On Thursday, the Department of Defense announced the transfer of an Algerian named Saiid Farhi from Guantanamo to his home country. The second line of the DoD’s press release reads: “Farhi was ordered released by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Nov. 19, 2009.” What the DoD’s release doesn’t say is that the district court’s ruling is illogical and could have been easily overturned on appeal.

Saiid Farhi is also known as Farhi Saeed Bin Mohammed in the government’s documents. I wrote about his case previously. Farhi was granted his petition for a writ of habeas corpus by Judge Gladys Kessler, whose opinion was eviscerated by the D.C. Circuit Court in another Gitmo detainee habeas matter – Al-Adahi v. Obama. Kessler’s opinion in Farhi’s case suffered from many of the same deficiencies as her opinion in Al-Adahi, as well as some new ones.