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Active Hostilities and International Law Limits to Trump’s Executive Order on Guantanamo

March 13, 2018

In his State of the Union speech on January 30, 2018, U.S. President Donald Trump announced his signing of a new executive order aimed at keeping open the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as well as approving its repopulation. This post considers how the law of war governing detention in armed conflicts constricts the ability of the U.S. to hold persons in military prisons at Guantanamo in the manner suggested by this new order. Formally speaking, Trump’s executive order repeals a critical portion of President Obama’s 2009 order calling for the Guantanamo prison site to be closed “as soon as practicable, and no later than 1 year from the date of this order.” The 2018 order also provides that the U.S. may “transport additional detainees” to the facility “when lawful and necessary to protect the nation.” On the one hand, this executive order simply makes explicit what has already been President Trump’s de facto Guantanamo policy since taking office. While the Obama Administration worked to reduce the Guantanamo population…

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Offshore Processing and Complicity in Current EU Migration Policies (Part 2)

October 11, 2017

In the first part of our blog post we reconstructed a complex web of migration policies that indicate a shift towards offshore processing of asylum claims in Niger and possibly Chad. In this second part, we seek to answer an obvious yet difficult legal question, namely who bears responsibility in scenarios of extraterritorial complicity such as this…

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The ECtHR Finds the US Guilty of Torture – As an Indispensable Third Party?

July 28, 2014

The recent rulings by the European Court of Human Rights in two cases concerning secret detention in Poland are remarkable, not the least because their bold approach in respect of human rights violations committed by a third party, in this case the United States of America. Of course, the US is not a party to the European Convention…

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Convicted CIA Agent Seeks Pardon from Italian President

September 13, 2013

Mr Robert Seldon Lady, one of the CIA agents convicted in absentia in Italy for their involvement in the abduction/rendition of Abu Omar, has petitioned the President of Italy for pardon. The letter is available here, and is a fascinating read (not least because the guy’s (real?) last name is Lady, his middle name reminds…

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The ECtHR Finds Macedonia Responsible in Connection with Torture by the CIA, but on What Basis?

December 24, 2012

André Nollkaemper is Professor of Public International Law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Amsterdam. He directs the project on 'Shared Responsibility in International Law' (SHARES); this piece is cross-posted on the SHARES Blog. On 13 December 2012, the European Court of Human Rights (‘the Court’) found the that the…

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