June 7, 2012, New York, NY. -- Yesterday federal judge John D. Bates of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia scheduled a hearing in litigation filed by the International Justice Network (IJN) and co-counsel on behalf of several men (two Yemeni and one Tunisian citizen) who have been detained at Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan for more than eight years. Each of the detainees in the case, Al Maqaleh, et al. v. Obama, was abducted from a third country and forcibly rendered to Afghanistan for indefinite detention in U.S. military custody.

The hearing will take place on Monday, July 16, 2012, at 10:00 AM in Courtroom 14 of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, 333 Constitution Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20001.

The first of the cases, which are petitions for habeas corpus (seeking the prisoners’ release from unlawful detention), was originally filed by IJN in 2006. Since that time, the U.S. government has sought to dismiss the cases for lack of jurisdiction. Petitioners have maintained that the court should hear the merits of their cases - now pending for many years. More information about the litigation is available here.