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Asadullah Haroon Gul was denied access to a lawyer. He was acquitted in Guantanamo for 14 years; his release is now ordered.
His lawyer told Al Jazeera that an American judge ruled that the United States had no legal basis to detain an Afghan man in the notorious Cuban Guantanamo Bay American prisoner of war camp, laying the foundation for his possible release.
Asadullah Haroon Gul is an Afghan national. He has been detained in Guantanamo since he was captured by the Afghan army in the eastern city of Jalalabad and handed over to the US military in June 2007.
U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta ruled on the habeas corpus petition, dismissing the argument that the U.S. government continues to retain Gul Detained in Guantanamo.
“The result of the petition was that it was approved,” Gul’s lawyer Tara Plochocki said, and she was “happy” with the judge’s decision.
According to the American legal advocacy organization Reprieve, Gul was detained in Guantanamo prison for 14 years without being charged, and was denied access to a lawyer for the first 9 years of his detention. In 2016, his lawyer filed a petition in the Federal Court of Washington, D.C., claiming that his detention was illegal.
The details of the judge’s ruling are temporarily classified as confidential, but Gul’s lawyers said the result is clear.
“The judge ruled that his detention was illegal. As with any other court order against the US government, the Constitution has an obligation to affect that order. So, this should mean that he is released immediately,” Plohoki told Al Jazeera.
Sehar Bibi holds a photo of his son Asadullah in the Sharm el Shatu refugee camp near Peshawar in northwestern Pakistan [Abdul Majeed/AFP]Habeas corpus is a centuries-old principle of British and American common law that allows people who have been wrongfully imprisoned to question the basis for their continued detention.
Although the U.S. Supreme Court Reign in 2008 Plocjoki said that Guantanamo detainees have the right to apply for habeas corpus, and Judge Mehta’s ruling is the first time in 10 years that a detainee has won a habeas corpus.
Gul was a member of a group called Hezb-e-Islami or the Islamic Party of Afghanistan, which reached a peace agreement with the Western-backed Afghan government in Kabul in 2016.
His lawyer argued that since hostilities in Afghanistan have ceased, he should be released, but the judge rejected these arguments.
Gul has never been a member of the Taliban, Al-Qaida, or any organization related to Al-Qaida, nor has he fought against the United States. He claimed in court documents that when he was captured, he was on a business trip from a refugee camp in Pakistan to Afghanistan, where he was living with his family at the time.
The judge’s ruling indicated that the government lawyer failed to prove that Gul may continue to be detained because of any connection with Al-Qaida.
“We are the first to question the actual meaning of the statute and how the government interprets it” and whether the United States “extends its detention power in any necessary way”, Plochocki said.
Importantly, before the judge’s ruling, the U.S. Military Review Committee ruled that Gul’s release was safe on October 7 and that he no longer needed to be detained, citing the “lack of leadership of extremist organizations” and “the lack of a clear ideological basis” “His previous behavior”.
“The committee’s recommendations are welcome, but we should remember that Asadullah spent more than 14 years in prison without charge or trial,” said Mark Maher, a probation US lawyer, in a statement. .
“Asadullah missed his daughter’s entire childhood. He should be reunited with his family as soon as possible, but there is no way to recover what they have lost.”
Attorneys from the Justice Department — who have always defended the government’s power to detain Gour — any effort to appeal the district judge’s decision will be undermined by the review committee’s decision to release him.
Haroon Gul is one of them 39 people are still being held in Guantanamo It is now one of the 13 people approved for release by the Military Review Committee. Some people have been granted permission for many years, but still struggle in prison.
President Joe Biden has pledged to close Guantanamo Prison. Between 2002 and 2017, Guantanamo Prison held more than 740 men-usually without any formal charges. In some cases, Tortured.
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