Yesterday, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon — who we last wrote about on November 21, 2008, when he ordered the Bush administration to release five Algerian natives who had been detained at Guantanamo Bay for nearly seven years, ruling that there was no basis for holding them as enemy combatants — ordered the Bush administration to forthwith release Mohamed el-Gharani, who has also been held at Guantanamo Bay for seven years.

A US judge has ordered the military to release a detainee at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp who was arrested in Pakistan when he was 14 years old.

Judge Richard Leon said the government had not proven that Mohamed el-Gharani, who is now 21, was a so-called “enemy combatant” and should be sent home.

The Chadian national was arrested at a mosque in Pakistan in October 2001.

His lawyer says he was accused by the US of being a member of al-Qaeda in 1998, when he would have been only 11.

The US authorities have also alleged that Mr Gharani stayed at an al-Qaeda-affiliated guest house in Afghanistan, fought in the battle of Tora Bora following the US-led invasion, and served as a courier for senior al-Qaeda operatives.

But Judge Leon said there was no evidence to support any of the allegations, and that US officials had relied mainly on information from two detainees at Guantanamo, whose reliability was questionable.

Lawyers for Mr Gharani from the legal charity, Reprieve, say there is not even any evidence that he ever went to Afghanistan.

Allegations, without evidence, were enough for us to hold him for more than seven years. Allegations made by two detainees, the credibility of one of whom was judged (by the government itself) to be “undetermined”, while the credibility of the other was judged to be questionable. Fanciful allegations, some of which made no sense whatsoever.

The government also accused Gharani of belonging to a London-based al-Qaeda cell in 1998, an accusation that Leon questioned. Gharani was 11 at the time, living with immigrant parents in Saudi Arabia, his attorneys said.

“Putting aside the obvious and unanswered questions as to how a Saudi minor from a very poor family could have even become a member of a London-based cell, the government simply advances no corroborating evidence for these statements it believes to be reliable from a fellow detainee, the basis of whose knowledge is — at best — unknown,” the judge said.

Leon said the government describes the credibility of that informant as “undetermined.” Government personnel have “directly called into question” the reliability of the other informant in Gharani’s case, he said.

How come every time a federal judge examines the Guantanamo Justice system, he finds that it stinks?