Until they die?
A federal judge slammed the Obama administration on Thursday for its "untenable" exercise of executive power with regard to Guantanamo Bay detainees.
"Eleven years after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center and the subsequent invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, 168 people captured in the Global War on Terrorism remain detained at the United States Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba," the 32-page opinion begins.
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth called it a "sad reality" that "not a single one of has been fully tried or convicted of any crime" for more than a decade.
"Despite this, the government has fought to deny detainees the ability to challenge their indefinite detentions through habeas proceedings," Lamberth wrote. "In a litany of rulings, this court and the Supreme Court have affirmed that the federal courts are open to Guantanamo detainees who wish to prove that their indefinite detentions are illegal."
In 2008, the Supreme Court's watershed ruling in Boumediene v. Bush guaranteed habeas proceedings for detainees to challenge their detentions.
As a result of that ruling, U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan, Lamberth's colleague, issued a "Protective Order and Procedures for Counsel Access to Detainees" outlining how lawyers for detainees could access classified information.
"Despite the fact that the government never opposed the protective order or brought
