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Release of Guantanamo detainee Asadullah Haroon Gul who was unlawfully imprisoned
Asadullah Haroon Gul has been released from Guantanamo Bay after fifteen years of detention without charge and returned to his home country of Afghanistan, where he will be reunited with his wife and daughter.
LONDON
Asadullah Haroon Gul has been released from Guantanamo Bay after fifteen years of detention without charge and returned to his home country of Afghanistan, where he will be reunited with his wife and daughter.
The US rendered Asadullah to Guantanamo 2007. His family feared him dead for many years and for the first nine years of his captivity, he did not have access to a lawyer, despite multiple attempts to obtain legal representation. Reprieve and the law firm Lewis Baach Kaufmann Middlemiss filed a writ for a petition of habeas corpus on his behalf in 2016, in which they demanded his release.
After years of litigation, in October 2021, they prevailed: the District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that Asadullah's detention was not legal, because he had only been a part of Hezb-e-Islami (HIA), a group that has been formally at peace since 2016, and he was not a part of Al Qaeda. The judge thus ordered his release. Asadullah was the first Guantanamo Bay detainee in over ten years to win a habeas case.
Asadullah was also cleared for release by unanimous decision of six US federal agencies, namely the departments of State, Homeland Security, Justice, Defense, plus the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the office of the Director of National Intelligence in October 2021.
After months of waiting for the government to act, on April 25, 2022, Asadullah's lawyers moved to hold the government in contempt of court for failing to comply with its order of release. His release today is the result of a hard-fought battle.
Asadullah has suffered severe physical and psychological torture during his detention, including being beaten, hung by his wrists, deprived of food and water, and prevented from praying. He has been subjected to sleep deprivation, extreme cold temperatures and solitary confinement.
Asadullah's lawyer at Reprieve US, Mark Maher, said:
"After 15 years imprisoned without charge or trial and after a Federal judge declared his detention illegal, Asad is finally free.
"Asad missed his daughter's entire childhood and he will never get back what has been taken from him, but he is now at least able to rebuild his life with his family, who have waited so long to see him.
"Ending Asad's unlawful detention is an important step and we hope that the State Department will move quickly to release other detainees who have been cleared to leave but remain stuck in limbo, wondering when their long ordeal will end."
Asadullah Haroon's lawyer at Lewis Baach Kaufmann Middlemiss, Tara Plochocki, said:
We are thrilled that, after fighting us every step of the way, the government has finally released Asad. The decision in this case shows that no one, not even the US government, is above the law. We thank the State Department for its efforts over the last two months to effectuate the court's order and hope that they apply the same diligence to the other detainees who are eligible for release.
Reprieve is a UK-based human rights organization that uses the law to enforce the human rights of prisoners, from death row to Guantanamo Bay.
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If signed by the president, as is expected, the bill would create a regulatory framework for stablecoins, which are pegged to the value of existing assets such as the U.S. dollar. The Trump family's World Liberty Financial has issued the stablecoin USD1.
@housedemocrats.bsky.social Shame on all of you. You have no foresight and no backbone.
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— Jodi Jacobson (@jljacobson.bsky.social) July 17, 2025 at 5:52 PM
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Leading House Democratic opposition to the GOP's package is Financial Services Committee Ranking Member Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), who warned last week that "these bills would make Congress complicit in Trump's unprecedented crypto scam."
As Politico detailed Thursday:
Waters and other Democrats called for presidential ethics provisions to be added to the bills, pointing to the Trump family's business entanglements in the crypto industry. Trump and his sons have stakes in several crypto ventures, including a company they launched last year that issues a stablecoin and could benefit from the GENIUS bill that is now awaiting the president's signature.
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After Thursday's vote, Bartlett Naylor, a financial policy advocate for the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, declared that "today, House members piled venality onto perversion onto corruption. In approving this crypto-enabling bill, Congress surrendered to the onslaught of crypto political spending and legitimized the world's biggest Ponzi scheme."
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RM @repmaxinewaters.bsky.social slams Republicans’ UNSTABLE Act:“The UNSTABLE Act creates the appearance of a federal framework for #stablecoins, but it does not provide the Federal government with the full authority it needs.” | tinyurl.com/5t2skxvnWATCH: www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQWy...
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— U.S. House Committee on Financial Services - Democrats (@ushousefsc.bsky.social) July 17, 2025 at 1:23 PM
In addition to sending the GENIUS Act to Trump, the House advanced two other crypto bills on Thursday: the Digital Asset Market Clarity (CLARITY) Act, which would create a regulatory framework for digital asset markets, and the Anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act, which would prevent the Federal Reserve from issuing a central bank digital currency (CBDC).
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The Trump administration is handing over the personal data of every Medicaid enrollee to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
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404 Media reported Thursday that in May, a hacker targeted the airline that operated the flights, which have been challenged in court by groups including the ACLU and Democracy Forward.
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The outlet reported that the family of one of the men who is listed on the flight manifests but whose name has never been reported or acknowledged by the Trump administration, has been protesting his disappearance in his home country of Venezuela.
Keider Alexander Flores Navas' mother, Ana Navas, said in a TikTok video in March that she suddenly stopped hearing from him the day the deportation flights took off—and then saw him in a photo of prisoners at CECOT.
@diariovea 🔵 Ana Navas: Mi hijo no figura en la lista de secuestrados, sé que está en El Salvador por una foto. 🔵 Keider Flores Navas es uno de los venezolanos trasladados a El Salvador. Su madre sabe que está allá por una fotografía en la que lo reconoció. 🔵 Señaló que tiene más de dos semanas y media sin poder hablar con su hijo. #elsalvador #eeuu #venezuela #migrantes #fyp ♬ sonido original - Diario VEA
"He was not on any list. But this photo is from El Salvador," Navas told the Venezuelan outlet Diario VEA.
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