Russian dancer ordered freed in Guantanamo habeas case

Russian dancer ordered freed in Guantanamo habeas caseA federal court on Thursday ordered the Pentagon to set free from Guantáaamo a former Russian Army ballet dancer turned devout Muslim whose plight captured the imagination of a Massachusetts college town.

Judge Henry Kennedy Jr. ordered the Obama administration to take ``all necessary and appropriate diplomatic steps . . . forthwith'' to release Ravil Mingazov, 42, an ethnic Tartar who was captured in Pakistan in 2002 and turned over to U.S. forces.

Thursday's midday ruling raised to 35 the number of Guantánamo detention cases the U.S. government has lost since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled two years ago that the war-on-terror captives can sue for their freedom in federal courts.

The Justice Department has so far successfully defended the indefinite detention of 13 Guantánamo captives.

With the Pentagon still holding 181 foreign men at Guantánamo, dozens more habeas corpus petitions are yet to be heard.