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Three judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit listened closely, but noncommittally, on Wednesday to a broad constitutional attack on the system of war crimes tribunals now operating at the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
In the broadest challenge so far to the system of war crimes courts set up at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, lawyers for a Yemeni national fighting his conviction on a terrorism conspiracy charge argued on Wednesday that those tribunals are an unconstitutional attempt to diminish the power of civilian courts.
In a sweeping new ruling that both expands and limits the power of U.S. military tribunals set up at Guantanamo Bay to try terrorist war crimes, a federal appeals court in Washington nullified two guilty verdicts of a former close aide to terrorist leader Osama bin Laden, and gave partial support to another verdict but ordered it reviewed further.
If Congress were to give the government the option of closing the military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay and allow prisoners from there to be kept in prisons in the United States, the government will continue to keep them outside of the usual legal system, the Obama administration has told Congress in a new report.
Picking up on thoughts from a lower federal court judge, Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer on Monday sketched the outlines of an issue that could be the basis for a new challenge to long-term detention by those held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The federal appeals court in the nation’s capital — in a rare, but partial, legal victory for Guantanamo Bay detainees — ruled on Tuesday that they may go to court to challenge harsh conditions in their military-run prison.
The Obama administration’s strong effort to protect military prosecutors’ options to level the easiest-to-prove war crimes charges against terrorism suspects appeared on Monday to be facing a significant hurdle in the D.C. Circuit Court.
A Kuwaiti national held by the U.S. military at Guantanamo Bay for more than eleven-and-a-half years, who figured in an important Supreme Court ruling nine years ago, is making a new plea for his release — just as soon as the U.S. completes its withdrawal from the war in Afghanistan.
Trying to take advantage of the Supreme Court’s last major ruling on the rights of foreign nationals held by the U.S. military outside of the country, lawyers for five detainees at a U.S.-run military prison in Afghanistan on Tuesday asked the D.C. Circuit Court to give them a chance to challenge those captives’ prolonged imprisonment.
Analysis In nearly twelve years of the “war on terror,” Congress has seldom been willing to let the other branches of the government decide on their own what U.S. policy would be on detention of individuals suspected of terrorism.
Arguing that a wartime prisoner has been held at Guantanamo Bay three years longer than even the government believed he should be confined, and that Congress is directly responsible for that delay, lawyers for a detainee there have moved for a prompt federal court ruling on a host of constitutional arguments over who may leave Guantanamo.
Seeking his own release from Guantanamo Bay but also fully defending presidential power to decide detention policy without interference from Congress, a Syrian man who has been cleared by the Obama Administration to leave the military prison on the island of Cuba has filed a sweeping new constitutional challenge in federal court to congressional restrictions on his release.