Update on. money laundering.. Dahabshiil company , Terrorist Financing jehadist Mohammed Sulaymon Barre, a Somali detained at Guantanamo Bay,

Dahabshiil inc is closely related to Al-Barakaat, a Somali financial company designated by the United States Government as a terrorist finance facilitator..

Sorting through complex, and often flawed, cases

In their summary of evidence against Mohammed Sulaymon Barre, a Somali detained at Guantanamo Bay, military investigators allege that he spent several years at Osama bin Laden's compound in Sudan. But other military documents place him in Pakistan during the same period. One hearing at Guantanamo cited his employment for a money transfer company with links to terrorism financing. Another file drops any mention of such links.

Barre is one of approximately 245 detainees at the military prison in Cuba whose fate the Obama administration must decide in coming months. Teams of government lawyers are sorting through complex, and often flawed, case histories as they work toward President Obama's commitment to close the facility within a year... http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090217/FRONTPAGE/902170302/1013/NEWS03

Sorting through complex, and often flawed, cases

Investigators set out to decide detainees' fate

By Peter Finn / The Washington Post

In their summary of evidence against Mohammed Sulaymon Barre, a Somali detained at Guantanamo Bay, military investigators allege that he spent several years at Osama bin Laden's compound in Sudan. But other military documents place him in Pakistan during the same period. One hearing at Guantanamo cited his employment for a money transfer company with links to terrorism financing. Another file drops any mention of such links.

Barre is one of approximately 245 detainees at the military prison in Cuba whose fate the Obama administration must decide in coming months. Teams of government lawyers are sorting through complex, and often flawed, case histories as they work toward President Obama's commitment to close the facility within a year.

Much of the government's evidence remains classified, but documents in Barre's case and a handful of others underscore daunting legal, diplomatic, security and political challenges. As officials try to decide who can be released and who can be charged, they face a series of murky questions: what to do when the evidence is contradictory or tainted by allegations of torture; whether to press charges in military or federal court; what to do if prisoners are deemed dangerous but there is little or no evidence against them that would stand up in court; and where to send prisoners who might be killed or tortured if they are returned home.

Approximately 60 detainees who have been cleared for release by the Bush administration remain at the camp. An additional 21 detainees are facing charges before military commissions and are almost certain to face trial in federal court, courts-martial or some new version of the current system of military commissions.

About 60 others could be prosecuted, the Pentagon has said, although many legal experts say that is unrealistic because of a lack of evidence and other problems. That leaves the fate of about 100 prisoners unclear. A Pentagon spokesman said the department would not discuss the cases of individual detainees.

Bush administration officials have insisted that among the detainees are any number of al-Qaida leaders, their financiers and facilitators, and high-level members of the Taliban.

"If you release the hard-core al-Qaida terrorists that are held at Guantanamo, I think they go back into the business of trying to kill more Americans and mount further mass-casualty attacks," former vice president Dick Cheney said in a recent interview with Politico. "If you turn them loose and they go kill more Americans, who's responsible for that?"

Obama administration officials acknowledge that closing the prison is not risk-free and that some detainees may return to terrorism. But the president has concluded that Guantanamo has sapped America's moral stature abroad and mired the country in endless litigation, forestalling justice for the alleged terrorists. Of the 779 people brought to Guantanamo, only three have been convicted, and two of those have since been released.

Flawed evidence

Barre, who fled Somalia's civil strife for Pakistan in the early 1990s, has been held at Guantanamo since 2002, after being picked up in a raid in Pakistan, where he had been recognized as a refugee by the United Nations.

In Karachi, he worked for Dahabshiil, an international money-transfer company that has offices in dozens of countries, including the United States. That job, and his flight from Somalia to Pakistan, led to accusations that Barre was "engaged in hostilities against the U.S.," according to military documents.

"I am convinced that your branch of the Dahabshiil company was used to transfer money for terrorism," the presiding officer told him at a hearing in Guantanamo in 2005.

Barre said that if any suspect money was transferred from his home office, it was done so unwittingly, and that Dahabshiil is a reputable company operating legally worldwide.