Georgetown Security Law Brief

Questions raised in Afghan detainee’s case

02/10/12: The New York Times reports that the case against one of the eighteen remaining Afghans at Guantanamo started gaining new attention after a military defense team began investigating it last year. The team talked to village elders, neighbors and family members who corroborated crucial aspects of the benign explanations offered by Obaydullah, and they concluded that certain intelligence about him had been “mischaracterized.” “With new evidence that brings into question the allegations against him, we hope we will be able to obtain a fair hearing, or that he will be sent home,” said Maj. Derek A. Poteet of the Marines, a military lawyer representing Obaydullah.

Suit challenges new Guantánamo mail rule

02/10/12: The Miami Herald reports that a lawyer for a Guantánamo prisoner charged in the September 11 attack has filed suit against the prison commander, arguing a new rule subjecting legal mail to a security review is unconstitutional and amounts to illegal “intelligence monitoring” of a US citizen. James Connell said Thursday that his suit filed in federal court in Washington DC is broader than a previous legal challenge to the rule brought by the lawyer for a separate defendant in the September 11 case. Connell is a civilian attorney who was appointed by the Pentagon to represent Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, also known as Ammar Al-Baluchi.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/02/09/2633649/suit-challenges-new-guantanamo.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/02/09/2633649/suit-challenges-new-guantanamo.html#storylink=cpy

Cuban migrants at Guantanamo base face restrictions

02/08/12: The Sacramento Bee reports that nearly three dozen Cuban asylum seekers were confined to the Leeward side of the US Navy base at Guantanamo Tuesday, no longer able to send packages to family across the minefield in a security crackdown at the US migrant center at the base in southeast Cuba. Officials wouldn't say precisely how the Cubans lost privileges of wider access on the base. But "several of the migrants repeatedly broke Naval Station rules in place to ensure base security," said Deborah Sisbarro at the State Department's Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration. The infractions occurred "in the last several weeks," she said.

Italy frees former Guantanamo detainee

02/07/12: The San Jose Mercury News reports that an Italian appeals court has overturned the terrorism conviction of a Tunisian man who had spent nearly eight years in the US military prison in Guantanamo, Cuba. Mohamed Ben Riadh Nasri, who had been convicted of terrorism association by a lower Italian court, was one of three Tunisian prisoners from Guantanamo that Italy accepted more than two years ago. Nasri's lawyer, Roberto Novellino, said the appeals court in Milan on Monday threw out the guilty verdict and its six-year sentence, meaning his client is a free man. The court's reasoning will be released in 30 days.

Military Judge denies request to delay 9/11 case at Guantanamo

02/04/12: NPR reports that a request for a delay in the September 11 case at Guantanamo has been denied. Two lawyers close to the proceedings tell NPR that a military judge denied their request to delay the arraignment of the September 11 suspects at Guantanamo until the summer. The lawyers were asking for more time to file memos on why Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his alleged co-conspirators should not be tried in a capital case and be eligible for the death penalty. The 9/11 suspects are expected to be arraigned before a military commission as early as April.

Holder says CIA interrogation probe nearing end

02/03/12: POLITICO reports that the Justice Department's investigation into the deaths of two detainees in CIA custody should conclude soon, Attorney General Eric Holder said Thursday. Holder made no mention of proceeding with prosecutions in the cases and suggested they would be closed. "There were ....things that were done during the course of those interrogations that are antithetical to American values, that resulted in the deaths of certain people," Holder said during testimony before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. "That investigation has run its course. We are at a point where we are about to close those investigations."

Lawmakers warn of outcry against Taliban transfer

02/02/12: Reuters reports that US lawmakers are steeling for a public battle against the possible transfer of Taliban detainees out of Guantanamo Bay prison, a key step in the Obama administration's bid to broker a peace deal ending the war in Afghanistan. Congressional opposition is gaining steam, especially among Republicans but also among some senior Democrats, to the potential transfer to Qatar of five senior Taliban prisoners, a good-faith move that could set the stage for eventual political talks between the Taliban and Afghan government.

