Dec. 15 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Supreme Court breathed new life into a lawsuit against the country’s military leaders by four British men who say they were tortured and denied religious freedoms while imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
The justices today told a federal appeals court to reconsider its ruling shielding former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other Pentagon officials from the suit by the former inmates. The high court pointed to its June 12 decision that said inmates at Guantanamo have constitutional rights.
Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal, Rhuhel Ahmed and Jamal al-Harith say they were beaten, stripped naked, threatened by dogs, subjected to extreme temperatures and deprived of adequate food, water and sleep. Each was captured in Afghanistan or Pakistan, held for more than two years at Guantanamo, then flown home to England and released in 2004.
“The torture, abuse and religious humiliation of Muslim detainees at Guantanamo Bay stands as a shameful episode in our history,” the four men said in their appeal.
The men are seeking to press claims under the U.S. Constitution, the Geneva Conventions and several federal statutes, including one that protects religious freedom. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia threw out the suits in January on a 3-0 vote.
“The court of appeals reasonably concluded that military detainees could not impose personal monetary liability on the nation’s military commanders for overseas conditions of confinement during a time of war,” argued U.S. Solicitor General Gregory Garre, the Bush administration’s top courtroom lawyer.
Humanitarian Mission
Rasul, Iqbal and Ahmed, who are childhood friends, say they were in Afghanistan to help provide humanitarian relief after the 2001 war against the Taliban. According to the lawsuit, they were captured by a warlord who turned them over to the U.S. military in exchange for a bounty.
Al-Harith says he was in Pakistan for a religious retreat, kidnapped and turned over to the Taliban in Afghanistan. When the Taliban fled, U.S. forces arrived at the prison and took him into custody, according to the suit.
Their religious freedom claims include allegations that they were unable to fulfill their daily obligation as Muslims to pray at Guantanamo, the U.S. naval base in Cuba. They say they were subjected to loud rock music, shackled in ways that prevented them from assuming the required posture and forced to be naked while praying, violating the Muslim tenet of modesty.
Some of the men also say they saw a copy of the Koran being thrown into a toilet bucket, their attorney, Eric L. Lewis, said in an interview. Rumsfeld has denied that allegation, which sparked deadly rioting in Pakistan, Afghanistan and other countries in 2005.
The June 12 Supreme Court decision, Boumediene v. Bush, said inmates may seek release in federal court. The justices, voting 5-4, said a 2006 law unconstitutionally stripped Guantanamo prisoners of their right to file so-called habeas corpus petitions.
The case is Rasul v. Myers, 08-235.
To contact the reporter on this story: Greg Stohr in Washington at gstohr@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Forsythe mforsythe@bloomberg.net.
On Monday, the Supreme Court of the United States directed an appeals court to reconsider its ruling concerning the claims of four former British Guantanamo captives. The lower court had ruled that the four men were not entitled to bring senior Bush Presidency officials to court, because they were not citizens, and were not detained within the United States, they had no recourse under the United States Constitution.

In its direction, the Supreme Court pointed out that in its landmark ruling in Boumediene v. Bush it ruled that overseas captives were entitled to Constitutional protection. Following its ruling on June 12, 2008 all the current Guantanamo captives were entitled to re-initiate their habeas corpus petitions, which had been stayed following the United States Congress passing the Military Commissions Act.

United States District Court Judge Thomas F. Hogan, the judge in charge of setting the rules of procedure for captives' habeas petitions has explicitly allowed former captives to seek relief in the US court system. This is the first instance of former captives whose cases had already been turned down being given renewed access.

The four British former captives were Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal, Rhuhel Ahmed and Jamal al-Harith. All four men claimed they were captured by bounty hunters who falsely claimed the four men were Mujahideen.    

Al-Harith claimed he was attending a religious retreat in Pakistan when he was captured.
Rasul, Iqbal and Ahmed, childhood friends from Tipton, said they had traveled to Afghanistan to render humanitarian assistance, when the war broke out during a trip they made to Pakistan.

The men reported that they were bound, naked, in painful "stress positions", and bombarded with loud music, which they described as a form of religious persecution.

The four men all claimed that, during their captivity, they observed a copy of the Koran being thrown into a latrine.

The four men were repatriated to the United Kingdom in early 2004, where they were set free.