properly, had not finished college, and had not been able to repay $20,000 he had borrowed from his aunt. Recanting On March 3, 2006, Qahtani's lawyer Gitanjali Gutierrez said that her client had recanted the accusations he had made against fellow detainees during earlier periods of interrogation under torture. He had told his lawyer that he was forced to falsely confess and name names, in order to get his "enhanced interrogation" to end. He had accused 30 other detainees of being former bodyguards of Osama bin Laden. Given the circumstances of how Qahtani's confessions were obtained, lawyers for the other detainees argued that his testimony should not be used by the military as justification to detain their clients. They used this argument in their petitions for habeas corpus challenges for their clients. The government argued that, under the Detainee Treatment Act (2005), detainees could not use the federal courts for habeas corpus except on appeal. In its decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (2006), the Supreme Court ruled that the Detainee Treatment Act and the military commissions as established by the Department of Defense were unconstitutional for depriving detainees of habeas corpus and rights of due process, and that the military commissions had not been authorized by Congress. Military Commissions Act of 2006 In the fall of 2006, Congress quickly passed and the President signed the Military Commissions Act of 2006. It responded to the Court's concerns but mandated the restriction of detainees to the military commission system. On February 9, 2008, the New York Times reported that the Office of Military Commissions was close to laying charges against six of the high-value detainees at Guantanamo, including Qahtani. He was believed to have been the planned 20th hijacker for the 9/11 attacks. Qahtani and the other five were charged on February 11, 2008, with war crimes and murder, and faced the death penalty if convicted. Gitanjali Gutierrez, an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), was representing Qahtani. Attorneys at CCR denounced the systematic use of torture against detainees and challenged the validity of the military commission. They said that evidence in Qahtani's death penalty case was obtained by torture. In their February 2008 press release, CCR said that "the military commissions at Guantanamo allow secret evidence, hearsay evidence, and evidence obtained through torture. They are unlawful, unconstitutional, and a perversion of justice." Suicide attempt According to his lawyer, in