Commentary: Gitmo’s prying eyes

02/01/12: The American Conservative features an opinion piece by Kelley Beaucar Vlahos alleging that Department of Defense actions have deprived Guantanamo detainees of the attorney client privilege.  Vlahos notes that the Office of Chief Defense Counsel for Military Commissions, whose clients are incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay, is engaged in a standoff. They’ve refused to sign the user agreement required by the Department of Defense that consents to “the routine monitoring, interception and search” of “all communications using or data stored on” the Pentagon’s global computer network, which all DoD personnel—including the attorneys—use every day. HT to Neal R. Sonnett.

Alleged bomber's lawyer wants to question Yemeni President

02/01/12: The Miami Herald reports that Guantánamo defense lawyers for an alleged al Qaida bomber asked an Army judge on Tuesday to order Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh to undergo war court questioning at a New York hospital. Navy Lieutenant Commander Stephen Reyes wouldn’t say what he wants to ask the former Yemeni strongman on behalf of Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, who faces a death penalty trial at Guantánamo next year. He did said he believed the chief military commissions judge could issue a subpoena that “would compel the Yemeni president to be deposed” — despite a US State Department declaration that the 69-year-old Yemeni would receive diplomatic immunity as head of state.

Algerian re-imprisoned after Guantanamo extradition

01/31/12: The Daily Star reports that a legal charity supporting detainees in Guantanamo has condemned the conviction and sentencing of an Algerian after he was forcibly repatriated after eight years in the US Guantanamo detention center. Naji was sent back to Algeria in July 2010. He was convicted on January 16 of "belonging to a terrorist group abroad" and sentenced to three years in prison, according to the state news agency.

Afghan officials, Taliban may hold talks in Saudi Arabia

01/30/12: CNN reports that the Afghan government plans to hold talks with Taliban representatives in Saudi Arabia in the coming weeks, in a move that threatens to cloud already delicate and fragile steps to negotiate an end to the United States' longest war. An anonymous senior official said the plans were at such an early stage that it was not clear who -- including American officials -- would attend or when any talks would be held. The US has acknowledged that it has held discussions about opening a Taliban office in Doha, Qatar, as well as the possibility of transferring some Taliban prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay as part of American support for Afghan reconciliation efforts.

Administration looking into repatriating non-Afghan detainees at US-run prison

01/25/12: The Washington Post reports that the Obama administration is considering the repatriation of most, if not all, of the non-Afghan detainees held at the main American-run prison in Afghanistan, an effort to oversee their transfer before US officials relinquish control of the facility, according to administration officials. The foreign prisoners, who number close to 50, were in some cases picked up on the battlefield in Afghanistan and in others detained in third countries and taken to the prison by the CIA, according to US and foreign officials.

4th Circuit denies damages suit for alleged torture suffered by ‘enemy combatant’ Jose Padilla

01/24/12: The ABA Journal reports that in a move decried by the American Civil Liberties Union as a sad day for the rule of law, a federal appeals court upheld a lower court's ruling that an American citizen who claimed he was illegally detained and tortured at a US military jail in South Carolina cannot turn to the legal system for redress. Because he was designated an "enemy combatant" by the military, Jose Padilla's treatment falls outside the scope of government conduct that tort litigation is intended to address, held the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals as it affirmed a trial court's dismissal of the case.

UN rights chief says US must close Guantanamo

01/23/12: CBS News reports that the UN human rights chief says the US government must close the Guantanamo Bay prison as President Barack Obama promised a year ago. Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, says "the facility continues to exist and individuals remain arbitrarily detained — indefinitely — in clear breach of international law."Pillay said Monday — ahead of Obama's next annual speech Tuesday — that she is deeply disappointed the US government "has instead entrenched a system of arbitrary detention."

UN asked to examine US efforts to squelch Spain torture probe

01/20/12: The San Luis Obispo Tribune reports that two legal rights groups on Thursday asked the United Nations to investigate allegations that Spanish and US officials collaborated to quash criminal probes into whether the Bush administration authorized illegal killings and torture of terrorism suspects. The request, made to the UN's special rapporteur for judicial independence, accused the United States of interfering with Spain's justice system in three different criminal cases. The New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights and the Berlin-based European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights asked that the UN demand that both governments refrain from meddling in court cases.

