Al Odah v. United States

On March 11, 2003 the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled on Al Odah v. United States 321 F.3d 1134 (2003 C.A.D.C.). The short facts are as followed "aliens captured abroad during hostilities in Afghanistan and held abroad in United States military custody at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba brought three actions contesting the legality and conditions of their confinement. The ultimate question presented in each case is whether the district court had jurisdiction to adjudicate their actions.

The complaint alleges: The complaint alleges that the detainees were in Afghanistan and Pakistan as volunteers providing humanitarian aid; that local villagers seeking bounties seized them and handed them over to United States forces; and that they were transferred to Guantanamo Bay sometime between January and March 2002. A representative of the United States Embassy in Kuwait informed the Kuwaiti government of their whereabouts...plaintiffs claim a denial of due process under the Fifth Amendment, tortious conduct in violation of the law of nations and a treaty of the United States, and arbitrary and unlawful governmental conduct. They seek a declaratory judgment and an injunction ordering that they be informed of any charges against them and requiring that they be permitted to consult with counsel and meet with their families. Id. at 1136.

The court held that the rule put forward in Eisentrager 339 U.S. 763 (1950) precluded the aliens from claiming habeas corpus. The majority of the opinion breaks down the courts interpretation of the applicability of habeas corpus to aliens being held at a military detention facility that is on land leased to the United States military. The Court pays short attention to Filartiga or the Alien Tort Statute holding: the detainees are in all relevant respects in the same position as the prisoners in Eisentrager. They cannot seek release based on violations of the Constitution or treaties or federal law; the courts are not open to them. Whatever other relief the detainees seek, their claims necessarily rest on alleged violations of the same category of laws listed in the habeas corpus statute, and are therefore beyond the jurisdiction of the federal courts. Nothing in Eisentrager turned on the particular jurisdictional language of any statute; everything turned on the circumstances of those seeking relief, on the authority under which they were held, and on the consequences of opening the courts to them. With respect to the detainees, those circumstances, that authority, and those consequences differ in no material respect from Eisentrager. Id at 1145