White House: Acquitted detainees may not be released

The Obama administration signaled Tuesday it may keep terrorism detainees even if they’ve been acquitted.

Chief Department of Defense lawyer Jeh Johnson told a Senate committee “that releasing a detainee who has been tried and found not guilty was a policy decision officials would make based on their estimate of whether the prisoner posed a future threat,” according to a report by Jess Bravin in the Wall Street Journal.

Bravin notes that the Bush administration maintained the same stance, “but its legality was never tested.”

Spencer Ackerman at The Washington Independent characterized Johnson’s response as moving the Obama administration “into new territory from a civil liberties perspective.”

“Asked by Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) the politically difficult but entirely fair question about whether terrorism detainees acquitted in courts could be released in the United States, Johnson said that ‘as a matter of legal authority,’ the administration’s powers to detain someone under the law of war don’t expire for a detainee after he’s acquitted in court,” Ackerman wrote. More

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