Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-15-05250/USCOURTS-caDC-15-05250-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 360
Nature of Suit: Other Personal Injury
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued April 5, 2016 Decided August 12, 2016

No. 15-5250

MOHAMMED JAWAD, ALSO KNOWN AS SAKI BACHA,

APPELLANT

v.

ROBERT M. GATES, FORMER SECRETARY OF DEFENSE, ET AL.,

APPELLEES

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 1:14-cv-00811)

Eric S. Montalvo argued the cause and filed the briefs for 

appellant.

Steven D. Schwinn was on the brief for amicus curiae 

The John Marshall Law School International Human Rights 

Clinic in support of plaintiff-appellant.

Lewis Yelin, Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice, 

argued the cause for appellees. With him on the brief were 

Benjamin C. Mizer, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney 

General, and Matthew M. Collette, Attorney.

Before: GRIFFITH, SRINIVASAN, and WILKINS, Circuit 

Judges.

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Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge GRIFFITH.

GRIFFITH, Circuit Judge: The United States detained 

Mohammed Jawad at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base for more 

than six years until he was released and returned to his native 

Afghanistan in 2009. He has filed a damages action against 

the United States and various federal officials, alleging that 

they subjected him to torture while he was in their custody. 

We affirm the district court’s dismissal of Jawad’s complaint 

because the federal courts lack jurisdiction to hear his claims.

I

Because we are reviewing the dismissal of Jawad’s 

complaint, we take his allegations as true and recite the facts 

in the light most favorable to him. See Klay v. Panetta, 758 

F.3d 369, 371 (D.C. Cir. 2014).

In December 2002, when Jawad was about 15 years old, 

Afghan authorities captured him following a grenade attack 

that badly injured two U.S. soldiers and their Afghan 

interpreter. The Afghan officials subjected Jawad to cruel and 

abusive treatment and forced him to sign a prepared 

confession. They gave the coerced confession to American 

military authorities in Afghanistan, who detained Jawad. 

While in their custody, Jawad was abused by American 

military authorities. Under intense and prolonged questioning, 

Jawad initially denied responsibility for the grenade attack, 

but later he confessed. Later still, he recanted his confession. 

In February 2003, Jawad was transferred to Guantanamo 

Bay Naval Base, where the cruel treatment continued. Despite 

his age, he was not housed in a facility for juveniles. He spent 

the majority of his first year at Guantanamo “in social, 

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physical, and linguistic isolation,” and even attempted suicide.

For two weeks in May 2004, Jawad was “repeatedly 

mov[ed] . . . from one cell to another in quick intervals 

throughout the night to disrupt sleep cycles, on average every 

three hours.” J.A. 30-31. Over the course of his detention at 

Guantanamo, he was interrogated more than 60 times, even 

after the government decided he had no useful intelligence. 

These interrogations included “various forms of cruel 

treatment such as excessive cold, loud noise, beatings, 

pepper-spray, and being shackled for prolonged periods.” J.A. 

29.

Pursuant to the Authorization for Use of Military Force 

(AUMF), Pub. L. No. 107-40, 115 Stat. 224 (2001), the 

President may “detain enemy combatants ‘for the duration of 

the particular conflict in which they were captured.”’ Al Janko 

v. Gates, 741 F.3d 136, 138 (D.C. Cir. 2014) (quoting Hamdi 

v. Rumsfeld, 542 U.S. 507, 518 (2004) (plurality opinion)). To 

determine whether an individual is properly detained as an 

enemy combatant, wholly apart from whether that person can 

be punished for his alleged crimes by a military commission, 

each detainee appears before a Combatant Status Review 

Tribunal (CSRT). See id. In 2004, a CSRT determined that 

Jawad was properly detained as an enemy combatant. In 2005 

and again in 2006, Administrative Review Boards (ARBs) 

concluded that there was sufficient reason to continue his 

detention. In rendering its decision, each tribunal “relied 

heavily” on Jawad’s “alleged confessions.” J.A. 33.

