||It has been suggested that this article be merged into Administrative detention. (Discuss) Proposed since March 2013.|
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Arbitrary or extrajudicial detention is the detention of individuals by a state, without ever laying formal charges against them.
Although it has a long history of legitimate use in wartime (see prisoner of war, Civilian Internee), detention without charge, sometimes in secret, has been one of the hallmarks of totalitarian states. Article 9 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that, "No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile."
Writ of Habeas Corpus
In democracies with legal systems based on English common law, since the thirteenth century signing of the Magna Carta, captives were able to call upon the writ of habeas corpus — literally "you should have the body." This legal procedure required the state to show that there was a meaningful, legal justification for their detention.
Detention without charge by democratic countries
In recent decades some democratic countries have introduced limited mechanisms whereby individuals can be detained without being charged or convicted of a crime. See, for example, the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and the Canadian security certificate.
- Administrative detention
- Arbitrary arrest and detention
- Black site
- Extrajudicial prisoners of the United States
- Frederick Zimmerman, ed. (2004). Basic documents about the treatment of the detainees at Guantánamo and Abu ... Nimble Books LLC. ISBN 978-0-9754479-0-1.
Hamdi argues that he is owed a meaningful and timely hearing and that "extrajudicial detention [that] begins and ends with the submission of an affidavit based on third-hand hearsay" does not comport with the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.
- Karen J. Greenberg. The Least Worst Place: How Guantanamo Became the World's Most Notorious Prison. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-955767-7.
In other words, the lawyers who were struggling to discover – or invent – a legal rationale for indefinite extrajudicial detention, unregulated by American or international law, had come down to see, however briefly, the flesh and blood reality that their ongoing work affected.
- Guantanamo group of 47 'should be held indefinitely' BBC January 22, 2010
- Human Rights First: In Pursuit of Justice; Prosecuting Terrorism Cases in the Federal Courts (2009)
- Human Rights First; Undue Process: An Examination of Detention and Trials of Bagram Detainees in Afghanistan in April 2009 (2009)