Legal Journals

Court Orders Five Guantanamo Bay Detainees to be Released

By clong

A federal judge has ruled that the United States lacks adequate evidence to justify holding five Algerians detained as terror suspects in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon rejected government claims that there was enough evidence to continue detaining the men, who have been held in Guantanamo for nearly seven years after being arrested in Bosnia.  “Seven years of waiting for our legal system to give them an answer to a question so important is, in my judgment, more than plenty,” Judge Leon said.

The men released by Judge Leon’s order - Lakhdar Boumediene, Mohamed Nechla, Hadj Boudella, Mustafa Ait Idir and Saber Lahmar - were among a group of detainees who won the right to challenge their detention in U.S. federal courts in an earlier Supreme Court ruling. In October, another federal judge ordered a separate group of Chinese Muslims released after a federal court hearing.

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Full post as published by Harvard International Law Journal Digest on December 05, 2008 (boomark / email).