WASHINGTON — The Obama administration said Friday that it is abandoning one of former President George W. Bush’s key phrases in the war on terrorism: “enemy combatant.”
The Justice Department said in legal filings that it will no longer use the term to justify holding prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.
That won’t change much for the detainees at the U.S. naval base in Cuba — President Barack Obama still asserts the military’s authority to hold them. Human-rights attorneys said they were disappointed that Obama didn’t take a new stance.
“This is really a case of old wine in new bottles,” said the Center for Constitutional Rights.
The Obama administration’s position on use of the term “enemy combatant” came in response to a deadline by U.S. District Judge John Bates, who is overseeing lawsuits of detainees challenging their detention. Bates asked the administration to give its definition of whom the United States may hold as an “enemy combatant.”
The filing backs Bush’s stance on the authority to hold detainees, even if they were not captured on the battlefield in the course of hostilities. Detainees’ lawsuits have argued that only those who directly participated in hostilities should be held.
There are some changes in legal principles in Obama’s stance. The Justice Department said authority to hold detainees comes from Congress and the international laws of war, not from the president’s own wartime power as Bush had argued. The Justice Department said prisoners can be detained only if their support for al-Qaeda, the Taliban or “associated forces” was “substantial.”
In another court filing, the Obama administration tried to protect top Bush administration military officials from suits brought by prisoners who say they were tortured at Guantanamo. Also, Attorney General Eric Holder submitted a declaration to the court outlining Obama’s efforts to close the detention facility within a year and determine where to place the 240 people held there.
