At Historic Habeas Corpus Hearing, Guantanamo's 'Dangerous Experiment in Indefinite Detention' Challenged

Lawyers representing a group of men held for over a decade without charge at Guantánamo asked a federal court on Wednesday to provide judicial intervention to stop the men’s arbitrary and unlawful imprisonment—continued detention, the legal team says, that is fueled by President Donald Trump’s “executive hubris and raw animus.”

“Our dangerous experiment in indefinite detention, after 16 years, has run its course,” said Baher Azmy, legal director at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), who argued before Judge Thomas Hogan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

CCR, human rights organization Reprieve, and other counsel filed on January 11—the offshore prison’s 16th anniversary—a challenge to the men’s indefinite detention. The habeas corpus motion (pdf) references the “devastating psychological and physiological consequences” and “conditions devised to break human beings” the men continue to experience. In addition to violating the constitutional right to due process, the motion argues:

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