Amnesty International Welcomes US Supreme Court's Decision to Instruct Appeals Court to Reconsider Former Guantanamo Detainees

Larry Cox, executive director
of Amnesty International USA, issued the following statement in response
to the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to instruct the U.S. Circuit Court
of Appeals for the District of Columbia to reconsider the lawsuit of four
former Guantanamo Bay detainees -- Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal, Rhuhel Ahmed
and Jamal Al-Harith. The men are British citizens or residents and were
returned to the United Kingdom in 2004.

"We applaud the Supreme Court's efforts
to guide the United States back to the rule of law by ordering the Appeals
Court to reconsider this case's claims of torture and abuse of the men's
religious rights. It is clearer and clearer that the Bush administration's
detention and interrogation policies not only violated domestic and international
standards of due process, but also the nation's moral values.

"Amnesty International hopes that the Appeals
Court will carefully reconsider its decision in light of the U.S. Supreme
Court's significant Boumediene ruling of June 2008. It is important
to help to provide answers and closure to the four men who were held without
charge in Guantanamo Bay and then released. It is the least the U.S. government
can do."

In June 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled
in Boumediene v. Bush that detainees held in the U.S.-controlled
detention facility at Guantanamo Bay have the right to challenge their
detention in U.S. federal courts.

Amnesty International is a Nobel Peace Prize-winning
grassroots activist organization with more than 2.2 million supporters,
activists and volunteers in more than 150 countries campaigning for human
rights worldwide. The organization investigates and exposes abuses, educates
and mobilizes the public, and works to protect people wherever justice,
freedom, truth and dignity are denied.