Judge orders US to explain lockup of Libyan in Cuba

WASHINGTON -- A federal judge yesterday ordered the government to explain why a Libyan national detained at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, should not be released immediately -- setting up a showdown next week between the court and the Bush administration over the fate of alleged ''enemy combatants" locked up on the island.

Separately, the Pentagon announced yesterday that preliminary hearings will be held next month for four other detainees, marking the first steps toward military tribunals that will be conducted in a new courtroom at Guantanamo Bay.

Military authorities also said yesterday that they were beginning annual reviews for many of the 600 detainees in Cuba to determine whether some should be sent home, a process the Pentagon established in response to criticism that the detainees lack due process. The first such ''combatant status review" was held involving an unnamed detainee. No decision was disclosed.

The developments are occurring just weeks after the US Supreme Court ruled that foreign nationals held at Guantanamo Bay, as well as Americans being held as enemy combatants without charges filed against them, have the right to challenge the legality of their confinement.

In Washington, US District Judge Reggie B. Walton, a Bush appointee who took the bench shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, ordered the government to explain by Tuesday why Salim Gherebi should not be released. If the government cannot show that Gherebi is a security risk, Walton said, he will order the 46-year-old Libyan released immediately. That would mark the first time the administration was forced to free any of the captives taken in the war on terror.

Stephen Yagman of Los Angeles is Gherebi's lawyer, but said he has never met his client nor spoken to him because of strict military restraints.

He said Salim Gherebi had moved to Afghanistan and was working as a mechanic there for about four years when he was captured in February 2002. Yagman denied that Gherebi was a terrorist or had fought against US forces in Afghanistan after Sept. 11. Rather, he said, Gherebi was like many other Guantanamo Bay detainees who were ''scooped up" after the US military offered large bounties for enemy combatants.

Terry Henry, a Justice Department lawyer handling the case, declined to discuss the matter. But he filed a notice yesterday, saying the government plans to present a formal request asking the judge to dismiss his order that demands the government explain Gherebi's status.