In 2007, the United States charged Jawad under the 

Military Commissions Act (MCA) of 2006 with three counts 

of attempted murder in violation of the law of war and three 

counts of intentionally causing serious bodily injury. The 

latter three counts were eventually dismissed as lesser 

included offenses. In September 2008, after prosecutors 

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expressed their intent to use Jawad’s confessions, his counsel 

moved to suppress them as the product of torture. In 

November 2008, the military commission judge agreed and 

suppressed the confessions. The judge also found that the 

repeated movement of Jawad at night throughout May 2004 

was “abusive conduct and cruel and inhuman treatment.” J.A. 

36.

While a prisoner at Guantanamo, Jawad challenged his 

continued detention in 2005 with a petition for a writ of 

habeas corpus in district court. He amended his habeas 

petition in 2009 and asked the district court to do what the 

military commission judge had done: suppress his previous 

confessions on the ground that they were the result of 

coercion and torture. The United States did not oppose the 

motion, and the district court granted it as conceded. In July 

2009, the United States filed a notice in the district court, 

explaining that “[i]n light of the evidence that remains in the 

record following respondents’ decision not to contest 

petitioner’s [m]otion [to suppress], respondents will no longer 

treat petitioner as detainable under the [AUMF].” Notice of 

the United States, Al Halmandy v. Obama, No. 05-cv-2385, 

D.E. 311 (D.D.C. July 24, 2009), J.A. 81. The district court 

granted Jawad’s habeas petition on July 30, 2009, and the 

United States repatriated Jawad to Afghanistan.

In 2014, Jawad filed a complaint in district court seeking 

damages from the United States and various federal officials 

arising out of his alleged mistreatment while in detention. His 

complaint sets forth six causes of action. The first four invoke 

the Federal Tort Claims Act and the Alien Tort Claims Act, 

alleging that Jawad was subjected to torture and inhumane 

treatment at the hands of his American captors in violation of 

the law of nations, the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions, 

Articles 6 and 7 of the Optional Protocol to the Convention on 

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the Rights of the Child on the Involvement of Children in 

Armed Conflict, and the Torture Victim Protection Act. The 

last two claims assert Fifth and Eighth Amendment violations 

actionable under Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of the 

Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 403 U.S. 388 (1971).

The district court dismissed Jawad’s complaint, holding 

that section 7(a) of the 2006 MCA bars the court from hearing 

any claims arising out of Jawad’s detention. Jawad timely 

appealed, and we have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291.

II

We review de novo the district court’s decision that it 

lacked jurisdiction. See Al Janko, 741 F.3d at 139.

The relevant portion of section 7(a) of the 2006 MCA 

states:

[N]o court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear 

or consider any [non-habeas] action against the United 

States or its agents relating to any aspect of the detention, 

transfer, treatment, trial, or conditions of confinement of 

an alien who is or was detained by the United States and 

has been determined by the United States to have been 

properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting 

such determination.

28 U.S.C. § 2241(e)(2). By its clear terms, this provision 

strips federal courts of jurisdiction to hear most claims against 

the United States arising out of the detention of aliens like 

Jawad captured during the United States’ invasion of 

Afghanistan in response to the attacks of September 11, 2001. 

Jawad acknowledges that he is an “alien” and that his lawsuit 

is an “action against the United States or its agents relating 

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to . . . [his] detention, . . . treatment, . . . or conditions of 

confinement.” Id. But he asserts that his lawsuit escapes the 

statute’s jurisdictional bar because he has not “been 

determined by the United States to have been properly 

detained as an enemy combatant.” Id.

Jawad concedes that a CSRT found that he was an 

“enemy combatant.” J.A. 33. We have held that such a finding 

by a CSRT fully satisfies the section 7(a) requirement that an 

alien be determined by the United States to have been 

properly detained as an enemy combatant. Al Janko, 741 F.3d 

at 144-45 (citing Al-Zahrani v. Rodriguez, 669 F.3d 315, 317, 

319 (D.C. Cir. 2012) and 28 U.S.C. § 2241(e)(2)). But Jawad 

offers several reasons why the CSRT finding does not do so 

here. Each of them fails.

