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Last ‘low-value’ Afghan detainee asks to be freed from Guantánamo Bay as U.S. troops leave Afghanistan

Spencer S. Hsu, Abigail Hauslohner and Missy Ryan
The Washington Post
May 10, 2021

A former Afghan militant who is one of the last 40 detainees held at the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, asked a U.S. judge for his freedom on Monday, arguing that President Biden’s recent troop withdrawal announcement amounted to a declaration that the U.S. war in Afghanistan is ending and that all prisoners of said war should be released.

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Gul “is a prisoner of war — a war that has been over for many years,” attorney Tara Plochocki argued Monday in court for his legal team, comprising people from human rights group Reprieve and the Lewis Baach Kaufmann Middlemiss law firm. “If the rule of law means anything, [he] must be released.”

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Gul asked to be sent home to raise his daughter and asked for his release, “not just for me, [but because] I need the law to mean something, and America does, too,” Plochocki told the court, adding in her own voice, “I have to say I agree with him.”

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