[Pnews] Guantanamo: Yemeni man will remain in prison despite US court ruling he is no threat

[Prisoner News]

middleeastmonitor.com
<https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20230413-guantanamo-yemeni-man-will-remain-in-prison-despite-us-court-ruling-he-is-no-threat/>
Guantanamo: Yemeni man will remain in prison despite US court ruling he is
no threat
April 13, 2023
------------------------------

A Yemeni man held in Guantanamo Bay for over 20 years without charge or
trial will remain in detention despite a US court ruling that he does not
pose a threat to the country. In an opinion yesterday over the ongoing case
of Abdulsalam Al-Hela, the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit ruled
that the authorities may not be allowed to keep a man imprisoned in
Guantánamo Bay after he is no longer deemed a threat.

According to the *Washington Post*, Al-Hela, a businessman and tribal
sheikh from Yemen, was captured in Egypt in 2002. He was held overseas for
two years before being taken to Guantánamo. He has been contesting his
detention in court since 2005 and was cleared for release two years ago.

Reporting on Al-Hela's legal battle, the *New York Times* said that a
Periodic Review Board in June 2021 approved the 55-year-old prisoner for
transfer if the receiving country could fulfil security conditions.
However, just like 10 other Yemenis at Guantanamo who have been approved
for transfer, he cannot be repatriated because the US considers Yemen,
which is in the middle of a civil war, to be too unstable to monitor his
activities.

Since the latest ruling by the Periodic Review Board, major steps have been
taken to end the war in Yemen. Delegations from Saudi Arabia
<https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20230412-tangible-progress-in-saudi-oman-peace-talks-with-houthi-leaders/>
and Oman have achieved "tangible progress" during peace talks with Yemen's
Houthi leaders currently taking place in the capital Sanaa.

*READ: Guantanamo Bay and an empire state of mind
<https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20160311-guantanamo-bay-and-an-empire-state-of-mind/>*

The DC Circuit returned Al-Hela's case to a lower court to decide whether
he should be released because the US no longer considers him a security
threat. However, it was determined that the fact Al-Hela can be released is
irrelevant.

"The Biden administration continues to fight in court to detain an
individual, who the government says it doesn't want to detain, in a prison
the president says should be closed," a senior staff attorney at the Centre
for Constitutional Rights, J Wells Dixon, is reported as saying in the
*Post. *

The ruling raised "a significant legal question… does the Constitution
allow the government to continue to hold someone without foreseeable end
simply because it hasn't made sufficient efforts to transfer them?" Dixon
added.

Any future appeals court ruling on that issue could have an impact on 16
other detainees who are being held at Guantanamo despite being approved for
transfer. Some have been in such limbo for over a decade.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/ppnews_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20230413/54cc6d21/attachment.htm>