Latest in habeas corpus
Judge Mehta’s 2021 decision granting Guantanamo Bay detainee Asadullah Haroon Gul’s writ of habeas corpus defines what the government must show to prove that a member of a former “associated force” should also be considered a part of al-Qaeda.
As the organizational scope of the post-9/11 armed conflict evolves, so too does the scope of military detention authority. A court’s ruling this week illustrates that it is shrinking.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit today denied a habeas corpus petition from a Yemeni detainee at Guantanamo Bay. Judge Neomi Rao, writing for the court, argued that "the Due Process Clause may not be invoked by aliens without property or presence in the sovereign territory of the United States." The petitioner, Abdulsalam al Hela, has been in detention at Guantanamo Bay since 2004.
The Supreme Court’s decision in Department of Homeland Security v. Thuraissigiam calls into question several aspects of the court’s earlier decision in Boumediene v. Bush and more generally signals a more limited vision of the Suspension Clause than Boumediene embraced.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit today rejected arguments by Abdul Razak Ali, an Algerian national held at Guantanamo Bay, that the full breadth of the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause applies to Guantanamo detainees. The court denied Ali’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus.
You can read the opinion and judgment below:
Note: The author is a member of Abu Zubaydah’s legal team. Joseph Margulies, Mark Denbeaux and Helen Duffy, who also represent Abu Zubaydah, have contributed to this article.
On Dec. 11, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia heard arguments in ACLU v. Mattis on the question whether the ACLU should be permitted to represent a United States citizen who is currently being detained as an enemy combatant in Iraq.
American Civil Liberties Union Foundation v. Mattis is a would-be habeas corpus petition brought by the ACLU Foundation on behalf of an unnamed American citizen whom the U.S. government has been holding in military detention in Iraq since September.
On October 30th, the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations will hold a hearing titled "The Authorizations for Use of Military Force: Adminstration Perspective," featuring Secretaries Mattis and Tillerson. This is a good thing. We should have an updated AUMF. But, failing that, we should at least have regular and serious hearings in which Congress elicits information about how the President currently construes these authorities.