Amicus Filing in Nashiri v. MacDonald

Now this is interesting: an amicus brief by retired military admirals and generals, on behalf of the appellant in Nashiri v. MacDonald.  That's the civil suit brought by military commission defendant Abd al-Rahim Hussein al-Nashiri, against Bruce MacDonald, the commissions' Convening Authority.  The district court rejected Al-Nashiri's claims, so he's taken them to the Ninth Circuit. Now supporting him are a group of retired military personnel---including Admirals Don Guter and John Hutson, both whom preceded MacDonald as the Navy's Judge Advocate General. The brief's "summary of the argument" section begins like this:

Amici Curiae support reversal of the dismissal below (1) to preserve the Presidential and Congressional powers to determine the geographic and temporal scope of war; (2) to avoid the fundamentally unfair consequences of altering substantive and procedural rights by revising the historical periods that the President and Congress affixed to hostilities; and (3) to protect the integrity of the military justice system and the safety of U.S. soldiers and citizens around the world.

Here, plaintiff Abd Al-Rahim Hussein Al-Nishari (“the accused” or “the appellant”), was arrested in 2002 in Dubai and has been held as a prisoner in Guantanamo Bay by the United States. (E.R. 76.) In September 2011, defendant and appellee Bruce MacDonald (“the appellee”), an administrative officer, issued orders to create a military commission empowered to try charges against the accused. (E.R. 86-116.) He charged the accused with crimes in connection with events in Yemen in early 2000 concerning the USS THE SULLIVANS attempted attack and the subsequent USS COLE bombing in October 2000, as well as an attempted attack on a French tanker, the M/V Limburg, in October 2002. (E.R. 96-104.)