Guantanamo Bay // Current

U.S. admits it held 12 juveniles at Guantanamo

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - The U.S. has revised its count of juveniles ever held at Guantanamo Bay to 12, up from the eight it... more

YesWeDid
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Closing Down Gitmo

ANP: An interview with David Cole. Part 1 President-elect Barack Obama says closing down the detainee camp in Guantanamo Bay... more

Vierotchka
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When and how will Obama close Guantanamo?

Michael Ratner: Focus is on fate of hundreds detained at Guantanamo who will never be put on trial. As the world waits for... more

Vierotchka
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When Camelot meets Guantanamo

The shock of new: the popular president-elect meets the all-time unpopular president at the White House. During his historic... more

Vierotchka
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It don't Gitmo better than a Guantanamo Close

President-elect Barack Obama's advisers are devising plans to shut down the now extremely controversial Guantanamo Bay... more

MrDoyle2588
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Obama plans Guantanamo close, US trials

WASHINGTON — President-elect Obama's advisers are quietly crafting a proposal to ship dozens, if not hundreds, of imprisoned terrorism suspects to the United States to face criminal trials, a plan that would make good on his promise to close the Guantanamo Bay prison but could require creation of a controversial new system of justice.

During his campaign, Obama described Guantanamo as a "sad chapter in American history" and has said generally that the U.S. legal system is equipped to handle the detainees. But he has offered few details on what he planned to do once the facility is closed.

Under plans being put together in Obama's camp, some detainees would be released and many others would be prosecuted in U.S. criminal courts.

A third group of detainees _ the ones whose cases are most entangled in highly classified information _ might have to go before a new court designed especially to handle sensitive national security cases, according to advisers and Democrats involved in the talks. Advisers participating directly in the planning spoke on condition of anonymity because the plans aren't final.

The move would be a sharp deviation from the Bush administration, which established military tribunals to prosecute detainees at the Navy base in Cuba and strongly opposes bringing prisoners to the United States. Obama's Republican challenger, John McCain, had also pledged to close Guantanamo. But McCain opposed criminal trials, saying the Bush administration's tribunals should continue on U.S. soil.

The plan being developed by Obama's team has been championed by legal scholars from both political parties. But it is almost certain to face opposition from Republicans who oppose bringing terrorism suspects to the U.S. and from Democrats who oppose creating a new court system with fewer rights for detainees.

Laurence Tribe, a Harvard law professor and Obama legal adviser, said discussions about plans for Guantanamo had been "theoretical" before the election but would quickly become very focused because closing the prison is a top priority. Bringing the detainees to the United States will be controversial, he said, but could be accomplished.

"I think the answer is going to be, they can be as securely guarded on U.S. soil as anywhere else," Tribe said. "We can't put people in a dungeon forever without processing whether they deserve to be there."WASHINGTON — President-elect Obama's advisers are quietly crafting a proposal to ship dozens, if not hundreds, of... more

Crazyotto
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56 responses

8 days ago

Obama plans to close Guantanamo bay prison: new trial system for inmates

WASHINGTON - President-elect Obama's advisers are quietly crafting a proposal to ship dozens, if not hundreds, of imprisoned... more

current89
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3 responses

8 days ago

Guantanamo detainees deny they planned to fight US

Seven years after their capture, six Algerian men denied Thursday they planned to fight with al-Qaida and asked to be released from prison in the first case of suspected terrorists challenging their detention at Guantanamo Bay.

The men, who were arrested in Bosnia in the weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, are being held without charges as enemy combatants at the U.S. detention facility on Cuba.

The detainees last summer won the right to sue for their release in U.S. civilian courts following a Supreme Court case by one suspect, humanitarian aid worker Lakhdar Boumediene.

During more than two hours of arguments in federal court in Washington, the Justice Department accused the Algerians of planning to travel to Afghanistan and join al-Qaida in its global jihad against the United States and its allies.

Lawyers for the Algerians said there is no evidence the men ever would have ended up on a battlefield or posed any threat against the U.S. Therefore, the lawyers said, the U.S. should not consider the men enemy combatants, as defined by the judge hearing the case, and must free them.

"The government does not allege that the petitioners had anything to do with the terrorist attacks on 9/11. It knows they did not," said one of the detainees' lawyers, Stephen Oleskey. "The government does not allege that these men engaged in any combat against the United States or its allies on any battlefield. It knows they did not."

Government lawyer Nicholas Oldham said the men were swept up before they could carry out their plans. "The United States was certainly entitled to be proactive," Oldham said.

The Algerians "made their plan to go to Afghanistan," Oldham said. "One of them was already a member and facilitator of al-Qaida. And the fact that they were captured before they were allowed to attack or kill Americans in the present conflict does not diminish the government's authority to detain them."

Nearly all the specific evidence against the Algerians is classified and can be discussed only in secret court sessions. Some evidence cannot be shared even with the detainees.Seven years after their capture, six Algerian men denied Thursday they planned to fight with al-Qaida and asked to be released... more

BuddyP
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12 days ago

Khadr's trial delayed until next year

A U.S. military judge has delayed the trial of Omar Khadr, the Canadian detainee held at Guantanamo Bay, until late January. ... more

PaliNadia
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1 response

20 days ago

Guantanamo Guards Struggle with Hunger Striker

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - Three years ago, the man known as Internment Serial Number 669 stopped eating. Ahmed Zaid Zuhair, a... more

wlwatkins
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21 days ago

Charges Dropped on 5 Gitmo Detainees - Military Denies the Obvious

In a follow up to last week’s post- Gitmo Prosecutor Quits Due to Lack of Fairnesss in System- 5 detainees originally being... more

unitedliberty
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1 response

27 days ago

War crimes charges dismissed in 5 Guantánamo cases

The Pentagon official in charge of prosecutions at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, dismissed war crimes charges Tuesday against five... more

