Gitmo Detainee Should Be Sent Home After Torture And Illegal Detention

Despite having admitted that Jawad was tortured and illegally imprisoned, the Obama administration last week asked for permission to continue to hold him while it decides whether to pursue a criminal case against him. The government's request, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, came after U.S. District Court Judge Ellen S. Huvelle had berated government lawyers the previous week for their inadequate case against Jawad. A copy of a transcript from that hearing can be found online at: www.aclu.org/safefree/detention/40450lgl20090716.html

"Last term, the Supreme Court ruled that Guantánamo detainees have a constitutional right to habeas corpus, for centuries the greatest safeguard of individual liberty against arbitrary and lawless government action," said Jonathan Hafetz, a staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project and lawyer for Jawad in his habeas case. "If the government can ignore a federal court's findings that it has no case against Mr. Jawad or reason to continue to lawlessly detain him, it will render habeas corpus a dead-letter and our courts powerless to remedy injustice."

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