U.K. Appeals Court Rules Detention of Afghan Suspect by British Armed Forces Unlawful (July 30, 2015) [1]
On July 30, 2015, the British Court of Appeal held in Serdar Mohammed v. Secretary of State for Defence [3] that U.K. armed forces violated Afghan law and Article 5 (right to liberty and security) of the European Convention on Human Rights by detaining a suspected Taliban commander in Afghanistan in 2010 for nearly four months. The Court found that “[t]here was no authority to detain [Serdar Mohammad] for longer than 96 hours under any of the three bases advanced by the Secretary of State” as Afghan law and International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) policy required any person detained by Her Majesty’s armed forced to be handed over to Afghan authorities after ninety-six hours and “[i]nternational humanitarian law has not reached the stage where it confers a right to detain in a non-international armed conflict as distinct from an international armed conflict.” Consequently, the Court found that his detention was arbitrary, allowing his public law claim to succeed, and that the detention was not lawful on the basis of Afghan law such that “a private law claim in tort under the law of Afghanistan could in principle be made in the courts of England and Wales.” According to a statement [4] by Penny Mordaunt, Minister for the Armed Forces, the Ministry of Defence is “extremely disappointed with this judgement and will be seeking leave to appeal to the Supreme Court.”