Eat_Disco
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0 responses

28 days ago

U.S. drops charges against 5 Gitmo detainees -

The Pentagon said Tuesday it has dropped war-crimes charges against five Guantanamo Bay detainees after the former prosecutor in... more

pigmonkey
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10 responses

28 days ago

Bush decides to keep Guantanamo open

Despite his stated desire to close the American prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, President Bush has decided not to do so,... more

synclaire
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31 responses

28 days ago

Response to 9/11 was 'huge overreaction' - ex-MI5 chief

A former head of MI5 today describes the response to the September 11 2001 attacks on the US as a "huge overreaction" and says the invasion of Iraq influenced young men in Britain who turned to terrorism.

In an interview with the Guardian, Stella Rimington calls al-Qaida's attack on the US "another terrorist incident" but not qualitatively different from any others.

"That's not how it struck me. I suppose I'd lived with terrorist events for a good part of my working life and this was as far as I was concerned another one," she says.

In common with Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, who retired as MI5's director general last year, Rimington, who left 12 years ago, has already made it clear she abhorred "war on terror" rhetoric and the government's abandoned plans to hold terrorism suspects for 42 days without charge.

Today, she goes further by criticising politicians including Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, for trying to outbid each other in their opposition to terrorism and making national security a partisan issue.

It all began, she suggests, with September 11. "National security has become much more of a political issue than it ever was in my day," she says. "Parties are tending to use it as a way of trying to get at the other side. You know, 'We're more tough on terrorism than you are.' I think that's a bad move, quite frankly."

Rimington mentions Guantánamo Bay, the practice of extraordinary rendition, and the invasion of Iraq - three issues which the majority in Britain's security and intelligence establishment opposed privately at the time.

She challenges claims, notably made by Tony Blair, that the war in Iraq was not related to the radicalisation of Muslim youth in Britain.

Asked what impact the war had on the terrorist threat, she replies: "Well, I think all one can do is look at what those people who've been arrested or have left suicide videos say about their motivation. And most of them, as far as I'm aware, say that the war in Iraq played a significant part in persuading them that this is the right course of action to take."

She adds: "So I think you can't write the war in Iraq out of history. If what we're looking at is groups of disaffected young men born in this country who turn to terrorism, then I think to ignore the effect of the war in Iraq is misleading."A former head of MI5 today describes the response to the September 11 2001 attacks on the US as a "huge overreaction"... more

toshiba
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42 responses

1 month ago

Al Qaeda accused get laptops at Guantánamo

Guantánamo guards must furnish confessed al Qaeda kingpin Khalid Sheik Mohammed and his four alleged co-conspirators with... more

TravG73
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1 month ago

Gitmo prosecutor quits due to lack of fairness in system

Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld, a self described conformist, became disenchanted with “the system” set up in Cuba over... more

unitedliberty
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9 responses

1 month ago

Psychologists banned from Guantanamo interrogations

The American Psychological Association has approved a landmark measure banning members from taking part in interrogations of... more

pokesmot
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3 responses

1 month ago

ACLU: Bush admin tried to create 'Gitmo inside the US'

The US military was using the same procedures employed at the controversial Guantanamo Bay prison at other facilities inside the United States where US citizens and legal residents were detained, according to documents released Wednesday.

At least one Navy officer was concerned that a detainee was being slowly driven insane by the policies, which prohibited detainees from having items such as shoes or socks, according to 91 pages of e-mails between officers at military brigs in Virginia and South Carolina released Wednesday by the American Civil Liberties Union.

"These documents are the first clear confirmation of what we've suspected all along, that the brig was run as a prison beyond the law. There was an effort to create a Gitmo inside the United States," Jonathan Hafetz of the ACLU's National Security Project in New York told the Associated Press, using the slang word for the U.S. naval facility in Cuba.

A pdf of the heavily redacted e-mails can be downloaded here. The ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act request along with the Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic at Yale Law School to obtain the documents.

The obtained e-mails apparently were exchanged between brig officers and military higher-ups between 2002 and 2004. They discuss detentions of Yaser Esham Hamdi, Jose Padilla, both of whom were US citizens at the time, and Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, who was a legal resident in the country when he was detained.

“Guantánamo was designed as a law-free zone, a place where the government could do whatever it wanted without having to worry about whether it was legal,” said Jonathan Freiman, an attorney with the Lowenstein Clinic at Yale. “It didn’t take long for that sort of lawlessness to be brought home to our own country. Who knows how much further America would have gone if the Supreme Court hadn’t stepped in to stop incommunicado detentions in 2004?”

The detainees apparently were not allowed to speak to family members or lawyers for years, and the e-mails suggest that Guantanamo standard operating procedures were being employed in the domestic brigs. An officer asked what to tell detainees about their legal status and received little guidance.

"Best not to discuss his status at all with him," wrote an unidentified superior, presumably a Pentagon or military lawyer. "Realize that's tough on a human level but realize anything you say becomes statement of US govt, at least potentially. Safest and honest answer is 'I don't know, sorry.'"

The documents also include "weekly updates" the brig officers were required to send on the treatment of the detainees, but the ACLU notes that the updates on Padilla and al-Marri were not released because the Navy said the documents were either being withheld or were missing. That the missing updates cover a period "during which the two were being detained incommunicado and interrogated," the ACLU says, suggests "the possibility that Guantánamo-like interrogations were taking place."The US military was using the same procedures employed at the controversial Guantanamo Bay prison at other facilities inside the... more