The Military Commissions Act of 2009, which amended the

Military Commissions Act of 2006 The Military Commissions Act of 2006, also known as HR-6166, was an Act of Congress signed by President George W. Bush on October 17, 2006. The Act's stated purpose was "to authorize trial by military commission for violations of the law of ...

, was passed to address concerns by 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 ...

. In ''

Boumediene v. Bush ''Boumediene v. Bush'', 553 U.S. 723 (2008), was a writ of ''habeas corpus'' submission made in a civilian court of the United States on behalf of Lakhdar Boumediene, a naturalized citizen of Bosnia and Herzegovina, held in military detention by ...

'' (2008) the court had ruled that the

was unconstitutional in suspending the right of detainees to ''

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 ...

''. The court ruled that

detainees Detention is the process whereby a state or private citizen lawfully holds a person by removing their freedom or liberty at that time. This can be due to (pending) criminal charges preferred against the individual pursuant to a prosecution or ...

had the right to access US federal courts to challenge their detentions. Formally, the amended act is Title XVIII of the

National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010 The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010 (, , 123 Stat. 2190.) is a law in the United States signed by President Barack Obama on October 28, 2009. As a bill it was H.R. 2647 in the 111th Congress. The overall purpose of the l ...

(). On December 3, 2009, Carol Rosenberg, of the ''

Miami Herald The ''Miami Herald'' is an American daily newspaper owned by the McClatchy Company and headquartered in Doral, Florida, a List of communities in Miami-Dade County, Florida, city in western Miami-Dade County, Florida, Miami-Dade County and the M ...

'', reported on a hearing before

Lieutenant Colonel Lieutenant colonel ( , ) is a rank of commissioned officers in the armies, most marine forces and some air forces of the world, above a major and below a colonel. Several police forces in the United States use the rank of lieutenant colone ...

Nancy Paul Nancy J. Paul is an officer in the United States Air Force. Education Military career Paul received a direct commission into the United States Air Force as a Judge Advocate General's Corps, Judge Advocate General in 1988. Lieutenant Colonel ...

, the Presiding Officer of the Military Commission for ''US v. Al Qosi.'' She wrote that Paul was the first Presiding Officer to address the implications of the new act. Paul ruled that the Prosecution could not use the new act to place additional charges against Sudanese captive

Ibrahim al Qosi Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al Qosi ( ar, إبراهيم أحمد محمود القوصي) (born July 1960) is a Sudanese militant and paymaster for al-Qaeda.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 (Philipp ...

had released a 281-page set of procedures for conducting military commissions in accordance with the Military Commissions Act of 2009 on May 4, 2010. This was one day before the first new hearing in the case of the Canadian citizen

Omar Khadr Omar Ahmed Said Khadr ( ar, عمر أحمد سعيد خضر; born September 19, 1986) is a Canadian citizen who at the age of 15 was detained by the United States at Guantanamo Bay for ten years, during which he pleaded guilty to the murder of U ...

, who had been detained since 2002 at Guantanamo and was the last Western citizen held. On May 24, 2010, Steven Edwards, writing for the ''

Vancouver Sun The ''Vancouver Sun'', also known as the ''Sun'', is a daily broadsheet newspaper based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The newspaper is currently published by the Pacific Newspaper Group, a division of Postmedia Network. Published s ...

'', reported that the ''

Canwest News Service Postmedia Network Canada Corp. (also known as Postmedia Network, Postmedia News or Postmedia) is a Canadian media conglomerate consisting of the publishing properties of the former Canwest, with primary operations in newspaper publishing, news ...

'' had recently learned that there was internal controversy within the

Obama administration Barack Obama's tenure as the 44th president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 2009, and ended on January 20, 2017. A Democrat from Illinois, Obama took office following a decisive victory over Republican ...

over the new rules for conducting

Guantanamo military commissions ThGuantanamo military commissionswere established by President George W. Bush – through a Military Order – on November 13, 2001, to try certain non-citizen terrorism suspects at the Guantanamo Bay prison. To date, there have been a total of e ...

. According to Edwards, some Obama appointees had tried to get new rules that would have caused the Prosecution to abandon charging Guantanamo captives such as

with murder. Edwards wrote that the change would have triggered dropping charges against a third of the Guantanamo captives whom the Prosecution planned to charge with murder.

References

{{wikisource Counterterrorism in the United States United States federal defense and national security legislation Acts of the 111th United States Congress United States federal legislation articles without infoboxes

See also

References