Press Releases
Detainee Policy
American Citizen Urges Court To Review His Prolonged Detention in Iraq and to Protect the Rule
A federal lawsuit filed today in Washington, D.C., challenges the Executive Branchs prolonged detention of an American citizen in Iraq without court review. The suit, entitled Munaf v. Harvey, was filed by the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, with co-counsel Burke Pyle LLC and the MacArthur Justice Center at Northwestern University School of Law.
– 08/16/06
Brennan Center Files Brief Rebuffing Claim to Unilateral Detention Authority
The U.S. Government has made the unprecedented claim that it can hold a U.S. citizen virtually incommunicado and then hand him over to potential torture. A brief filed last Friday by lawyers for a U.S. citizen detained in Iraq for more than nineteen months decisively responds to this extraordinary claim of unchecked executive power.
– 06/26/06
Former Judges Denounce Detention of Innocent Men at Guantanamo
The Brennan Center for Justice and the law firm of Jenner & Block LLP filed a brief yesterday on behalf of former federal judges in Qassim v. Bush. The brief argues that our federal courts have the power to end the four-year-plus detention of two men in the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base who the Government concedes are innocent, but who remain imprisoned. Such an arbitrary exercise of executive authority, contend the former judges, cannot go unchecked by the courts.
– 02/22/06
Court Issues Injunction Blocking US Citizen’s Transfer to Torture
Today, Judge Ricardo M. Urbina of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., issued a preliminary injunction barring transfer of U.S. citizen to Iraqi authorities where he would be at grave risk of torture. Judge Urbina rejected the governments sweeping claim that federal courts have no role protecting U.S. citizens liberties when the U.S. government detains them overseas. His decision transforms an emergency order, issued on February 3, into an ongoing preliminary injunction.
– 02/13/06
Brief Forestalls Transfer of US Citizen Held Without Hearing or Charge to Iraqi Custody
Petitioner Shawqi Omar and his wife and son as next friends hereby submit supplemental briefing requested by the Court in support of the request for a Temporary Restraining Order preventing the United States government from transferring Mr. Omar, a United States citizen, to Iraqi authorities.
– 02/04/06
Brennan Center Files Brief in Guantanamo Detainees’ Case
The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law yesterday filed a friend of the court brief arguing that the Detainee Treatment Act does not cut off meaningful access to the courts for detainees at Guantanamo Bay.
– 01/26/06
Constitutional Scholars Voice Grave Concern at Court-Stripping Amendment
A wide coalition of leading law professors today urged Congress to reject efforts to strip the federal courts of the ability to hear habeas corpus cases from the detainees at Guantanamo Bay. The letter, signed by more than 350 law professors, came in response to the passage late last week of an amendment to the Defense Appropriations Act by Senator Lindsey Graham. The Graham Amendment apparently seeks to cut off the cases filed by detainees at Guantanamo Bay.
– 11/14/05
Brennan Center for Justice Files Brief in Jose Padilla Case
An amicus (friend of the court) brief was filed today by the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty and National Security Project at NYU School of Law in Jose Padilla v. Commander C.T. Hanft, supporting the District of South Carolina Court’s finding the detention of Jose Padilla to be in violation of the Constitution.
– 02/14/05
Court Steps In To Block US Citizen’s Transfer to Torture
Last Friday, February 3, 2006, Judge Ricardo M. Urbina of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., issued an order barring the U.S. Government from transferring an American citizen, Shawqi Omar, to Iraqi authorities where he would be at grave risk of torture. Judge Urbina issued this emergency order last week to stop Mr. Omars possible midnight transfer to Iraqi hands and has asked for further briefing about the pivotal Separation of Powers issues raised by the case.
– 02/07/05