Latest in Guantanamo: Litigation: D.C. Circuit
The D.C. Circuit will hear oral argument on Moath Hamza Ahmed al-Alwi’s latest challenge to his detention at Guantanamo Bay on Tuesday: here’s the current state of the proceedings.
On Friday, military judge Col. Vance Spath filed a memorandum of opposition to plaintiff Brig. Gen. John G. Baker’s petition for writ of habeas corpus. You can view the full document here:
The government has filed a brief opposing the cert petition in Bahlul v. United States.
Yesterday, in a short per curiam opinion, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit affirmed the ruling of the U.S. District Court for the District Columbia that the lower court had no jurisdiction over a motion by Guantanamo detainee Saifullah Paracha to hold certain statutory provisions unconstitutional as “bills of attainder.”
On Friday, a three-judge panel in the D.C. Court of Appeals rejected a request to release recordings of military personnel in Guantanamo Bay force-feeding a detainee who was on a hunger strike.
Counsel for Ali Hamza Suliman al Bahlul have filed a petition for a writ of certiorari with the Supreme Court appealing the October 2016 ruling by the U.S. Circuit Court of the District of Columbia.
Counsel for Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri have filed a petition for a writ of certiorari with the Supreme Court.
With the end of the Obama administration and the beginning of the Trump administration, activity has picked up in Guantanamo litigation regarding the SSCI "torture report." Several weeks ago, I flagged that in the Nashiri habeas case in the U.S.
As Benjamin Wittes and I noted a few weeks ago, these past few weeks have produced some interesting litigation activity regarding the Senate Intelligence Committee’s interrogation report. In the last days of the Obama administration and the first few days of the Trump administration, things appear to have picked up even more.
The D.C. Circuit's refusal to reach the merits of Al-Nashiri's pre-trial challenge to the jurisdiction of the Guantánamo military commissions may seem like a hypertechnical application of a hypertechnical doctrine, but it's premised on a far deeper—and more problematic—normative assessment of the commissions' legitimacy.