Justice Department lawyers on Friday blocked a legal request for the immediate release of a Guantánamo Bay detainee who is undernourished to the point of starvation, weighing just 74 pounds after an eight-year hunger strike.
The 36-year-old Yemeni national, Tariq Ba Odah, had filed a habeas corpus petition for release from unlawful detention and, in a rare move on Friday, the Justice Department submitted its sealed objection to his release, reported The Guardian.
Odah was cleared for transfer in 2009, indicating the government does not possess enough information to charge him with a crime nor considers him to be a national security threat.
Odah's lawyer said that the Justice Department decision indicates that President Obama is battling growing divisions within his administration, leaving him unable to uphold his 2008 presidential campaign promise to close the prison, according to Reuters.
"It is a transparent attempt to hide the fact that the Obama administration's interagency process for closing Guantánamo is an incoherent mess," said Omar Farah, Odah's attorney from the Center for Constitutional Rights. "And it is plainly intended to conceal the inconsistency between the administration's stated intention to close Guantánamo and the steps taken to transfer cleared men. The administration simply wants to avoid public criticism."
Odah has been force-fed via nasal tubes since he stopped eating solid food in 2007. In June, his lawyers submitted statements from doctors saying that his weight loss has reached the point of irreparable medical harm, as his body is rejecting nutrients and beginning to cannibalize its own internal organs for sustenance. Pentagon officials have said he is receiving proper medical care.
Odah's attorneys are now reviewing the sealed filing and are not yet able to comment on its contents, according to The Guardian.
An official speaking under the condition of anonymity told The Guardian that the motion was sealed in order to protect the government from embarrassment rather than to protect classified information.
The anonymous official added that hardline factions within the U.S. Defense Department believe that hunger strikes are "functionally a method of warfare."
Pentagon officials say that allowing Odah's challenge to his detention to go unanswered would represent a substantial defeat and could create an incentive for future hunger strikes, reports Al Jazeera. State Department officials reportedly supported his release.
In the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Odah was captured by the Pakistani Army along the Afghan border and was accused of receiving weapons training to fight with the Taliban. He has been held at the Guantánamo facility without charge since the beginning of 2002.
