Supreme Court of the United States

The Supreme Court of the United States gave Guantánamo detainees the right to challenge their detention through habeas corpus, a ruling that made federal review available to Mohamedou Ould Slahi. Its decision in Boumediene v. Bush did not itself decide Slahi’s case; it established the right he later invoked before a district judge, who ordered his release.

The Boumediene Ruling

On June 12, 2008, the Supreme Court ruled 5–4 in Boumediene v. Bush that detainees at Guantánamo had a right to challenge their detention through habeas corpus. The decision addressed access to a legal process by which detainees could contest the basis for confinement. In the book’s chronology, it marks a consequential change: a detainee held at Guantánamo could bring a challenge before a federal court.

Slahi’s Habeas Petition

Slahi had handwritten a petition for a writ of habeas corpus on March 3, 2005, more than three years before the Supreme Court’s ruling. From August through December 2009, Judge James Robertson heard that petition in the U.S. District Court. On March 22, 2010, Robertson granted it and ordered Slahi’s release. The sequence distinguishes the Supreme Court’s role in recognizing the right to challenge detention from the district court’s later consideration of Slahi’s individual petition.

The Case Before the District Court

The government’s position, as described in the account of the later appellate review, was that Slahi could be detained because he was considered part of al-Qaeda: it cited his oath of allegiance, associations with members, hosting of leaders, and referral of aspiring jihadists to an operative. The account also explains that district courts hearing Guantánamo habeas cases assessed whether the government could show that a petitioner was an active member of the organization at the time of detention. Slahi had joined al-Qaeda in 1991, but maintained that his participation ended with the fall of Afghanistan’s communist government. These details place his petition within the factual and legal dispute that federal habeas review made possible; they are not findings attributed to the Supreme Court’s Boumediene ruling.

Significance and Limits

The ruling’s importance in Slahi’s story lies in the avenue of review it opened, not in a direct judgment on his guilt, detention, or release. No charge sheet had been drawn up against him in Guantánamo, and the account notes that the government did not argue in the 2009 habeas proceedings that he was a major al-Qaeda figure or had taken part in al-Qaeda plans or attacks. The Supreme Court’s decision therefore forms part of the institutional setting for Slahi’s legal challenge, while the 2010 release order belongs to Judge Robertson’s district-court proceeding.