Jawad first points to the government notice, filed in the 

habeas action, that it would “no longer treat” Jawad as 

“detainable.” This statement, Jawad contends, was a 

“determination [that] he was not properly detained.” 

Appellant’s Br. 9 (emphasis added). According to Jawad, with 

this language, the government announced that it had rescinded 

the previous CSRT and ARB determinations. As a result, he 

argues, section 7(a)’s bar does not extend to him.

We assume that Jawad is right, as a matter of law, that 

the government could override a prior determination that an

alien had been “properly detained” by issuing a new 

determination to the contrary in habeas litigation. But, as a 

matter of fact, the government did not do so here. It never said 

that Jawad was not properly detained, only that the United 

States would no longer treat him as such. Notice of the United 

States, Al Halmandy v. Obama, No. 05-cv-2385 (D.D.C. July 

24, 2009), J.A. 81-82 (describing its position as “a decision 

not to contest the writ”). The government’s statement says 

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nothing about the jurisdictional question raised by section 

7(a): whether the United States had determined that Jawad 

was properly detained as an enemy combatant. See Al Janko, 

741 F.3d at 144. That determination had already been made in 

Jawad’s CSRT and ARB proceedings, and nothing in the 

government’s habeas filing contradicted those earlier 

conclusions. This case would be much different and a closer 

call had the government conceded before the district court 

that Jawad had never been properly detained. But that is not 

the case here.

Jawad also argues that the initial CSRT determination 

that he was properly detained was “illegal and void” because 

“his capture, torture, and detention[] violated domestic and 

international law concerning treatment of juveniles accused of 

a crime.” Appellant’s Br. 20-21; see id. at 15-20 (citing the 

Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the 

Child on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict, S.

TREATY DOC. NO. 106-37A (ratified June 18, 2002); Uniform 

Code of Military Justice, 10 U.S.C. § 948b(c) (2006); and 

Federal Juvenile Delinquency Act, 18 U.S.C. § 5031 et seq.). 

The United States asserts that Jawad forfeited or waived this 

argument by failing to raise it before the district court. But the 

United States takes too narrow a view of Jawad’s position 

before the district court. There, he argued that section 7(a) did 

not divest the court of jurisdiction because his juvenile status 

“taint[ed]” the CSRT determination and the United States 

“should never have taken custody of [Jawad]” due to his 

juvenile status. Mem. Opposing Mot. to Dismiss at 25-26, 

Jawad v. Gates, No. 14-cv-00811 (D.D.C. Apr. 20, 2015). 

This was adequate to preserve the argument on appeal. 

On the merits, we conclude that even if we were to 

decide that an allegation that a CSRT was “illegal and void” 

bears on whether section 7(a)’s jurisdictional bar applies—a 

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conclusion we need not, and do not, reach—Jawad’s 

argument fails for other reasons. Jawad has not shown that his 

CSRT determination ran afoul of any domestic or 

international law. He does not cite any provision in the 

Uniform Code of Military Justice or other domestic law that 

prohibits the detention of juvenile enemy combatants pursuant 

to the AUMF, much less explain how violations of any such 

provisions would “void” the CSRT’s determination. Nor does

Jawad show how any alleged failure of the United States to 

comply with its treaty obligations would do so. In particular, 

Jawad relies on the Optional Protocol to the Convention on 

the Rights of the Child on the Involvement of Children in 

Armed Conflict, which the United States ratified in 2002.

That treaty requires signatories to “take all feasible measures 

to ensure” that child soldiers “recruited or used in hostilities 

contrary to this Protocol are demobilized or otherwise 

released from service” and to provide, “when necessary, . . . 

all appropriate assistance for their physical and psychological 

recovery and their social reintegration.” Optional Protocol, 

art. 6(3). Jawad argues that the United States violated the 

Protocol’s requirement to provide rehabilitation and 

reintegration to detained juveniles. But Jawad never explains 

how these provisions would render his initial detention 

improper under the treaty, let alone why a violation of the 

treaty would “void” the CSRT’s determination. 

