Kiyemba II Stay is Denied

A three judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court decided not to grant Petitioners a stay in the Kiyemba II case. Again this appeal was seeking the stay of a D.C. Circuit mandate saying that the government did not have to give Petitioners advanced warning before they transferred them out of Guantanamo Bay. The appeal was denied today in a one page order with no explanation on the court's reasoning.



I can only assume that the court's reasoning for issuing this denial is that they are setting up a situation in which the Kiyemba II petitioners can be easily transferred out of Gitmo. This would be important because the Kiyemba II petitioners are the petitioners in Kiyemba which could end up leading to a very significant Supreme Court case which the government and the Supreme Court would like to avoid. I believe that this is the case because the petitioner argument in Kiyemba II was much stronger than the government's and I believe that on that basis their motion should have been granted. I said in my first post on this case that while I was ideologically behind Petitioners I felt that they weren't actually in danger of the government surprising them with a transfer to a hostile country. Since I don't think that it is likely that the petitioners in this case will be treated unfairly and transferred to a hostile country I don't have a huge problem with this ruling.