Al Bahlul

The Justice Department filed a brief on Wednesday opposing the cert petition in Bahlul v. United States. Counsel for Ali Hamza Suliman al Bahlul filed the cert petition in March to seek review of an October 2016 D.C. Circuit decision. That ruling overturned a previous D.C.

On Thursday, October 20th, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled once again on the case of Ali Hamza al-Bahlul, a Guantanamo detainee convicted by a military commission for inchoate conspiracy to commit war crimes. In a divided and inconclusive en banc decision, the D.C.

In an en banc decision, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed Ali Hamza al-Bahlul's conviction by military commission for conspiracy to commit war crimes. The decision is the opposite of the court's panel decision last June, which vacated al-Bahlul's conviction. The court's decision is also available here.

Anyone following the Guantánamo military commissions would do well to read Bob Loeb and Helen Klein's trenchant take on last Friday's D.C. Circuit decision in In re Khadr, in which the Court of Appeals declined to issue a writ of mandamus even while agreeing that there may be a serious question "whether the civilians who serve as judges on the U.S.