The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up an appeal filed by a Syrian former detainee at the U.S. Guantanamo Bay base in Cuba, leaving intact a lower-court ruling prohibiting him from suing the United States for damages stemming from his treatment during seven years of detention.
The court left in place a January 2014 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit against Abdul Rahim Abdul Razak al Janko, who says he was tortured and suffered physical and psychological degradation at Guantanamo from 2002 to 2009 after being detained in Afghanistan in 2001.
The appeals court said that based on what Congress has directed, courts do not have the authority to hear lawsuits like the one filed by Janko.
Janko was released from Guantanamo in October 2009 after a successful legal challenge to his detention. Prior to his detention by U.S. forces, Janko had been imprisoned and tortured by the then-Taliban-led Afghan government as a suspected U.S. spy.
Janko filed his lawsuit against the U.S. government in 2010, seeking damages for the injuries he says he sustained.
The United States opened the Guantanamo detention facility in 2002 to hold what it described as foreign terrorism suspects. The treatment of detainees there has drawn international criticism.
The case is Janko v. Gates, U.S. Supreme Court, No. 14-650.
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