NEW YORK – A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit today
closed an avenue for Guantánamo Bay detainees to challenge their detention,
shutting down approximately 175 pending cases in that court. The court struck
down a provision of the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 that allowed detainees to
challenge their status as "enemy combatants" as determined by the Pentagon’s
Combatant Status Review Tribunals, a status that allows for their indefinite
detention at Guantánamo.
The only avenue left for detainees to
challenge their detention is to file habeas corpus challenges in district
courts, a fundamental constitutional right upheld by the Supreme Court last June
in Boumediene v. Bush. While the habeas option is absolutely critical, the
Supreme Court said in Boumediene that it was also not the sole avenue for
redress.
The following can be attributed to Jonathan Hafetz, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union National Security Project:
"After three years of government stonewalling, the appeals court has unfortunately just taken away one of the avenues for the Guantánamo detainees to finally get a shot at justice in America."