[JURIST] A judge in the US District Court for the District of Columbia ruled [order, PDF] Wednesday that the US may continue to hold Yemeni detainee Ghaleb Nassar Al Bihani [NYT materials] at the Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive] prison facility. Judge Richard Leon [official profile] held that the government had met its burden of proving, by a preponderance of evidence, that Al Bihani is an "enemy combatant" [JURIST news archive]. Lawyers for Al Bihani argued that he only served as a cook for Taliban fighters and never fired on US troops, but Leon found that this was sufficient to classify him as an "enemy combatant" under the definition set forth last June by the Supreme Court in Boumediene v. Bush [opinion, PDF; JURIST report]. Leon wrote:

based on the evidence presented by the Government and all reasonable inferences drawn therefrom, the Court concludes that petitioner Al Bihani is being lawfully detained as an enemy combatant because it is more probable than not that he was "part of or supporting Taliban or al Qaeda forces" both prior to and after the initiation of U.S. hostilities in October 2001. Accordingly, the Court must, and will, DENY Al Bihani's petitioner for a writ of habeas corpus and will not order his release.