According to an exchange during the Senate Armed Services Committee captured by Spencer Ackerman, they may not. Sen. Mel Martinez of Florida asked whether acquitted detainees would be released into the United States. Pentagon General Jeh Johonson suggested the government had the authority to keep them locked up anyway:
Johnson said that “as a matter of legal authority,” the administration's powers to detain someone under the law of war don't expire for a detainee after he's acquitted in court. “If you have authority under the law of war to detain someone” under the Supreme Court's Hamdi ruling, “that is true irrespective of what happens on the prosecution side.”
Remarkable. Johnson also hinted that Guantanamo's closure, the centerpiece of the Obama administration's attempt to reform the Bush administration's approach to terrorism, might not happen on schedule.
-- A. Serwer
