Thursday, August 06, 2009
Khalid Abdullah Mishal Al Mutairi, rlease ordered July 29, but still imprisoned
Federal judges in Washington, DC, have ruled over the last year that 28 detainees at Guantanamo Bay were being unlawfully held, and ordered their release. But, according to an investigation by ProPublica, 19 of these men are still at the detention facility in Cuba, leaving the current administration in defiance of federal courts.
President Barack Obama has maintained the same legal stance as his predecessor, George W. Bush, that as commander-in-chief he has the authority to detain not only al Qaeda and Taliban members, but also their supporters. The collection of federal rulings regarding individual detainees has not established when the president can place someone in preventive detention, or how strong the evidence presented by the government needs to be.
One judge, Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, has maintained in the cases she has presided over that the burden of proof is on the government to show why a prisoner should be considered a wartime detainee—and not on the detainee to prove his innocence.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
New Gitmo Decision Offers Unusual Insight Into Weakness of Government Evidence (by Chisun Lee, ProPublica)
Their Own Private Guantánamo (by Chisun Lee, ProPublica)
An Examination of 31 Gitmo Detainee Lawsuits (by Chisun Lee, ProPublica)
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