British citizens Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal, Rhuhel Ahmed, and Jamal Al-Harit were noncombatants who were arrested in Afghanistan, then transferred to Guantanamo, where they were tortured. After their release in March 2004, they were repatriated to “the U.K., and from there sued a number of high government officials, including Secretary [of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld and other military officers at Guantanamo for damages, asserting claims for torture, religious abuse, and other mistreatment. On April 24, 2009, the D.C. Court of Appeals dismissed the case on the grounds that the Constitution does not have extraterritorial application, and therefore claims arising out of the Fifth and Eighth amendments do not extend to Guantanamo Bay. The dismissal rejected the proposition that non-U.S. citizens who are outside the sovereign territory of the U.S. are entitled to constitutional rights, including due process rights. More significantly, the Court held that the defendants had a qualified immunity, based on the proposition that they had no reasonable expectation their actions would be contrary to U.S. law. Lastly, with respect to petitioners’ claim under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), the Court of Appeals found that the Act did not apply to them, not only because of the fact that the claim violations occurred outside the sovereign territory of the U.S., but that the plaintiffs did not qualify as ‘persons’ under the Act. Petition for certiorari was filed by the petitioners, but the Supreme Court rejected it on Dec. 14, 2009.”
– M. Cherif Bassiouni, The Institutionalization of Torture by the Bush Administration, Page 68