In writing my testimony for today’s House Judiciary Committee hearing on drones and targeted killing of U.S. citizens overseas, I found myself writing a more complete explication of the essential legal rationale underlying the administration’s position on the subject than … Read more »
U.S. District Judge John D. Bates has granted summary judgment to the Pentagon in a Freedom of Information Act cast brought by the International Counsel Bureau and the law firm of Pillsbury, Winthrop, Shaw Pittman. The decision opens:
International Counsel
U.S. District Judge John Bates has entered the following order in Maqaleh, the case testing federal court habeas jurisdiction for detainees at Bagram:
MINUTE ORDER: The Court has received 81 petitioners’ notice that they have recently discovered facts that
I have now read through the ACLU-CCR lawsuit on behalf of the Al-Aulaqi and Khan families. Here are my initial thoughts:
First, this lawsuit does not suffer from the prohibitive standing problem that plagued these groups’ earlier efforts to block … Read more »
Here’s your off-the-cuff read-out of this morning’s hearing before U.S. District Judge John Bates in Al-Maqaleh v. Gates and Hamidullah v. Obama, better known as the “can we get a little GTMO-style habeas review over U.S. detentions at Bagram” cases… Read more »
As Ben noted last month, Judge Bates recently has shown some interest in possibly moving the Boumediene-at-Bagram case, Al Maqaleh v. Rumsfeld, along toward a resolution. After several very quiet months seemingly mulling over the pleadings before him, … Read more »
The United States District Court for the District of Columbia yesterday granted the United States’ motion to dismiss in Wahid v. Gates – a habeas case in which the petitioner had challenged his detention at Bagram. The gist of the … Read more »
As both Wells and Ben noted previously, there are renewed signs of interest in the fate of military detention in Afghanistan, in the form of an NPR story by Quil Lawrence and an order that same day from Judge Bates … Read more »
This morning, National Public Radio ran this story, which Wells linked to earlier, noting that the concern that the United States was recreating Guantanamo at Bagram:
Today, U.S. District Judge John Bates issued the following curious order in both … Read more »
Yesterday, Judge John Bates of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia granted the government’s motion for summary judgment in the case of Kadi v. Geithner. Yassin Abdullah Kadi, a Saudi and a self-described businessman and philanthropist, … Read more »
As Ben pointed out yesterday, the Washington Post report about the possibility that non-Afghan detainees held at Parwan will be repatriated to their home countries is significant news. Apart from its import for U.S. detention policy generally, the development, if … Read more »
The Washington Post reports that the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel wrote a classified legal opinion in support of the al-Aulaqi killing. Carrie Budoff Brown* at Politico reports that former U.S. Representative and intelligence committee member Jane Harman says … Read more »
A federal court in Washington ruled on Thursday that former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe enjoys residual immunity from being forced to testify as a witness in an Alien Tort Statute/Torture Victims Protection Act suit against Drummond Company. (Uribe had been … Read more »
I have only read the D.C. Circuit’s Khan opinion very quickly and may have further thoughts when I dive in a little deeper. On brief perusal, though, it seems to me that the chief importance of the decision–written by Judge … Read more »
The last time we covered the progress of the case that I’ll call Al Maqaleh v. Obama II (to distinguish from the first time this case was considered in 2008-2010, Al Maqaleh I), Judge Bates had just granted the … Read more »
An article today in The Nation, by Jeremy Scahill, alleges that the CIA operates a proxy detention facility in Mogadishu (the article also alleges a CIA-sponsored training operation for Somali government forces, but treats the allegations of a proxy detention … Read more »
The public version of Shawali Khan’s reply brief in Khan v. Obama (No. 10-5306), a Guantanamo habeas case currently pending before the D.C. Circuit, is now available. In this case, petitioner Shawali Khan appeals Judge John Bates’s September 2010 decision… Read more »
Yesterday the public version of the government’s response brief in Khan v. Obama (No. 10-5306), a Guantanamo habeas case currently pending before the D.C. Circuit, became available. In this case, petitioner Shawali Khan appeals Judge John Bates’s September 2010 … Read more »
The deadline for a notice of appeal of Judge Bates’ ruling in Al Aulaqi came and went a few weeks back with no filing from the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights. In response to my queries, the groups … Read more »
Yesterday two new GTMO habeas briefs became publicly available.
