UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
______________________________
MUHAMMAD AHMAD ABDALLAH :
AL ANSI, et al., :
:
Petitioners, :
:
v. : Civil Action No. 08-1923 (GK)
:
BARACK H. OBAMA, et al., :
:
Respondents. :
______________________________:
ORDER
Upon consideration of the present state of this litigation,
and the Court’s experience in managing other Guantanamo Bay
litigation, the Court concludes that the following Order will help
narrow issues in this case and, hopefully, narrow any discovery
disputes which may arise. It is hereby
ORDERED, that the Government shall submit by June 15, 2009, a
numbered statement of material facts upon which it intends to rely
in making its case-in-chief. The statement of material facts shall
provide a short statement of each material fact upon which the
Government intends to rely in making its case-in-chief, and it
shall identify all evidence it expects to elicit in support of
those facts and how it intends to present the evidence, including
the names of any witnesses the Government intends to call or upon
whose statement it relies; and it is further
ORDERED, that if the Government intends to rely on any
statements in its statement of material facts, it shall produce, to
the Court and to Petitioner’s counsel, on or before June 15, 2009,
the statements, in whatever form, including any:
A. audio recordings of statements;
B. video recordings of statements;
C. transcripts of statements;
D. contemporaneous notes taken during statements; or
E. records or reports of statements prepared by persons
other than the persons who prepared the summaries of the
statements already produced.
In addition, the Government shall produce: (1) the identity of the
speaker; (2) the content of the statement; (3) the person(s) to
whom the statement was made; (4) the date and time the statement
was made or adopted; and (5) the circumstances under which such
statement was made or adopted (including the location where the
statement was made). If the Government cannot identify the
original source or any later source of the information, it must so
indicate.
If the Government intends to rely on any documents (including
FBI 302 reports), the documents shall be produced to Petitioner’s
counsel along with the statement of facts, unless such documents
were already produced, and the relevant portions of the documents
shall be identified (by page and paragraph number) if the
Government does not intend to rely on the entire document; and it
is further
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ORDERED, that “reasonably available evidence,” under § I.D.1
of the Case Management Order, includes any evidence discovered by
the Government attorneys while preparing the Petitioner’s factual
return or while litigating habeas corpus petitions filed by other
detainees at Guantanamo Bay, as well as any evidence discovered
during the ongoing review of Guantanamo cases ordered by President
Obama on January 22, 2009. See Executive Order 13,492, § 2(d)
(ordering the “prompt and thorough review of the factual and legal
bases for the continued detention of all individuals currently held
at Guantanamo, and of whether their continued detention is in the
national security and foreign policy interests of the United States
and in the interests of justice”); and it is further
ORDERED, that a Status Conference be scheduled for June 10,
2009, at 10:30 a.m.1 Parties shall submit an unclassified Joint
Status Report by June 5, 2009, at 12:00 p.m.
/s/
May 11, 2009 Gladys Kessler
United States District Judge
Copies to: Attorneys of Record via ECF
1
If this date is inconvenient for out-of-town counsel,
they should confer with opposing counsel and Chambers about a more
suitable date.
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Abdallah Al Ansi v. Bush
Combined Opinion