IACHR: Djamel Ameziane v. United States

Following the events of 9/11, the US and its NATO allies engaged in military operations in Afghanistan with UN approval.  Beginning in February 2002, the US began to transfer suspected terrorists to its Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a black hole, where US authorities claimed that the law didn't apply because these were not "prisoners of war," entitled to protection under Geneva III, but "unlawful enemy combatants," a term not used in the Geneva Conventions.  The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (Commission), a principal organ of the Organization of American States, in March 2002, issued precautionary measures for the Guantanamo detainees, a kind of interim relief, when the beneficiary is in urgent danger of irreparable harm, and called upon the US to clarify their legal status, since the detainees were being held without charge.  These measures were reiterated and expanded over the years as further information about the status and conditions these detainees were under were brought to light.

On August 6, 2008, the Center for Constitutional Rights and the Center for Justice and International Law presented the first individual case of a Guantanamo detainee, Djamel Ameziane, an Algerian Muslim. who had fled Algeria, to the Commission.  It should be noted that the Commission is the only international human rights body, where persons may file petitions alleging that the US has violated their human rights.  The US has ratified the UN Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, but it has not accepted the first Optional Protocol, which gives individuals the right to file petitions against the US with the UN Human Rights Committee.

Mr. Ameziane was held in Guantanamo from 2002 until he was forcibly expelled to Algeria in December 2013, in violation of the principle of non-refoulement.  During his detention he suffered torture, solitary confinement, beatings, lack of medical care, insults to his religion, etc. and, most importantly, the total lack of access to habeas corpus, or any judicial remedy, to provide a rationale for his confinement.  In October 2008, four months after the Boumediene Supreme Court decision, he was authorized to be transferred out of Guantanamo, but he feared being returned to Algeria where, as a Muslim, he had been persecuted, and the US authorities were unwilling to send him anywhere else.

The Commission's Merits decision on the case was issued on April 22, 2020.  This is the Commission's first decision on a case involving a Guantanamo detainee and calls upon the US, inter alia, to repeal the Military Commissions Act and the Detainee Treatment Act.  The Commission considers these laws tantamount to impermissible amnesty laws, because they provide a complete defense to the prosecution for crimes committed in connection with the detention and interrogation of these detainees on the basis of legal guidance in force at the time, which indicated that certain interrogation techniques amounting to torture were legal.  This thoughtful and important decision is 70 pages long and deserves greater consideration and dissemination than it has received until now.