Five Gitmo detainee releases ordered
November 21, 2008 at 1:47 pm by Scott Henry in NewsSoon after the Nov. 4 election, the public discussion about shutting down the the military prison at Guantanamo Bay officially began in earnest. Now, after years of inaction and incremental progress by federal courts, the dam may finally be bursting.
Yesterday, Federal District Court Judge Richard J. Leon decided in 34-page ruling that five Algerian men held at Gitmo for the past seven years were being detained illegally and should be freed. As the NYT put it:
The case was an important test of the Bush administration’s detention policies, which critics have long argued swept up innocent men and low-level foot soldiers along with high-level and hardened terrorists.
The six are among a group of Guantánamo inmates who won a Supreme Court ruling that the detainees have constitutional rights and can seek release in federal court. The 5-4 decision said a 2006 law unconstitutionally stripped the prisoners of their right to contest their imprisonment in habeas corpus lawsuits.
But spare your kudos for Judge Leon just yet. As a legal rubber stamp for the Bush Administration’s policies, he’s been a big part of the problem. As the Center for Constitutional Rights – a major plaintiff in the movement to shut down Guantánamo – recounts:
On January 19, 2005, D.C. District Court Judge Richard J. Leon granted the government’s motion to dismiss two of the habeas petitions assigned to him. In Khalid v. Bush, he held that the non-citizen detainees at Guantanamo detained outside the sovereign territory of the United States in the course of the war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban possessed no substantive rights to due process that would allow them to vindicate themselves via habeas corpus petitions. Judge Leon held that they possessed no constitutional rights; that no federal law was relevant and applicable; and that international law was not binding in this instance.
For more on the back story, you can read my cover story from two years ago.
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