ACLU Asks Court to Order Hearing for Imprisoned Guantánamo Book Author
Motion Also Asks Court to Instruct Prison Officials to Reverse Harsh Restrictions Recently Imposed On Mohamedou Slahi
WASHINGTON — The American Civil Liberties Union today asked a federal court to order the Defense Department to hold a long-delayed hearing to review the detention of Guantánamo prisoner Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a Mauritanian citizen who the U.S. has detained for more than 13 years without charge or trial.
The filing comes in Slahi’s habeas case challenging his detention. He is the author of the international best-selling memoir released this year, “Guantánamo Diary.” In 2011, President Obama an executive order establishing the “Periodic Review Board” process and giving the secretary of defense one year to hold hearings and review the cases of indefinitely held Guantánamo detainees. Nearly four years later, Slahi has yet to be scheduled for this hearing, despite numerous requests from his attorneys.
Today’s motion also asks the court to order an end to recent deprivations imposed on Slahi, such as the confiscation of family photos, legal papers, and the personalized gifts given to him by guards, which were described in his book. Prison officials have given no reason for their actions, which have deprived Slahi of the few comforts he possessed to cope with his prolonged and indefinite imprisonment.
“Mohamedou Slahi should never have been locked up in the first place. Both the Constitution and international law demand that he be given a chance to prove that he should be set free,” said Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU National Security Project. “We’re asking the court to make the Obama administration follow its own rules, so an innocent man can finally go home after suffering for so long.”
An online petition demanding Slahi’s release has gathered nearly 50,000 signatures. Last week it was that the producers of Hollywood films including “Captain Phillips” and “Green Zone” have acquired the rights to turn Slahi’s book into a movie.
In 2010, the federal district judge in the case ordered Slahi released, but the Obama administration successfully appealed. The case was sent back to the district court with instructions to use looser standards to decide whether individuals can be held at Guantánamo. The matter is now awaiting further action from the district court.
The former chief prosecutor for the Guantánamo military commissions, Col. Morris Davis, has said that he was unable to find any evidence that Slahi had engaged in any acts of hostility against the United States. Another military prosecutor, Lt. Col. Stuart Couch, withdrew from the case after determining that the U.S. military extracted statements from Slahi by torture.
Slahi was born in Mauritania in 1970 and won a scholarship to attend college in Germany. In the early 1990s, Slahi fought with al-Qaeda when it was part of the Afghan anti-communist resistance supported by the U.S.. The federal judge who reviewed all the evidence in his case noted that the group then was very different from the one that later came into existence. He worked in Germany for several years as an engineer and returned to Mauritania in 2000. The following year, at the behest of the U.S., he was detained by Mauritanian authorities and rendered to a prison in Jordan. Later he was rendered again, first to Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan and finally, in August 2002, to the U.S. prison at Guantánamo, where he was subjected to severe torture.
Slahi was one of two so-called “Special Projects” whose treatment then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld personally approved. The abuse included beatings, extreme isolation, sleep deprivation, sexual molestation, frigid rooms, shackling in stress positions, and death threats against both Slahi and his mother.
Slahi’s book, the first and only memoir by a still-imprisoned Guantánamo detainee, was published from a 466-page handwritten manuscript. In January, after a years-long battle with government censors, the book was released in the United States with over 2,500 government redactions. It spent several weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list and has since been translated into multiple languages for publication in more than 25 countries.