The first is the appellant’s opening brief in Khan v. Obama (No. 10-5306). In this case, petitioner Shawali Khan appeals Judge John Bates’s September 2010 decision denying his habeas petition. Khan … Read more »
As Josh Gerstein reports over at Politico, U.S. District Judge John D. Bates today granted the Al Maqaleh petitioners’ motion for leave to file amended habeas petitions. Al Maqaleh concerns the habeas petitions of detainees held at the Bagram … Read more »
Five thoughts on Judge Bates’ Al Aulaqi decision:
First, as far as I’m concerned, there is really only one surprising thing about the decision, whose holdings any Lawfare reader could have anticipated relatively precisely. The surprise is that Judge … Read more »
Judge Bates wrote a solid, careful, and in my view persuasive opinion in al-Aulaqi. The opinion is clearly a victory for the government. But it was not without small victories for ACLU, CCR, and others who want to establish … Read more »
Don’t have time to read the 83-page opinion in Al-Aulaqi? Here are the key points in outline format, sans commentary:
I wonder how many media outlets that misleadingly made the government’s invocation of the state secrets privilege the central feature of their coverage of its arguments will eat crow in light of Judge Bates’ refusal (at the government’s urging… Read more »
Michael Leiter, the Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, gave an important speech today at CSIS that touched on many topics, including an overview of the foreign and homeland terrorist threat, what the government is doing about it, and how … Read more »
The Al Aulaqi argument today was long—far too long for me to write a blow-by-blow account of the entire session. It went on for three hours, and I had to duck out just before it ended. Even a brief summary … Read more »
Judge John Bates issued the following order in Al-Aulaqi yesterday:
MINUTE ORDER: Pursuant to plaintiff’s request (to which defendants have not objected) made during the parties’ joint telephone conference held with chambers on this date, it is hereby ORDERED as
In a recent article in the Miami Herald, Carol Rosenberg noted that the government has prevailed on the merits in three straight GTMO habeas proceedings and offered perspectives on what this might signify. Could it be a change in the … Read more »
I have now read Judge Reggie Walton’s opinion affirming the detention of Guantanamo detainee Toffiq Nasser Awad Al-Bihani. In keeping with my usual practice, I will leave it to others to discuss the case’s effect on the “scorecard.” The case, … Read more »
I was amused, in reading Judge Bates’ Khan opinion just now, to run across the judge’s account of the scope of the government’s detention authority–amused because the New York Times this morning editorialized that holding people in prolonged military detention … Read more »
The opinion by U.S. District Judge John Bates in Khan v. Obama has been declassified in redacted form. I will have comments after I’ve read it, though the case is at minimum significant for finding detainable someone who is “part … Read more »
Nine years after it was enacted in response to the September 11 attacks, the Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) remains the primary basis for detaining and targeting terrorists who threaten the United States. The AUMF, however, authorizes force only … Read more »
The USG’s brief in Al-Aulaqi, the targeted killing case, reveals a great deal about the Obama administration’s thinking about its legal authorities.
1. Perhaps most noteworthy is the brief’s reliance on the president’s exclusive Commander-in-Chief authorities. The thrust of … Read more »
Peter Margulies, author of Law’s Detour: Justice Displaced in the Bush Administration, who previously offered these comments and these comments on S. 3707, weighs in on the bill’s mandatory stays to habeas challenges to military commission proceedings. He … Read more »
It has become something of a convention in the copious journalism surrounding the Guantanamo habeas litigations to keep a win-loss scorecard. A typical example is this recent story by Miami Herald reporter Carol Rosenberg, who writes:
Judge John Bates’ ruling, … Read more »
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
In one of the strangest stories I’ve come across in a long time—and there have been many—news reports say an FBI agent shot and killed an Orlando man with ties to deceased Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev. Ibragim Todashev was not suspected of playing a role in the bombings, but, during questioning, confessed nevertheless to playing a role in a triple homicide in the Boston area. After his confession, Todashev allegedly… Read more »
