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District Court: No Jurisdiction Over Emergency GTMO Motion on Water, Cold

Wells Bennett
Monday, April 15, 2013, 7:26 PM
That's the gist of this report, filed earlier today by Politico's Josh Gerstein:
A federal judge declined Monday to take action on behalf of a hunger-striking prisoner at Guantanamo Bay whose attorneys say his life is in danger because of a lack of clean water and adequate medical treatment. After an hour-long hearing Monday morning, U.S.

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That's the gist of this report, filed earlier today by Politico's Josh Gerstein:
A federal judge declined Monday to take action on behalf of a hunger-striking prisoner at Guantanamo Bay whose attorneys say his life is in danger because of a lack of clean water and adequate medical treatment. After an hour-long hearing Monday morning, U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Hogan ruled that he had no jurisdiction to act on the petition from Musa'ab Al-Madhwani, a Yemeni who has spent more than a decade at Guantanamo after being captured at what authorities say was an Al Qaeda safe house in Pakistan. Al-Madhwani  says he is on a hunger strike, as are at least dozens of other prisoners. Detainee lawyers say as many as 100 inmates are refusing food. On Saturday, scuffles broke out as all prisoners in the communal living camp at Guantanamo were moved into single-prisoner cells, according to the military. The military cited security concerns, including fears that prisoners were being coerced to join the hunger strike.
Background can be found here.

Wells C. Bennett was Managing Editor of Lawfare and a Fellow in National Security Law at the Brookings Institution. Before coming to Brookings, he was an Associate at Arnold & Porter LLP.

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