As both a candidate and as president, Barack Obama repeatedly expressed his desire to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The facility and its role in the military's detention operations have been deeply controversial from the beginning of the war against Al Qaeda. Timelines for closing the facility have come and gone, yet the administration has been stymied by legislation that has made the task extremely difficult. Detention has been litigated up and down the federal appellate ladder. And as criminal trials have begun for some of the inmates in military commissions, the legal questions surrounding their detention and treatment have only gotten thornier.
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On June 7, Majid S. Khan, a Pakistani detainee at Guantánamo Bay whose sentence ended on March 1, filed a 30-page petition for a writ of habeas corpus against President Joe Biden, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, and Lance Okamura, the U.S. commander of Joint Task Force-Guantanamo.
Al-Qahtani’s own Mixed Medical Commission was mooted by his repatriation, but his case may have opened up a new avenue for Guantanamo detainees.
In taking up the representation of detainees, Ketanji Brown Jackson did a service to the system.
The anniversary of the opening of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay is an opportunity to reflect on the facility’s legacy and identify the mistakes made so that they are not repeated.
With the departure of U.S. and coalition forces from Afghanistan earlier this year, the United States ended the central front of its longest war. However, one relic from that war remains: The indefinite detention of presumed combatants at Guantanamo Bay.
The letter urging clemency came after Khan last week became the first former prisoner at a black site to give an account of the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques agents used to extract information from terrorism suspects.
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.
Abu Zubaydah, a detainee held at Guantanamo, wants testimony from two former CIA contractors about his treatment at a CIA black site in connection with a criminal inquiry in Poland. The government says their testimonies could expose state secrets.
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 U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia unsealed a ruling denying Guantanamo detainee Saifullah Paracha's petition for habeas corpus. In the January decision, the court held that the government may detain Paracha on the basis of evidence that he rendered "substantial support" to al-Qaeda and the Taliban, though he was not a member of either. The decision is available here and below.