On 5 August 2009, almost 14 months after the US Supreme Court ruled that the Guantánamo detainees are entitled to a “prompt” habeas corpus hearing to challenge the lawfulness of their detention, a federal judge will hear the case of Mohammed Jawad, who was taken into US custody in 2002 in Afghanistan when he was still a child and who remains in Guantánamo more than six and a half years later. The judge’s patience with the US authorities appears to have run out.
