Boumediene

Human rights experts say there is a serious risk that some of the Guantanamo detainees cleared for release could face persecution or torture.

As expected, yesterday President Obama signed a supplemental appropriations bill that prohibits the release of Guantanamo detainees into the United States, and restricts the president’s ability to release them to other countries without Congressional approval.
The little-noticed provision raises constitutional questions about who has the power to control the release of detainees — the president, Congress [...]

Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog reminds us that today is the one-year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision, Boumediene v. Bush, which confirmed that Guantanamo Bay detainees have the right to challenge their detentions in U.S. courts. Coincidentally, today the Washington Post also reported on its front page that the Obama administration has given up [...]

In an exclusive interview with Jake Tapper of ABC News, Lakhdar Boumediene said he was “tortured” while wrongly imprisoned for seven and a half years at Guantanamo Bay without charge or trial, deprived of sleep for 16 days at a time and physically abused. He eventually went on a hunger strike and was physically force-fed.
While [...]

Let’s unpack a claim about the Guantanamo detainees, as summarized by Marc Ambinder:
It had been the hope of administration legal advisers that a majority of the 240 [Guantanamo detainees] — perhaps a large majority — would be tried in federal courts. Then they discovered that the evidentiary thresholds for doing so were too high given [...]

A petition to the Supreme Court filed Monday is being called the first major challenge to the Obama administration’s detention policies.

A federal judge this morning ordered five detainees freed from Guantanamo Bay, according to the New York Times.