Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Legal News Blogs -> JURIST - The Paper Chase

Legal News

: JURIST - The Paper Chase

Supreme Court remands torture lawsuit by ex-Guantanamo detainees

By Bernard Hibbitts (editor) and University of Pittsburgh School of Law students.

[JURIST] The US Supreme Court on Monday granted certiorari, vacated, and remanded the case of Rasul v. Myers for further consideration in light of the Court's June decision in Boumediene v. Bush. The US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit ruled on the case five months before Boumediene was decided, holding that four former Guantanamo Bay detainees do not have the right to sue high-ranking government officials for alleged torture and infringement of religious practice during their captivity. In Boumediene, the Court held that federal courts have jurisdiction to review habeas corpus petitions filed by Guantanamo detainees who have been classified as "enemy combatants." UK citizens Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal, Rhuhel Ahmed, and Jamal Al-Harith were released from Guantanamo in March 2004. In May 2004, Rasul and Iqbal said in an open letter to US President George W. Bush that they had suffered abuse at Guantanamo similar to that perpetrated at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The Center for Constitutional Rights filed a lawsuit on their behalf in October 2004 against former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard Meyers, and others alleging "deliberate and foreseeable action taken . . . to flout or evade the United States Constitution, federal statutory law, United States treaty obligations and long established norms of customary international law." The circuit court affirmed the district court's ruling dismissing the plaintiff's claims under the Alien Tort Statute for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. The court dismissed the plaintiffs' claims under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, finding that they did not have the right to sue for infringement of religious rights because they are aliens who were not in the US at the time of the alleged acts. The plaintiffs petitioned the Court for review in August.

Full post as published by JURIST - The Paper Chase on December 15, 2008 (boomark / email).