Bagram Detainees Repatriated to Pakistan, Is Habeas Appeal Moot?
A few weeks ago, Bobby and John reacted to a Washington Post story reporting that seven hundred Afghan detainees at Bagram Air Force Base whom the US transferred to Afghan custody earlier
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A few weeks ago, Bobby and John reacted to a Washington Post story reporting that seven hundred Afghan detainees at Bagram Air Force Base whom the US transferred to Afghan custody earlier this year may be released. Despite the custody transfer agreement, the U.S. still has its own detention facility at the base, in which it houses non-Afghan detainees. Now it seems that at least a few of those detainees have recently been transferred or repatriated. Six Pakistanis were recently repatriated, and one of them has a habeas appeal pending before the D.C. Circuit.
That detainee, Hamidullah, was just one of three Bagram detainees who simultaneously argued before the D.C. Circuit this fall in favor of overturning the district court's rejection of their habeas petitions. The United States informed the court this week that Hamidullah is no longer in U.S. custody, and so the United States believes that that particular case is now moot. So, the D.C. Circuit has ordered both parties to pull together arguments before Thanksgiving addressing that issue.
Media report that the current draft U.S.-Afghan agreement appears to leave untouched U.S. authority over Bagram Air Force Base.
Raffaela Wakeman is a Senior Director at In-Q-Tel. She started her career at the Brookings Institution, where she spent five years conducting research on national security, election reform, and Congress. During this time she was also the Associate Editor of Lawfare. From there, Raffaela practiced law at the U.S. Department of Defense for four years, advising her clients on privacy and surveillance law, cybersecurity, and foreign liaison relationships. She departed DoD in 2019 to join the Majority Staff of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, where she oversaw the Intelligence Community’s science and technology portfolios, cybersecurity, and surveillance activities. She left HPSCI in May 2021 to join IQT.
Raffaela received her BS and MS in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2009 and her law degree from Georgetown University Law Center in 2015, where she was recognized for her commitment to public service with the Joyce Chiang Memorial Award. While at the Department of Defense, she was the inaugural recipient of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s General Counsel Award for exhibiting the highest standards of leadership, professional conduct, and integrity.
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