Guantánamo after the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear a case that would grant those detainees access to courts to challenge their detention.188 155. Both international humanitarian law and human rights law prohibit the use of enforced disappearances and unacknowledged detention.189 Accordingly, the CIA RDI programme violated various international standards such as the prohibitions of enforced disappearance, torture and ill-treatment, as well as arbitrary arrest and detention.190 DETENTION AT GUANTÁNAMO 156. Under the Bush administration, the United States considered itself in a global “war on terror”, which was not limited by geographical boundaries, against al Qaeda, the Taliban and associated forces. This administration maintained that the President could detain people based on the President’s constitutional role as commander-in-chief and under the AUMF.191 Under the Obama administration, the US government stopped referring to its ongoing operations against terrorism as a global “war on terror” and no longer maintained that the President had constitutional authority to detain people.192 The Obama administration articulates that the United States is in an armed conflict against al Qaeda, the Taliban and associated forces and asserts that the authority to detain individuals captured in this conflict is provided by the AUMF, as informed by the laws of war.193 157. The US government maintains that all Guantánamo detainees were captured in connection with an armed conflict and that they are being lawfully held in conformity with the laws of 188 Senate Study on the CIA RDI Programme, Executive Summary, op. cit., note 171, pp. 140-141: “Beginning in September 2003, the CIA held a number of detainees at CIA facilities on the grounds of, but separate from, the U.S. military detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. (…) After consultation with the U.S. solicitor general in February 2004, the Department of Justice recommended that the CIA move four detainees out of a CIA detention facility at Guantanamo Bay pending the Supreme Court's resolution of the case. (…) By April [redacted], 2004, all five CIA detainees were transferred from Guantanamo Bay to other CIA detention facilities.” See, also, The Report of The Constitution Project's Task Force on Detainee Treatment, op. cit., note 183, p. 169. 189 ICRC Report, op. cit., note 182, p. 24. 190 Detaining individuals in secret detention is a per se violation of the CAT. UN CAT, Concluding observations on the combined third to fifth periodic reports of the United States of America, op. cit., note 107, para. 11; Nowak, CCPR Commentary, op. cit., note 93, pp. 226-228: the UN HRC determined that the use of enforced disappearance, incommunicado detention and kidnapping by secret agents constitutes arbitrary arrest and detention; UN Special Procedures, “Joint study on global practices in relation to secret detention”, op. cit., note 109, paras. 20, 28; UN CAT, Conclusions and recommendations of the Committee against Torture, United States of America, CAT/C/USA/CO/2, op. cit., note 107, paras. 17-18. 191 United States Supreme Court, Shafiq Rasul et al. v. George W. Bush, “Brief for the Respondents”, Case Nos. 03-334, 03-343, March 2004, <http://www.pegc.us/archive/Supreme_Court/Al-Odah_Rasul_merits/Govt_Merits_Al-Odah_20040304.pdf>. 192 United States District Court for the District of Columbia, In Re: Guantanamo Bay Detainee Litigation, “Respondents’ Memorandum regarding the Government’s detention authority relative to detainees held at Guantanamo Bay”, op. cit., note 52; Jeffrey F. Addicott, “Rightly Dividing the Domestic Jihadist from the Enemy Combatant in the ‘War Against al-Qaeda’ – Why It Matters in Rendition and Targeted Killings,” Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law, Vol. 45, Issues 1, 2, 2012, p. 273, <http://law.case.edu/journals/JIL/Documents/45CaseWResJIntlL1&2.14.Article.Addicott.pdf >. 193 ODIHR meeting with Attorneys from the Departments of State, Justice and Defense, 5 September 2014. United States District Court for the District of Columbia, In Re: Guantanamo Bay Detainee Litigation, “Respondents’ Memorandum regarding the Government’s detention authority relative to detainees held at Guantanamo Bay”, ibid. In this memorandum, the United States acknowledges that the laws of war include treaties such as the Geneva Conventions and customary international law, and asserts that “[p]rinciples derived from law-of-war rules governing international armed conflicts (…) must inform the interpretation of the detention authority Congress has authorized for the current armed conflict” since the laws of war are “less well-codified with respect to [their] current, novel type of armed conflict against armed groups such as al-Qaida and the Taliban”. 63