Judge Robertson's 2010 release order

Judge Robertson's 2010 release order was the federal district court’s decision granting Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s habeas corpus petition and directing his release from Guantánamo. Issued after a judge examined the government’s evidence and arguments, the order became a focal point in the dispute over the legal basis for Slahi’s detention. Its practical effect was overtaken by an appeal and a remand, leaving the question of his detention unresolved.

Petition and ruling

Slahi handwrote his habeas corpus petition in his cell at Camp Echo five years before James Robertson heard it. From August through December 2009, Robertson considered the petition in the district court. On March 22, 2010, he granted it and ordered Slahi released. The decision followed a close judicial examination of the government’s case; the account of the proceedings describes Robertson as the judge who had thoroughly reviewed that case.

The order arose within a broader series of Guantánamo habeas cases. By April 1, 2010, the government had lost 34 of 46 such cases. Robertson’s decision therefore came at a moment when the standards governing detention were being contested, and when the distinction between past association and active participation carried direct consequences for whether a detainee could lawfully be held.

The government’s case

At the time Robertson considered the petition, district courts were asking whether the government had shown that a petitioner was an active member of al-Qaeda when detained. Slahi had joined the organization in 1991 and sworn a loyalty oath, but maintained that his participation ended after the fall of the communist government in Afghanistan. The government relied on his intermittent contacts with people who remained active in al-Qaeda, including his brother-in-law and cousin Abu Hafs, to argue that he himself remained a member.

The court’s consideration of those contacts was not equivalent to finding that they constituted criminal material support. Robertson regarded the interactions as sporadic; the account of his reasoning describes them as consistent with Slahi trying to avoid close relationships with al-Qaeda members without making himself their enemy. A footnote in the later declassified, redacted version of the order also records that the government had initially argued Slahi could be detained under the Authorization for Use of Military Force on the theory that he aided the September 11 attacks, but abandoned that theory and acknowledged that he probably did not know about the attacks. The order thus sits against a record in which the government’s asserted grounds shifted and its claims were subject to judicial scrutiny.

Redaction and the public record

The order was initially classified. Two weeks after public criticism of the decision, the court released a declassified but redacted version. The released text made some of the government’s arguments visible while leaving parts of the document inaccessible, so the public account of the ruling remained incomplete. Redaction is not incidental to the order’s history: it shaped what readers could know about the case even as the decision itself became the subject of public debate.

The annotations accompanying the published manuscript place such gaps within a wider documentary record. They draw on public sources including declassified government documents, litigation, news reporting, and investigations by the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Senate. Their stated purpose is not to reconstruct classified text, but to identify information that can plausibly be connected to redactions when it is supported by public records or careful reading. The annotations also make their limits explicit: speculation is distinguished from confirmed content, and no claim is made that people with access to the unredacted manuscript verified the proposed explanations.

Appeal and unresolved effect

The administration filed a notice of appeal on March 26, four days after Robertson’s order. On November 5, 2010, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit sent Slahi’s case back to the district court for rehearing. In doing so, the appellate court accepted a looser standard for deciding whether a detainee was part of al-Qaeda: the government no longer had to show that the person was carrying out the organization’s orders or directions when taken into custody. The appeals court also emphasized that the government had not criminally indicted Slahi for material support to terrorists or al-Qaeda, and was not seeking detention on the ground that he aided the September 11 attacks.

The remand changed the legal framework in which the district court would reconsider Slahi’s intermittent contacts with active members, without converting those contacts into a criminal conviction. The case remained pending. The release order therefore marked a decisive judicial judgment, but not a final end to Slahi’s detention or to the legal dispute over what the government had established.