In Guantánamo Case, U.S. Government Says It Can Indefinitely Detain Anyone — Even U.S. Citizens

The Intercept – by Murtaza Hussain

FOR OVER 17 years, Moath al-Alwi has been held at Guantánamo Bay without charge. A Yemeni citizen, al-Alwi is one of Guantánamo’s “forever prisoners,” those whom the U.S. government has not charged with a crime but is unwilling to release. On June 10, the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal in his case, the latest setback in al-Alwi’s long effort to obtain due process rights. Even though the court wouldn’t take al-Alwi up, Justice Stephen G. Breyer wrote that it would only be a matter of time before the court had to grapple with the forever prisoners and the scope of the government’s power to hold them.

The Supreme Court rejection — and Breyer’s comments — briefly brought al-Alwi’s case back to national attention. Little noted, however, were the eyebrow-raising assertions that the government has made in this case about its powers to indefinitely detain not just al-Alwi, but anyone — including U.S. citizens.

In a filing with the Supreme Court this April, lawyers for the Justice Department argued that the United States can continue to hold al-Alwi without charging him, an argument that they haven’t made since the era of President George W. Bush. The lawyers also went out of their way to stress that even if he were a U.S. citizen, they would have the power to detain him indefinitely.

“There is no bar to this Nation’s holding one of its own citizens as an enemy combatant,” the filing read. Were al-Alwi a citizen, they argued, he “would pose the same threat of returning to the front during the ongoing conflict.” There were no “constitutional questions” raised by this hypothetical, they maintained.

Read the rest here: https://theintercept.com/2019/06/21/guantanamo-bay-indefinite-detention/