May 6, 2026, Washington, D.C. – A Somali man detained without charge at Guantánamo since 2006 today asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to order summarily his release from Guantánamo because a lower court has failed for nearly ten years to adjudicate his habeas corpus petition. One of fifteen men still held at Guantánamo, Guled Hassan Duran, 52, still suffers from serious medical problems exacerbated by two decades of abuse and neglect in U.S. custody. 

Mr. Duran, a Somali citizen from the Daarood clan with prior lawful residence in Sweden, was captured in Djibouti in March 2004 and disappeared into the CIA’s Rendition, Detention, and Interrogation program. He was transferred to Guantánamo in 2006, has never been designated for prosecution or charged with any offense, and was approved for release in July 2021, based on a unanimous determination by senior U.S. government officials that he does not present a threat to the security of the United States. While U.S. officials committed nearly five years ago to undertake “vigorous efforts” to transfer him, they have made no discernable efforts to send him home to Somalia or safely resettle him in another country where he will be treated humanely and free to move on with his life.

As Mr. Duran explained to the Periodic Review Board (PRB) that approved him for transfer: “All I want is just to move on with my life. I want to be reunited with my wife and my children. I have lost so much time with them, and it has been very difficult for everyone. . . . I don’t want to lose the next 20 years, or however much time l have left in my life, to Guantánamo. I don't want to die here.”

In 2016, Mr. Duran filed a habeas petition challenging his indefinite detention as a violation of the Constitution and laws of the United States. Almost a decade later, the federal district court still has not ruled on a range of motions—some filed more than six years ago—or related discovery issues; nor has it set a schedule toward a hearing on the merits of his case. In September 2025, Mr. Duran’s attorneys filed a motion asking the court to rule on the pending motions, to no avail. 

With Mr. Duran facing a dormant habeas case on one hand and continuing detention without need or foreseeable end on the other, the Center for Constitutional Rights and co-counsel, attorney Sabrina Shroff, U.S. Air Force Major Michael Leahy, and retired U.S. Army Colonel Wayne Aaron, today filed a mandamus petition on his behalf. A writ of mandamus – an order by a higher court instructing a lower court to perform its legal duty – is the only way Mr. Duran might obtain meaningful relief from the harm he continues to suffer each day in detention. 

Mr. Duran’s petition requests that the appeals court grant his mandamus petition and as a remedy either summarily grant his habeas petition and order his prompt release from Guantánamo, or order the district court to do the same. Alternatively, Mr. Duran asks the appeals court to order the district court to promptly consider his habeas petition. He also requests interim relief in the form of an order transferring him from the detention facility to the care of migration officials at Naval Station Guantánamo Bay pending final resolution of his habeas case and efforts to transfer him, which would allow him greater access to his family and the outside world. 

“We don’t take this step lightly, but Mr. Duran is in an impossible situation and requires judicial relief to end his detention at Guantánamo,” said Wells Dixon, a senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights. “Habeas corpus is a powerful legal remedy for unlawful detention, requiring a jailor to appear before a court to account for a prisoner in his custody. It arises from the common law in England, before the founding of the United States, and is written into the U.S. Constitution to ensure due process of law. But a court must promptly dispose of petitions like Mr. Duran’s for habeas to be effective and fulfill its historical purpose.”

Adding urgency to Mr. Duran’s petition are his chronic medical conditions. He has been regularly hospitalized during his detention in U.S. custody for serious intestinal maladies that trace back to before his capture, when he was the victim of a street robbery in Mogadishu, Somalia. U.S. interrogators denied him medical care and abused him to try to force him to cooperate. In more recent years, he has simply been neglected and forgotten. He will require continuing medical care upon his release from Guantánamo.

In July 2021, Mr. Duran was the first so-called “high value detainee” previously held in secret CIA detention to be approved for transfer through the PRB process. The PRB’s decision was affirmed by a Review Committee comprised of the Secretaries of Defense, State, and Homeland Security, the Attorney General, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Director of National Intelligence, which concluded unanimously that Mr. Duran does not present a continuing threat to the security of the United States and should no longer be detained. At this point, everyone agrees that Mr. Duran should be released from Guantánamo, but relief will likely only come with a court order.

For more information, please see our case page.