanistan. But once Latif caught up to Ibrahim at the institute, Ibrahim had to leave again and told Latif to wait for him there until they could travel together to Pakistan. After waiting in vain for several weeks, Latif says, he then returned to Pakistan without Ibrahim, fleeing U.S.—supported forces he had been told were advancing from northern Afghanistan.

The district court granted Latif's habeas petition following briefing and a hearing in which Latif declined to testify. Abdah v. Obama (Latif), 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 83596 (D.D.C. July 21, 2010). Although it did not “disregard” the Report entirely, slip op. at 26, the district court concluded it could not “credit that information because there is serious question, as to whether the [Report] accurately reflects Latif's words, the incriminating facts in the [Report] are not corroborated, and Latif has presented a plausible alternative story to explain his travel.” Id.

II

In a Guantanamo detainee case, we review the district court's “specific factual determinations” for clear error, and its ultimate grant or denial of habeas de novo. Almerfedi v. Obama, 654 F.3d 1, 5 (D.C.Cir.2011). As in our prior cases, we assume, without deciding, that the district court was correct to hold the Government to the preponderance-of-the-evidence standard. See id. at 5 n. 4; Al–Bihani v. Obama, 590 F.3d 866, 878 & n. 4 (D.C.Cir.2010); see also Boumediene v. Bush, 553 U.S. 723, 787, 128 S.Ct. 2229, 171 L.Ed.2d 41 (2008) (“The extent of the showing required of the Government in these cases is a matter to be determined.”); Al–Adahi, 613 F.3d at 1105 (“Although we doubt ... that the Suspension Clause requires the use of the preponderance standard, we will not decide the question in this case.”). To meet its burden, “the government must put forth credible facts demonstrating that the petitioner meets the detention standard, which is then compared to a detainee's facts and explanation.” Almerfedi, 654 F.3d at 6.

At the heart of the Government's case is the Report in which Latif reportedly admitted being recruited for jihad, receiving weapons training from the Taliban, and serving on the front line with other Taliban troops. Latif's whole defense is that this official government record is unreliable—in other words, that the Government botched it. Latif says his interrogators [redacted] so garbled his words that their summary bears no relation to what he actually said. Latif's case turns on this claim, because if the Report is an accurate summary of what Latif told his interrogators, then his detention is lawful. On this we all agree. Latif, 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 83596, slip op. at 26; accord Dissenting Op. at 1206–07. The district court says it did not altogether disregard the Government's evidence, slip op. at 26, and for good reason: the Report has more than sufficient indicia of reliability to meet the Government's “minimum threshold of persuasiveness.” Almerfedi, 654 F.3d at 6.

Ordinarily, at this point in our analysis, we would simply review the district court's comparison of the Government's evidence with the “detainee's facts and explanation,” bearing in mind that the ultimate burden is on the Government to establish Latif's detention is legal. Id. We pause here, however, because the district court expressly refused to accord a presumption of regularity to the Government's evidence, and on appeal the Government continues to assert its Report is entitled to such a presumption.

A

“The presumption of regularity supports the official acts of public officers and, in the absence of clear evidence to the contrary, courts presume that they have properly discharged their official duties.” Sussman v. U.S. Marshals Serv., 494 F.3d 1106, 1117 (D.C.Cir.2007). The presumption applies to government-produced documents no less than to other official acts. See Riggs Nat'l Corp. v. Comm'r, 295 F.3d 16, 21 (D.C.Cir.2002) (holding that “an official tax receipt” of a foreign government “is entitled to a presumption of regularity”). But Latif (and our dissenting colleague) argue no such presumption can be applied in Guantanamo cases—at least not to interrogation reports prepared in stressful and chaotic conditions, filtered through interpreters, subject to transcription errors, and heavily redacted for national security purposes.

Since the problems Latif cites are typical of Guantanamo detainees' interrogation reports, the rule he proposes would subject all such documents to the he-said/she-said balancing of ordinary evidence. It is impossible to cure the conditions under which these documents were created, so Latif's proposed rule would render the traditional presumption of regularity wholly illusory in this context. We conclude first that intelligence documents of the sort at issue here are entitled to a presumption of regularity, and second that neither internal flaws nor external record evidence rebuts that presumption in this case.

Courts sensibly have anticipated that some sort of presumption is proper in the Guantanamo, but until now we have not directly addressed the question. The dissent interprets our silence heretofore as disapproval and suggests that a...