Book excerpts and video and audio content are at:
Today’s motion is at:
/sites/default/files/field_document/slahi_habeas_petition_-_motion_for_order_to_show_cause.pdf
Today’s supporting declaration about Slahi’s treatment is at:
/sites/default/files/field_document/hollander_slahi_declaration_with_exhibits.pdf
More information on Periodic Review Boards is at:
/blog/speakeasy/definite-end-indefinite-detention-within-reach
National Security
Slahi v. Obama - Habeas Challenge to Guantánamo Detention
National Security
Slahi v. Obama - Habeas Challenge to Guantánamo Detention
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Press ReleaseDec 2024
Free Speech
National Security
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Press ReleaseDec 2024
National Security
Religious Liberty
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WASHINGTON – The Biden administration today released the first-ever national strategy to counter Islamophobia and related forms of bias and discrimination, including hate against Arab, Sikh, and South Asian Americans. In advance of the strategy, American Civil Liberties Union and its partners had urged the administration to overhaul government programs that reflect anti-Muslim discrimination. In particular, we have called for urgent action to constrain governmental agencies from continuing to exercise their authorities and technology to wrongly surveil and investigate, watchlist, and question and detain Muslims at the border, as well as deny immigration benefits to people from Muslim-majority countries. While the White House raised expectations that many of these issues would be addressed, the final strategy ended up falling far short. The following is a statement from Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU’s National Security Project: “While this strategy acknowledges discrimination and its harms, it does little to end them and is a squandered opportunity. For decades, American officials have invoked national security to pass laws and implement programs that disproportionately harm Muslims and people perceived to be Muslim. A serious anti-discrimination strategy would concretely address multiple bias-infused government practices that deny our communities equal participation in civic life and our democracy, like federal watchlisting, surveillance, and investigation. We’re profoundly frustrated that the administration didn’t take even the basic, overdue step of recognizing that anti-Muslim discrimination is uniquely normalized and embedded in government policies.” -
VirginiaDec 2024
National Security
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Our client, Nizar Trabelsi, is in the United States against his will. The federal government brought him here from Belgium more than a decade ago and charged him with terrorism-related crimes. At trial, the government’s case failed: a federal jury found Mr. Trabelsi not guilty. But instead of allowing Mr. Trabelsi to return to Belgium after his acquittal, the United States placed him in highly restrictive immigration detention and began an ongoing effort to force him to Tunisia, where he was born and where he will very likely be tortured. Mr. Trabelsi’s detention violates the Constitution, immigration law, and the extradition treaty between the United States and Belgium. Through this lawsuit, he seeks to return to Belgium, and he demands an immediate improvement of his detention conditions. -
Press ReleaseDec 2024
National Security
Immigrants' Rights
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ALEXANDRIA, Va. — This week, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia ruled that the court does not have jurisdiction to decide whether the government can continue to detain Nizar Trabelsi, a Tunisian national who was brought to the United States against his will for prosecution and was cleared of all charges last year. The ruling means the United States will be able to continue to detain Mr. Trabelsi while it attempts to deport him to Tunisia, where he was born and where, as an immigration judge ruled earlier this year, he will likely face torture. The court also concluded that even if it did have jurisdiction over Mr. Trabelsi’s case, his claims challenging the government’s detention of him would fail. “Reviewing claims that the government is holding someone unlawfully is at the core of the judicial function, and we’re heartbroken for our client that the court got this so wrong,” said Brett Max Kaufman, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Center for Democracy. “The government’s arguments in defense of Mr. Trabelsi’s detention makes a hash of the Constitution, immigration laws, and its own extradition treaty.” In 2013, the United States forcibly extradited Mr. Trabelsi from Belgium to face criminal charges in the United States. In July 2023, after almost 10 years of highly restrictive pretrial detention, a federal jury cleared Mr. Trabelsi of all charges. But instead of releasing Mr. Trabelsi or returning him to Belgium, the U.S. transferred him to immigration detention, wrongly treating him as an applicant for admission and placing him in the deportation process. Over the years, the Belgian government has issued multiple formal diplomatic requests asking the U.S. to facilitate his return, but the U.S. has refused to send him back. Mr. Trabelsi filed a lawsuit challenging the government's authority to detain him. He also sought immediate improvements to his detention conditions. Those claims were not part of the court’s ruling today, and will continue to be litigated on a separate track. “Mr. Trabelsi only wants to return to Belgium after being illegally extradited to the United States, held for ten years, and then acquitted by a jury of any crimes,” said Nicole Hallett, clinical professor of law and director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at the University of Chicago Law School. “He cannot be held indefinitely and we will continue to fight to make sure that justice ultimately prevails.” Mr. Trabelsi is represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, the University of Chicago Law School’s Immigrants’ Rights Clinic, the ACLU of Virginia, and Professor Jonathan Hafetz of Seton Hall Law School. The complaint in Trabelsi v. Crawford was filed against Jeffrey Crawford, warden of the Farmville Detention Center where Mr. Trabelsi is being held; Liana Castano, ICE field office director for the Washington Field Office; Alejandro Mayorkas, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security; and Merrick Garland, U.S. attorney general.