US Launches Secret Bid to Stop Release of Hunger-Striking Guantánamo Detainee
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – In an extremely rare legal maneuver, the Obama administration has challenged a legal request to free a hunger-striking Guantánamo Bay detainee entirely in secret.
US officials said the objection to freeing Tariq Ba Odah, who is undernourished to the point of starvation, and the decision to challenge his legal gambit outside of public view, are indications that the Obama administration will fight tenaciously to stop detainees from seeking freedom in federal courts, despite Barack Obama’s oft-repeated pledge to close Guantánamo.
Late on Friday, the US justice department submitted a long-awaited filing in Ba Odah’s habeas corpus petition. The filing was kept under seal, a rarity for a challenge to the so-called “great writ,” the underpinning of Anglo-American jurisprudence, The Guardian reported.
The filing itself simply reads: “Sealed opposition.”
Attorneys for Ba Odah are currently reviewing the sealed filing but said they cannot comment on the substance yet. Keeping the US opposition secret is “rare and unnecessary,” said Wells Dixon of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has Ba Odah as a client.
Ba Odah, a 36-year-old Yemeni who has spent 13 years at Guantánamo, currently risks dying in the Guantánamo Bay facility where he has spent a third of his life. He weighs 74 pounds (34kg), the result of years of rejecting food and forced feeding through a tube inserted through his nose into his stomach.
The Obama administration’s 2009 review cleared the Yemeni national for transfer, an indication the government does not possess information sufficient to charge him with an offense nor considers him a threat to US or allied security.
In June, lawyers for Ba Odah submitted into the court record statements from doctors indicating that his weight loss – he weighs approximately 56% of his ideal body weight – has reached the point of irreparable medical harm.
Ba Odah’s lawyers reacted with surprise and anger at the government’s sealed challenge. While they hoped the US would not oppose the Yemeni’s request for freedom, they also did not expect the US to keep its reasons for the challenge secret.
National-security lawyers said they could not think of a case where the government had filed a sealed challenge to a habeas petition.
