Board Will Not Reconsider Prisoner for Release

May 4, 2017, New York – Today, lawyers at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) criticized a decision by the Guantánamo Periodic Review Board (PRB) not to grant a new hearing to CCR client Guled Hassan Duran. Duran was captured in 2004 and rendered to the CIA, then transferred to Guantánamo where he has been held without charge since 2006. In October, a PRB declined to approve him for transfer after a hearing that lawyers say was grossly unfair and riddled with problems.

“Mr. Duran appeared before the PRB without counsel and was not given adequate time to prepare for the hearing,” said Center for Constitutional Rights Legal Director Baher Azmy. “Further, the Board routinely relies on evidence obtained through torture, including evidence rejected by federal courts.”

The Board’s decision took place after a “file review,” which occurs six months after an initial PRB decision denying clearance in order to determine whether new information or circumstances warrant a new PRB hearing. The PRB is a forward-looking, administrative process to determine whether “detention is necessary to protect against a continuing significant threat to the security of the United States.”

Following the PRB’s decision last fall, CCR filed a new lawsuit challenging Mr. Duran’s detention, arguing that he is being unlawfully held under the laws of war. Without conceding that his detention was ever lawful, CCR said that any justification for Duran’s initial detention had long since expired given the declared end of U.S. combat operations in Afghanistan and the lack of resemblance between any ongoing conflict and that in which Duran was allegedly captured. The case is pending.

Guled Hassan Duran is a 43-year-old Somali citizen with a large, close-knit family. He is one of seven children, and his brother and sisters speak fondly of their childhood together and describe Guled as a family man. He is married with four children.                                                                     

For more information about Mr. Duran, visit CCR’s client profile.

For more information about CCR’s lawsuit over Mr. Duran’s continued detention, visit CCR’s case page.

The Center for Constitutional Rights has led the legal battle over Guantánamo for more than 15 years – representing clients in two Supreme Court cases and organizing and coordinating hundreds of pro bono lawyers across the country, ensuring that all the men detained at Guantánamo have had the option of legal representation. CCR is responsible for many Guantánamo cases in many venues, representing men in their habeas cases in federal court and before the military commissions and Periodic Review Boards, the families of men who died at Guantánamo, and men who have been released and are seeking accountability in international courts.