Yemeni loses appeal for release from Guantanamo

Detainees participate in an early morning prayer session at Camp IV at the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base, August 5, 2009.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Tuesday upheld a ruling that a Yemeni man who cooked for Taliban and al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan was lawfully detained at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The decision comes amid a fierce political battle over the controversial facility. The Obama administration is trying to close it but is under pressure not to return Yemeni detainees to their home country because of al Qaeda activity there.

Several of the roughly 91 Yemeni detainees at Guantanamo Bay have been cleared to be sent home. However, that appears unlikely any time soon because of concerns that deepened when a Nigerian man charged with trying to blow up a U.S. airliner told U.S. investigators he was trained by al Qaeda in Yemen.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld a federal judge's ruling that the detention of Yemeni citizen Ghaleb Nassar Al-Bihani at the prison, where he has been held since mid-2002 for his associations with the militant Taliban and al Qaeda groups, was lawful.

Saudi native Al-Bihani was a cook in a Taliban brigade that had al Qaeda members. He denied firing a weapon and said he was not a member of the Taliban or al Qaeda, but acknowledged he had stayed in al Qaeda-affiliated guest houses in Afghanistan.

He also has told two different stories about whether he received military training. The brigade surrendered to the Afghan Northern Alliance forces and was handed to U.S. forces in early 2002.

In his appeal, Al-Bihani argued that his detention was not authorized under U.S. law and that his attempt to challenge it had been thwarted by procedural problems. The appeals court rejected his arguments.

"Al-Bihani's detention is authorized by statute and there was no constitutional defect in the district court's habeas procedure that would have affected the outcome of the proceeding" the three-judge panel ruled.

The decision is one of a handful of cases to reach the appeals court. Dozens of detainees have sought release from the Guantanamo prison under the so-called habeas corpus doctrine.

About 30 Guantanamo prisoners have been ordered by U.S. judges to be released while at least seven detainees, including Al-Bihani, have had their requests seeking release rejected.

(Reporting by Jeremy Pelofsky, editing by David Alexander and Steve Gutterman)