[ad_1]
WASHINGTON — In his last days as Secretary of the Army, Ryan D. McCarthy has moved to thwart a federal decide’s order for an impartial examination of a mentally unwell prisoner at Guantánamo Bay who was beforehand tortured there, the Justice Department disclosed on Friday.
Lawyers for the prisoner, Mohammed al-Qahtani, 45, had obtained the order in March for 2 overseas docs and one from the U.S. Army to look at the person below an Army regulation to find out whether or not he ought to be repatriated to his native Saudi Arabia for psychiatric care.
The Defense Department has not permitted such a medical assessment for the reason that detention heart was established in January 2002, and the order was poised to change into an early take a look at of the Biden administration because it considers resuming releases from Guantánamo.
But on Friday, Justice Department legal professionals notified the U.S. District Court in Washington that Mr. McCarthy had signed a two-page memorandum on Monday excluding detainees at Guantánamo from the regulation that was the premise of the court docket order.
In March, Judge Rosemary M. Collyer dominated that the regulation required the medical assessment, and that if the docs discovered repatriating Mr. Qahtani to Saudi Arabia was in his greatest curiosity, she would order it.
The order rattled the Defense Department, which has fought for practically twenty years to dam civilian courts from deciding questions involving the detainees. Officials warned that, if an examination have been performed, others among the many present 40 detainees would search medical repatriation.
Judge Collyer has since retired, and one other decide, Ellen Segal Huvelle, upheld the order in August. The subsequent month an appeals court docket rejected a authorities pleading to delay the examination, leaving the Trump administration with a quandary: Permit the primary ever decisive exterior analysis of a Guantánamo detainee or, as earlier administrations have executed to keep away from court docket orders to launch a detainee, voluntarily switch Mr. Qahtani to a psychiatric hospital in Saudi Arabia.
It did neither, citing restrictions at Guantánamo in the course of the coronavirus pandemic.
Given Mr. McCarthy’s resolution to change the regulation, the Justice Department on Friday requested the court docket to vacate Judge Collyer’s order. “The entire legal basis underlying this court’s March 2020 Order has evaporated,” it mentioned.
Once Mr. Biden takes workplace subsequent week, his Justice Department might select to keep up the identical place or withdraw the request to the court docket.
Mr. Qahtani’s lawyer, Ramzi Kassem, known as the transfer “a last-ditch effort by the Trump administration to lock Joe Biden into a path of resisting the independent medical examination of a mentally ill man that the government has admitted torturing.”
Mr. Qahtani, who was identified with schizophrenia, was captured alongside the Pakistan-Afghanistan border three months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist assaults and subjected to 2 months of steady, brutal interrogation at Camp X-Ray at Guantánamo in late 2002 and early 2003.
Leaked paperwork present that Mr. Qahtani was disadvantaged of sleep and water, saved nude and was menaced by canines, whereas below the care of army medics.
“There is no real question that the examination will confirm my client’s severe illnesses and lead to his medical repatriation,” mentioned Mr. Kassem, a legislation professor whose clinic at City University of New York represents Mr. Qahtani.
Mr. Qahtani has been suspected of being considered one of a number of failed, aspirational twentieth hijackers within the Sept. 11 assaults. But he has by no means been charged with a criminal offense, partly as a result of he was tortured.
Stephen I. Vladeck, a professor on the University of Texas School of Law who follows Guantánamo litigation, mentioned the Army secretary has the authority to switch a regulation however the query possible confronting the court docket will likely be “whether the change is procedurally valid and whether it can be applied retroactively to this pending case.”
He additionally known as the timing suspicious, days earlier than Mr. McCarthy is relieved as Army secretary. “They lost on the rule. So they changed the rule.” He known as it “a pretty shady way to duck the issue.”
A Pentagon spokesman, Mike Howard, declined to touch upon the change, together with whether or not the Department of Defense’s basic counsel was consulted beforehand.
[ad_2]
Source link
