Human Rights First Welcomes the Release of Youths From Guantanamo Bay

“While we’re certainly pleased to see the administration recognize that these teenagers pose no serious threat to U.S. national security, this can be of little comfort to the young people who have just spent almost two years of their lives in a detention camp for reasons that remain unclear,” said Deborah Pearlstein, Director of the U.S. Law and Security Program at Human Rights First. “We hope this is an indication that the administration will now move quickly to resolve the legal status of the hundreds of other detainees still held in the camp,” Pearlstein added.

Since January 2002, the United States has held approximately 660 individuals - from more than 40 different countries - in a detention camp at Guantanamo Bay. The prisoners at Guantanamo have not been afforded hearings to determine their status as prisoners of war as required by the Geneva Conventions that the United States has long upheld. Nor has any yet been charged with a crime, though the administration has indicated that military commission proceedings will soon commence to try some of the detainees.

U.S. officials have released approximately 90 of the original detainees from Guantanamo, but because new arrivals have continued to flow into the camp, the overall number of detainees has remained largely stable.

As detailed in a ‘friend of the court’ brief, filed as the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights in Al Odah v. United States and Rasul v. Bush, U.S. law allows the detainees in Guantanamo to challenge their detention in U.S. courts. This is in keeping with the practices of other democracies like the United Kingdom and Israel, and international laws of war. The Supreme Court is expected to decide whether the detainees’ have a right to challenge their detention in U.S. courts by July.