A prisoner’s bid to end a fifteen-year stint at Guantanamo Bay, by arguing that the war in Afghanistan was over, had his hopes dashed in a federal court this week.
Moath al-Alwi, captured in 2001, argued that statements made by the previous administration, suggesting hostilities in Afghanistan had ceased, meant that prisoners of war from that conflict should be freed, in accordance with long-established law of war principles.
Alwi’s legal team specifically cited statements made by former President Obama in 2015. One was made during his annual State of the Union speech. The second statement, made a week later, claimed that the “combat mission in Afghanistan is over,” and “America’s longest war has come to a responsible and honorable end.”
US District Judge Richard Leon, however, disagreed. He ruled that the President’s statements had been misconstrued, and that, rather than ending, the war was taking on a new form.
“President Obama’s statements reflect a transition from Operation Enduring Freedom, which was the military’s active combat mission, to Operation Freedom’s Sentinel, a support and counterterrorism operation nonetheless entails active hostilities in Afghanistan,” Leon determined.
He added that the executive branch also made numerous other remarks “expressly stating that active hostilities persist in Afghanistan,” both before the courts and congress.
Leon ultimately affirmed a broad vision of executive war powers and authorities granted under the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force—ones that have been largely left unchecked during both the previous Obama and Bush administrations.
For example, Leon was unsympathetic to Alwi’s claim that his 15-year detention has “gone on for so long that it cannot be reconciled with the longstanding principles of war and cannot be justified under the AUMF.”
The judge concluded simply that the “duration of a conflict does not somehow excuse it from longstanding law of war principles.”
BuzzFeed reported that Alwi’s legal team would appeal the decision, which could set up a showdown at the federal appellate circuit in Washington–the only appellate court with nationwide jurisdiction.
The body, often a feeder court to the US Supreme Court, has yet to hear a case concerning the standing of the AUMF, as the war in Afghanistan drags on. Three other lower courts have struck down arguments similar to Alwi’s, but the detainees in those cases were transferred out of the military prison before their appeals could be heard.
By the end of his administration, President Obama had used transfer agreements to whittle the number of detainees at Guantanamo down to 41.
President Trump, however, has called for no further transfers out of the military prison. He has also suggested he would send American citizens to the facility.
