Lakhdar Boumediene

Who is Lakhdar Boumediene?

Lakhdar Boumediene, a citizen of Bosnia and Herzegovina, was held in military custody in the United States Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba beginning in January 2002. Boumediene was the lead plaintiff in Boumediene v. Bush, a U.S. Supreme Court decision that Guantanamo detainees and other foreign nationals have the right to file writs of habeas corpus in U.S. federal courts.

He and four other of the Algerian Six plaintiffs were released from Guantánamo on May 15, 2009 after a US Federal judge found that “the Bush administration relied on insufficient evidence to imprison them indefinitely as ‘enemy combatants.’” He now lives in Provence, France, with his wife and children.