Late last Thursday, attorneys began a legal process to force the United States government to justify its imprisonment of people at the Guantánamo Bay offshore interrogation camp or release them.
Held without charges or access to a lawyer for years, these prisoners legally can challenge their detention in court, according to a Supreme Court ruling last June, "Rasul v. Bush."
The Bush administration, however, continues to block their access to legal counsel.
Lawyers from the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) titled their Thursday petition of habeas corpus, “John Does Nos. 1-570 v. Bush,” said CCR Deputy Legal Director Barbara Olshansky in a press release, “because they have no names and no faces. They have been disappeared by an Administration that shows as little regard for an order of the Supreme Court as it does for international law and human rights.”
U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina granted permission for the the suit to be filed and the "John Doe" names to be used, the Associated Press reported Friday.
“While over 70 Guantánamo detainees have lawsuits now pending in the D.C. District Court,” Olshansky said, “those petitions were actually brought by detainees’ family members. The vast majority of the detainees at Guantánamo have not been able to communicate with loved ones who have the ability to contact lawyers in the U.S.”
Doe v. Bush, she said, "means that they now actually do have their claims pending before a federal court on exactly the same basis as their fellow inmates."
Another CCR attorney on the case, Rachel Meeropol, said in the press release: "We hope that the filing of this document will not only force the U.S. Government to do what it has long promised to do, but will also encourage anyone around the world who thinks they may have a loved one at Guantánamo to contact the Center for Constitutional Rights at 212.614.6439 or bjo@ccr-ny.org"
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