Slahi v. Obama Release Order and Government Appeal

Slahi v. Obama Release Order and Government Appeal refers to the 2010 federal court order directing Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s immediate release and the government’s appeal of that decision. The appeal did not bring his imprisonment to an end: he remained at Guantánamo without ever having been charged with a crime, making the order a consequential but unrealized intervention in his detention.

The Release Order and Appeal

The account identifies the year and outcome of the ruling but provides no detailed explanation of the judge’s reasoning or the government’s arguments on appeal. Its central fact is direct: in 2010, a federal judge ordered Slahi released immediately, and the government appealed. The distinction between an order for release and an actual release is essential to the episode; the ruling did not return Slahi to freedom.

Continued Imprisonment

The book’s account places the legal action within a much longer detention. Slahi had been transferred through Jordan and Bagram to Guantánamo, where he remained imprisoned; the United States government had never charged him with a crime. The appellate challenge therefore left unresolved the basic condition the order had addressed: his continued confinement without a criminal charge.

The Case and the Public Record

The release ruling appears in a record shaped by secrecy as well as litigation. The 466-page manuscript Slahi wrote by hand in his Guantánamo cell in 2005 was censored by the government with more than 2,500 black-bar redactions before its later editorial preparation. Larry Siems describes public records, including government documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests and investigations by the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Senate, as sources for annotations that help readers assess the manuscript’s context. He distinguishes those public sources and contextual judgments from any claim to reconstruct the hidden text: the annotations do not purport to recover classified material or establish the original wording beneath the redactions.

Editorial Access and the Meaning of the Ruling

The continuing detention also restricted Slahi’s participation in the publication of his own account. Larry Siems had not met or communicated with him and requested a confidential meeting before submitting the edited manuscript, hoping to check that it represented Slahi’s content and intent. The Pentagon refused access to detainees for anyone who was not their legal counsel. Slahi had authorized publication in edited form, but could not participate in or respond to the editing. Against this background, the 2010 order stands not as the end of his confinement but as a measure of the distance between a formal decision for release and the continuing reality of imprisonment. Siems wrote that the government’s explanations for the detention remained vague and shifting, and that the long secrecy surrounding the diary had impeded public understanding of the case.