Sorting out the new Guantanamo cases

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Lyle Denniston Law News

Sorting out the new Guantanamo cases

Two major new appeals to the Supreme Court, raising fundamental issues about the government’s power to use Guantanamo military courts to try war crimes, have been bogged down for weeks in difficulties over getting security clearance for documents in one of the cases.

Last week, all of this got sorted out, and the two cases have now started moving through the court’s process, on the same timetable. The cases have finally appeared on the docket, but in somewhat confusing form.

Both cases are shown as if they had arrived at the court and were placed on the docket last Monday, an action that starts the court’s normal schedule for a new case. Under that schedule, the government is due to file its responses – unless it obtains more time to do so, which appears likely — on May 31, after the ordinary 30-day period. (If the government does get more time to respond, the court may take no action on the two cases until early in its next term, starting in October.)

The docket pages also show this: the petition in the case of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri (now docketed at 16-8966) was filed on January 17, and in the case of Ali Hamza Ahmad Suliman al-Bahlul (16-1307), on March 28.