Al Hajji Voluntarily Dismisses Appeal

Earlier today, lawyers for Abdullah Bin Omar Al-Hajji moved to dismiss his appeal to the D.C. Circuit voluntarily, and without prejudice.   The government does not oppose the former Guantanamo detainee's request. Al-Hajji's, you may recall, was a constructive custody/collateral harms case.  The detainee had been transferred from Guantanamo to Libya, apparently in order to serve out a criminal sentence in a Libyan jail.  That lead the district court to reject the petitioner's claims of ongoing legal injury, and to dismiss his case on mootness grounds.  In particular, Judge Richard Leon batted away the constructive custody claim as "rank speculation." Al Hajji thus took his petition for writ of habeas corpus to the D.C. Circuit - where he today abandoned his effort.   This likely had something to do with the court of appeals past mootness cases, which rejected claims akin to Al Hajji's.