[JURIST] A judge in the US District Court for the District of Columbia [official website] issued a confidential ruling last week denying a habeas corpus [LII materials] petition by Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive] detainee Adham Mohammed Ali Awad, the Miami Herald reported [text] Monday. Yemeni native Ali Awad was detained following a skirmish and standoff outside a hospital in Afghanistan in 2002 and has been held at Guantanamo ever since. There is no record that formal charges have been levied against Ali Awad, a situation that exemplifies many of the issues [San Francisco Chronicle report] facing Guantanamo detainees. With Ali Awad's health reportedly failing [detainee status report, PDF], it is unclear whether the government will act quickly to bring a case against him.

Since the US Supreme Court's June 2008 ruling in Boumediene v. Bush [opinion, PDF; JURIST report] that Guantanamo detainees could challenge their imprisonment in federal court through the use of habeas corpus motions, several detainees have been granted release. Last month, Guantanamo detainee Mohammed Jawad was ordered released [JURIST report] when a federal judge granted his habeas petition. Jawad's release came less than two weeks after the same judge ordered that all of Jawad's statements elicited by torture be suppressed [JURIST report]. Jawad faced charges of attempted murder [JURIST report] for a grenade attack on US soldiers in Kabul in 2002. Also last month, a federal judge ordered the release [JURIST report] of Kuwaiti Guantanamo Bay detainee Khaled Al-Mutairi.