Jawad argues as well that his juvenile status makes the 

jurisdictional bar of section 7(a) wholly inapplicable to his 

case because the “MCA lacks jurisdiction over minors.” 

Appellant’s Br. 16. Although it is not altogether clear what 

Jawad means by this, we understand him to be arguing that no 

provision of the MCA can apply to juveniles, leaving him free 

to bring his damages action. According to Jawad, it is “wellestablished that military tribunals lack jurisdiction over 

minors below the age of consent.” Id. at 17 (citing United 

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States v. Blanton, 23 C.M.R. 128 (C.M.A. 1957) (holding that 

the “enlistment of a person under the statutory age is void so 

as to preclude trial by court-martial for an offense committed 

by him while still under such age”)). Similarly, Jawad points 

to the Federal Juvenile Delinquency Act, which provides 

certain procedures for the prosecution and detention of 

juveniles in federal cases, and contends that the MCA lacks 

those protections. See 18 U.S.C. § 5031 et seq. But Jawad 

again sidesteps the relevant question. Nothing in those 

sources of law bears on whether Congress, through section 

7(a), barred courts from hearing damages actions brought by 

juveniles determined to be properly detained as enemy 

combatants. The court-martial cases deal with whether 

military courts have jurisdiction to try juveniles. That has no 

relevance here because Jawad is not being tried by any 

military court. The Federal Juvenile Delinquency Act is 

equally immaterial. Even if its procedures for detaining and 

prosecuting juveniles were somehow applicable to detainees

like Jawad, any argument based on such procedures relates 

only to Jawad’s merits claim about his treatment in detention. 

The Act is silent as to the question at issue here: whether 

juveniles detained under the AUMF are barred from filing 

damages actions in federal court.

Jawad next argues that section 7(a) is inapplicable here 

because the United States never determined that he was an 

unlawful enemy combatant. Although Jawad agrees that his 

CSRT and ARB determinations found him to be an enemy 

combatant, he maintains that section 7(a) should apply only to 

detainees who are determined to be unlawful enemy 

combatants because the 2006 MCA provides that military 

commissions have jurisdiction only over such combatants. 10 

U.S.C. § 948d(a) (2006). According to Jawad, section 7(a) 

“may only bar claims by individuals over which the MCA has 

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jurisdiction,” which is limited to unlawful enemy combatants. 

Appellant’s Br. 25.

But the plain language of section 7(a) does not require a 

finding of unlawfulness. Rather, the jurisdictional bar applies 

where a detainee has been determined to be an “enemy 

combatant.” 28 U.S.C. § 2241(e)(2). We will not “read[] a 

phrase into the statute when Congress has left it out.” Keene 

Corp. v. United States, 508 U.S. 200, 208 (1993). Where, as 

here, the statutory text is clear, “[t]he plain meaning of 

legislation should be conclusive” unless it “compels an odd 

result.” Engine Mfrs. Ass’n v. EPA, 88 F.3d 1075, 1088 (D.C. 

Cir. 1996) (internal quotation marks omitted).

Nothing odd results from applying section 7(a)’s 

jurisdictional bar to suits by detainees who have been 

determined to be enemy combatants, but not only unlawful 

enemy combatants. To be sure, Congress conditioned the 

jurisdiction of military commissions on unlawful-enemycombatant status in the 2006 MCA, 10 U.S.C. § 948d(a). 

Section 7(a), however, is not linked to the MCA’s grant of 

jurisdiction to military commissions. The bar is instead tied to 

the AUMF’s detention authority, which allows “the President 

to detain enemy combatants”—not solely unlawful ones. Ali 

v. Obama, 736 F.3d 542, 544 (D.C. Cir. 2013). We affirmed 

this understanding in Al Janko, explaining that section 7(a) 

applies where the United States has made a determination 

“that the detainee meets the AUMF’s criteria for enemycombatant status.” 741 F.3d at 144 (emphasis added). 

