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US releases Boumediene from Gitmo
WASHINGTON (AP) - The United States on Friday released the Guantanamo Bay prisoner who was at the center of a Supreme Court battle giving detainees the right to challenge their confinement, an Obama administration official said. Lakhdar Boumediene left the U.S. naval facility in Cuba Friday headed to relatives in France, said the official, who spoke on a condition of anonymity because the release was not yet cleared for announcement.
| Guess it's okay to bomb US embassies again ... |
| It will be interesting to see how France feels about this decision in a year or two. |
Boumediene was arrested along with five other Algerians in 2001 in Bosnia, suspected in a bomb plot against the U.S. embassy in Sarajevo. He arrived in Guantanamo in January 2002.
President Barack Obama has promised to close the prison at Guantanamo and has urged allies to help take prisoners from there. France promised to take one Guantanamo prisoner when Obama attended the NATO summit in April and said last week it would accept Boumediene.
In June 2008, the Supreme Court ruled in a case called Boumediene v. Bush that foreign Guantanamo Bay detainees have rights under the Constitution to challenge their detention in civilian courts. On a 5-4 split, the majority said the U.S. government was violating the rights of prisoners there and that the system the Bush administration put in place to classify suspects as enemy combatants and review those decisions is inadequate.
| Perhaps the worst ruling since Plessy v Ferguson ... |
Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the court, said, "The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times."
| But the Constitution already provided for the handling of foreign nationals captured in time of war, Tony, you guys on the Court forgot that ... |
| I'm sure they'll have the opportunity to revisit this decision in the not-too-distant future. The mills of God, and all that. |
Posted by: Steve White 2009-05-16 |
