‘Obama Says The War Is Over. So Why Can’t I Leave Gitmo?’

[n2doc]

Lawyers for a longtime detainee are trying out a new defense. If it works, he and a bunch of his fellow Gitmo prisoners could go free.


An accused Taliban fighter held for more than 13 years in Guantanamo Bay is demanding his release, saying that since President Obama has declared the war in Afghanistan is over, there are no longer any legal grounds to hold him.

It’s believed to be the first time a Guantanamo detainee has argued that the government’s authority to detain him evaporated with end of military operations against the Taliban, which began in 2001 following the 9/11 attacks. But when U.S. attorneys respond, they could argue that, in fact, hostilities haven’t come to a conclusion, and there are still grounds to hold the man. That could put them the strange position of undercutting the president, and arguing that just because the commander-in-chief says the war is over doesn’t necessarily make it so.

“If they say that, that is the practical effect of what they’d be saying,” Brian Foster, one of the attorneys for the detainee, Mukhtar al Warafi, told The Daily Beast.

more

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/03/14/obama-says-the-war-is-over-so-why-can-t-i-leave-gitmo.html

[Igel]

1. The entire thing is squirrelly.

He won't be released.

No grounds to release him here. Or back to wherever he was captured, presumably Afghanistan.

Could have been released to Yemen, but no agreement was ever worked out. And I'm not sure that releasing him there now would be a great thing.

Perhaps they should just cut to the chase: Air-drop him in IS territory and hope he doesn't go back to Afghanistan to help reimpose enlightened Taliban rule there.

At the same time, it pays to note what happened at the end of WWII--a much cleaner war, with a rather more decisive end to hostilities. German POWs were kept in US-based POW camps at least until 1946, and some POWs kept longer for various reasons. (And let's not discuss the fate of Russian POWs and what happened to German POWs in Russia).