U.S. Supreme Court
Supreme Court Tells D.C. Circuit to Reconsider Gitmo Torture Case
Posted Dec 15, 2008, 09:42 am CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss
The U.S. Supreme Court has directed a federal appeals court to reconsider the claims of four former Guantanamo detainees from the United Kingdom who claim they were tortured and their religious beliefs denigrated.
The court told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to reconsider its January decision to toss the suit, Rasul v. Myers, SCOTUSblog reports. The Supreme Court said the decision should be reconsidered in light of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Boumediene v. Bush, which said detainees have a right to challenge their detention in federal courts.
The order in Rasul paves the way for the Obama administration to take a position on the torture controversy and raises the prospect that detainees will be granted additional rights, SCOTUSblog says.
The federal appeals court had ruled in Rasul that the detainees’ suit against top Pentagon officials and military officers was based on conduct that was within the scope of their duties, and the detainees’ remedy was an administrative proceeding.
The detainees had claimed they were beaten, shackled in painful stress positions, threatened by dogs, subjected to extreme temperatures and deprived of adequate sleep, food, sanitation and medical care. They also claimed religious harassment, saying their captors forced them to shave their beards, denied copies of the Koran, interrupted them while praying, and threw a copy of the Koran in a toilet bucket.
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