Because section 7(a) deals with the jurisdiction of federal 

courts over lawsuits by individuals determined to have been 

properly detained, section 7(a) understandably applies to 

enemy combatants—the category of combatants who may be 

properly detained under the AUMF—and is not limited to 

unlawful enemy combatants. In fact, Congress’s use of 

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“unlawful” in the sections of the 2006 MCA that deal with 

military-commission jurisdiction, but not in section 7(a), 

further works against reading that term into the jurisdictional 

bar. Russello v. United States, 464 U.S. 16, 23 (1983) 

(“[W]here Congress includes particular language in one 

section of a statute but omits it in another . . . , it is generally 

presumed that Congress acts intentionally and purposely in 

the disparate inclusion or exclusion.”). 

Finally, Jawad raises several meritless constitutional 

claims. First, he contends that he is entitled to a damages 

remedy for “unconstitutional trespasses by the United States.” 

Appellant’s Br. 33. Our precedent, however, forecloses this 

position. We have held that monetary remedies are not 

constitutionally required “even in cases such as the present 

one, where damages are the sole remedy by which the rights 

of plaintiffs . . . might be vindicated.” Al-Zahrani, 669 F.3d at 

320. Second, Jawad maintains that section 7(a) is 

unconstitutional on its face because its “broad elimination of 

jurisdiction” is “inconsistent with the plain language of 

Article III of the Constitution.” Appellant’s Br. 29-30. To 

succeed on a facial challenge, Jawad must show “that no set

of circumstances exists under which [section 7(a)] would be 

valid, or that the statute lacks any plainly legitimate sweep.” 

United States v. Stevens, 559 U.S. 460, 472 (2010) (internal 

citations and quotation marks omitted). But our precedent 

again forecloses Jawad’s argument. As we have held, section 

7(a) can constitutionally be applied to “any [non-habeas] 

detention-related claims, whether statutory or constitutional, 

brought by an alien detained by the United States and 

determined to have been properly detained as an enemy 

combatant.” Al Janko, 741 F.3d at 146.

Jawad also urges that section 7(a) is a legislative act 

inflicting punishment without trial in violation of the Bill of 

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Attainder Clause, U.S. CONST. art. I, § 9, cl. 3. See United 

States v. Lovett, 328 U.S. 303, 315 (1946). A law is an 

unconstitutional bill of attainder if it “applies with specificity” 

to a person or class and “imposes punishment.” BellSouth 

Corp. v. FCC, 162 F.3d 678, 683 (D.C. Cir. 1998); Anthony 

Dick, Note, The Substance of Punishment Under the Bill of 

Attainder Clause, 63 STAN. L. REV. 1177 (2011). Even 

assuming that section 7(a) meets the specificity requirement 

because it applies only to enemy combatants, Jawad advances 

no argument that the jurisdictional bar is a form of 

punishment. We will “not consider ‘asserted but unanalyzed’

arguments.” Anna Jaques Hosp. v. Sebelius, 583 F.3d 1, 7 

(D.C. Cir. 2009) (quoting Carducci v. Regan, 714 F.2d 171, 

177 (D.C. Cir. 1983)) (“[A]ppellate courts do not sit as selfdirected boards of legal inquiry and research, but essentially 

as arbiters of legal questions presented and argued by the 

parties before them.” (quoting Carducci, 714 F.2d at 177)). 

And even if we did consider Jawad’s argument, “only the 

clearest proof could suffice to establish the unconstitutionality 

of a statute” on Bill of Attainder Clause grounds, Communist 

Party of the U.S. v. Subversive Activities Control Bd., 367 

U.S. 1, 83 (1961), and his failure to provide such proof dooms 

his claim. See also Hamad v. Gates, 732 F.3d 990, 1004 (9th 

Cir. 2013) (concluding that section 7(a) does not qualify as a 

bill of attainder); Ameur v. Gates, 759 F.3d 317, 329 (4th Cir. 

2014) (same).

III

We affirm the district court’s dismissal of Jawad’s 

complaint for lack of subject matter jurisdiction.

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