Barre v. Obama

Synopsis

Mohammed Sulaymon Barre is a Somali refugee who has been imprisoned in Guantánamo for nearly eight years after being abducted from his home in Pakistan by Pakistani authorities. Mr. Barre holds official refugee status granted by the United National High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).  He lived and worked freely as a refugee in Pakistan for years prior to his detention.  He had been living at home with wife when the Pakistani authorities came in the middle of the night for him in early November 2001, soon after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.  He is believed to have been sold to the United States for bounty at a time when the United States was offering sizable sums for the handover of purported enemies. Mr. Barre seeks to return to his family in Somaliland, the self-declared independent republic that is stable in an otherwise volatile Somalia.  He has never been charged with a crime yet he remains imprisoned.  CCR has filed both a habeas petition and petition under the Detainee Treatment Act (DTA) challenging the legality of Mr. Barre’s detention.

*Pictured: Extended Family of Mohammed Barre in Borao, Somaliland
Photo courtesy of Reprieve

Status

On June 26, 2008, less than two weeks after the Supreme Court’s historic decision in Boumediene v. Bush, which granted men detained in Guantánamo Bay the right to challenge their detention through a petition habeas corpus, CCR attorneys filed a habeas petition on behalf of Mohammed Sulaymon Barre in what was one of the first petitions to be filed in the D.C. District Court after Supreme Court’s opinion.  Mr. Barre’s case is currently pending in the D.C. District Court.  CCR had previously filed a petition on his behalf under the Detainee Treatment Act (DTA).

Description

Mohammed Sulaymon Barre is a Somali refugee who fled Somalia during the civil war in the early 1990s. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) granted Mr. Barre refugee status in Pakistan. In Pakistan, Mr. Barre married and found a job working for a large international money transfer company called Dahabshiil.  On November 1, 2001, the Pakistani authorities raided the home Mr. Barre shared with his wife and arrested Mr. Barre in the middle of the night.  At the time the Pakistani authorities told Mr. Barre that he was merely being investigated because his work phone number appeared on a list of calls made by members of a suspect charitable organization, Al Wafaa, and he would be released in the morning.  Instead, Pakistani officials kept Mr. Barre in their custody for four months.  Mr. Barre is believed to have been sold for bounty to the United States at a time when the United States was offering thousands of dollars for the handover of suspected enemies.  The extensive use of bounties was confirmed by then Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, when he admitted in his autobiography that he received bounties in exchange for the transfer of many men to U.S. custody.  Once in the custody of U.S. forces, Mr. Barre was sent to the U.S. military base at Bagram, where U.S. guards abused him and coercively interrogated him before transferring him to Guantánamo.

Mr. Barre has been in custody since November 2001, perhaps the longest imprisonment of any Guantánamo detainee.  Mr. Barre is believed to remain in prison today largely because of his nationality.  The single most important determinant of whether an individual remains in Guantánamo or has been released is his nationality.  Mr. Barre is a refugee from wartorn Somalia, a country to which he cannot safely return.  He seeks to return to his family in Somaliland, a self-declared independent republic in northern Somalia which has no official diplomatic relations with the United States.

On August 1, 2007, the Center for Constitutional Rights filed a Detainee Treatment Act (DTA) petition on behalf of Mohammed Sulaymon Barre in the D.C. Circuit Court.  At that time, Congress had passed legislation which prevented Guantánamo detainees from challenging their detention in the District Court and offered only a very limited review of their detention though an appeal of the Combatant Status Review Tribunal’s (CSRT’s) decision regarding their “enemy combatant” designation.  The petition challenged Mr. Barre’s designation as an enemy combatant and included the demand that the U.S. government provide access to critical information and allow CCR attorneys to visit their client. His case represented the intersection of many key issues surrounding the fate of the Guantánamo detainees: faulty hearing processes, the danger faced by many who may be returned to torture in their home countries, and the complicated path their cases must follow through the courts.

On June 11, 2008, the Supreme Court issued an historic decision in the case of Boumediene v. Bush, granting non-citizens detained in Guantánamo Bay the right to challenge their detention through the writ of habeas corpus.  Less than two weeks later, the Center for Constitutional Rights filed a habeas petition on behalf of Mr. Barre, challenging his unlawful detention without trial in Guantánamo since 2002.

Despite being granted international mandate refugee protection from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Mr. Barre continues to languish in Guantánamo Bay.  He is the final remaining refugee in Guantánamo recognized by UNHCR.  Mr. Barre is the son-in-law of Muhamad Hussein Abdallah, another Somali refugee formally detained in Guantanamo.  On October 31, 2008, Mr. Abdallah was transferred back to his home in Somaliland, where he now lives peacefully with his family.  

The Center for Constitutional Rights continues to pursue Mr. Barre’s habeas corpus petition in the D.C. District Court while simultaneously advocating the UNHCR to assist with his immediate release from Guantánamo Bay.

Timeline

On August 1, 2007, CCR attorneys filed a Detainee Treatment Act (DTA) petition on behalf of Mr. Barre, a Somali man who holds refugee status granted by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The petition challenges his designation as an enemy combatant and includes the demand that the U.S. government provide access to critical information and allow CCR attorneys to visit their client.

On June 12, 2008, the Supreme Court of the United States  ruled 5-4 in favor of the detainees in the consolidated cases of Boumediene v. Bush and Al Odah v. United States, by reversing the Court of Appeals decision, and granting men detained in Guantánamo the writ of habeas corpus.
 
On June 26, 2008, CCR attorneys filed a habeas petition on behalf of Mr. Barre challenging his unlawful and indefinite detention in Guantánamo Bay.

On January 22, 2009, President Barack H. Obama signed an Executive Order to close Guantánamo Bay within one year.

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