D.C. Circuit Denies GTMO Detainee Al Bahlul’s Appeal of Life Sentence

This morning, the D.C. Circuit ruled that Guantanamo Bay detainee Ali Hamza Ahmad Suliman al Bahlul will continue serving the life sentence imposed by a military commission and affirmed multiple times by the U.S. Court of Military Commission Review (CMCR). Circuit Judges Gregory Katsas and Florence Pan and Senior Circuit Judge David Sentelle denied the petitions of al Bahlul to vacate the conspiracy conviction and life sentence against him or, in the alternative, send his case back to the CMCR for reconsideration. 

Al Bahlul, a Yemini native who joined Al Qaeda in the late 1990s, is currently serving a life sentence imposed in 2006 based on three convictions. In the years since, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit vacated two of the three convictions (providing material support for terrorism and soliciting others to commit war crimes)—but it kept the conspiracy conviction, and the CMCR reaffirmed his life sentence. 

Al Bahlul challenged his life sentence on four grounds. First, that the military commission lacked jurisdiction; second, that the CMCR should have sent his case back to the military commission for resentencing after the D.C. Circuit vacated two of the convictions against him; third, that the CMCR erred by determining on its own that the military commission would have given him a life sentence even if he had only been convicted on one charge; and fourth, that the CMCR erred by considering torture-obtained evidence in determining whether a life sentence remained appropriate. 

On al Bahlul’s argument that the military commission should resentence because its latest decision was based on torture-obtained evidence, the court agreed with the government’s argument that al Bahlul cannot raise an objection to the introduction of torture-obtained evidence now, as it wasn’t raised on initial appeal. (The military commission and CMCR recently decided in a separate Guantanamo case that torture-obtained evidence was usable as well.)

You can read the opinion here or below: