According to the United States

Department of Defense Department of Defence or Department of Defense may refer to: Current departments of defence * Department of Defence (Australia) * Department of National Defence (Canada) * Department of Defence (Ireland) * Department of National Defense (Philippin ...

, it held more than two hundred Afghan detainees in Guantanamo prior to May 15, 2006. They had been captured and classified as

enemy combatants Enemy combatant is a person who, either lawfully or unlawfully, engages in hostilities for the other side in an armed conflict. Usually enemy combatants are members of the armed forces of the state with which another state is at war. In the case ...

in warfare following the US and allies' invasion of Afghanistan to overthrow the

Taliban The Taliban (; ps, طالبان, ṭālibān, lit=students or 'seekers'), which also refers to itself by its state (polity), state name, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a Deobandi Islamic fundamentalism, Islamic fundamentalist, m ...

and disrupt terrorist networks. Originally, the US held such prisoners in sites in Afghanistan, but needed a facility to detain them where they could be interrogated. It opened the

Guantanamo Bay detention camp The Guantanamo Bay detention camp ( es, Centro de detención de la bahía de Guantánamo) is a United States military prison located within Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, also referred to as Guantánamo, GTMO, and Gitmo (), on the coast of Guant ...

on January 11, 2002, and transported the enemy combatants there. The

United States Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...

's ruled in ''

Rasul v. Bush ''Rasul v. Bush'', 542 U.S. 466 (2004), was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court in which the Court held that foreign nationals held in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp could petition federal courts for writs of ''habeas corpus ...

'' (2004) that the detainees had the right of ''

habeas corpus ''Habeas corpus'' (; from Medieval Latin, ) is a recourse in law through which a person can report an unlawful detention or imprisonment to a court and request that the court order the custodian of the person, usually a prison official, t ...

'' to challenge their detention under the US Constitution. That summer, the Department of Defense stopped transferring detained men to Guantanamo. On September 6, 2006,

United States President The president of the United States (POTUS) is the head of state and head of government of the United States of America. The president directs the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United State ...

George W. Bush George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush family, and son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush, he ...

announced the transfer of 14

high value detainees Extrajudicial prisoners of the United States, in the context of the early twenty-first century War on Terrorism, refers to foreign nationals the United States detains outside of the legal process required within United States legal jurisdiction. ...

to Guantanamo, including several Afghans. Other Afghans have been transferred to the camp since then.

List of individuals

References

External links

Human Rights First blog: Military Commissions
*

Human Rights First Human Rights First (formerly known as the Lawyers Committee for International Human Rights) is a nonpartisan, 501(c)(3), international human rights organization based in New York City and Washington, D.C. In 2004, Human Rights First started its " ...

Guantánamo by the Numbers (2010)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Afghan Detainees In Guantanamo *

Afghan Afghan may refer to: *Something of or related to Afghanistan, a country in Southern-Central Asia *Afghans, people or citizens of Afghanistan, typically of any ethnicity ** Afghan (ethnonym), the historic term applied strictly to people of the Pas ...

Afghanistan–United States relations

List of individuals

See also

References

External links