Scooter Libby case invoked at Guantánamo terror trial

01/19/12: The Miami Herald reports that prosecutors working out procedures for handling secret evidence in the trial of an alleged Al Qaida chieftain invoked a surprising precedent Wednesday — the 2007 felony trial of Lewis “Scooter” Libby, former Vice President Dick Cheney’s aide. At issue here was how, if at all, defense lawyers could challenge substitutions for secret evidence that’s to be shielded from them in the death penalty trial of alleged USS Cole bomber Abd al Rahim al Nashiri. Pentagon prosecutors are seeking his military execution as the alleged mastermind of the October 2000 Cole attack that killed 17 US sailors. HT to Neal R. Sonnett.

Russia assails US over Guantanamo prison

01/15/12: The Miami Herald reports that Russia's Foreign Ministry has accused the US of breaking international law by keeping terror suspects in indefinite custody without trial at the Guantanamo Bay prison. In a statement posted on its website Sunday, the ministry said the prison represents a "flagrant violation of international law." The Foreign Ministry also criticized the NDAA, signed into law by President Obama on December 31, which includes a provision allowing indefinite military detention without trial. The ministry claimed the act contradicts US obligations under international humanitarian law.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/01/15/2590886/russia-assails-us-over-guantanamo.html#storylink=cpy

Kuwait and US disagree over Guantanamo inmates

01/13/12: The Wall Street Journal reports that the Kuwaiti government is intensifying efforts to seek the transfer of two Kuwaitis who remain at the US detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a prospect that has grown dim as the facility turned 10 years old Wednesday amid continued political battles over its operation. In recent months, Kuwaiti officials have pressed the US to transfer Fawzi al-Odah and Fayiz al-Kandari to Kuwait, where they would continue to be detained at a US military facility but in proximity to family members, said people familiar with the discussions. HT to Neal R. Sonnett.

Hundreds protest on 10th anniversary of Guantanamo prison

01/12/12: The Los Angeles Times reports that chants of "Guantanamo has got to go" echoed down Pennsylvania Avenue on Wednesday as a crowd of rain-dampened protesters marked the 10th anniversary of the arrival of the first 20 detainees at Guantanamo. More than 800 people demonstrated in what they said was solidarity with the 171 inmates who remain in the prison, as well as the unknown numbers detained at the US military prison at Bagram, Afghanistan. Protesters voiced anger with President Obama's failure to close the prison and with his approval last month of the NDAA, which codified the US government's authority to detain prisoners, including US citizens, indefinitely without trial.

Opinion: Guantánamo 10 years on and the future of indefinite detention

01/11/12: IntLawGrrls features an opinion piece by Kristine A Huskey, Director of the Anti-Torture Program at Physicians for Human Rights and one of the first attorneys to represent Guantánamo detainees in the seminal case, Rasul v. Bush. On the tenth anniversary of the detention camp, Huskey discusses how President Obama, the Congress, and the American people have accepted the establishment of indefinite detention of citizens and non-citizens alike, as well as the militarization of civilian processes in our democratic society in belief that the trade off will make us more secure. She concludes that Guantánamo should close "because it is fast becoming a symbol for the destruction of a free and just society – the kind of society we all yearn for."

Lawsuit seeks detainee's Guantánamo video

01/10/12: The Miami Herald reports that a new lawsuit seeks to force the US government to make public the videotapes of harsh interrogation carried out on a Guantánamo Bay detainee nearly a decade ago. The federal lawsuit was filed Monday in New York. Lawyers with the Center for Constitutional Rights said they want the public to see the videotapes to shift the discussion about interrogation methods used in the quest to stop terrorism worldwide. The videotapes were made of the interrogation of Saudi citizen Mohammed al-Qahtani. He remains held at Guantánamo.

Opinion: Notes from a Guantánamo survivor

01/09/12: The New York Times features an opinion piece by Murat Kurnaz, the author of “Five Years of My Life: An Innocent Man in Guantánamo,” and Guantánamo detainee from 2001 to 2006. As the tenth anniversary of Guantanamo approaches, Kurnaz describes his experience there and how he was eventually released, further describing that his American lawyer recently made public a number of American and German intelligence documents from 2002 to 2004 that showed both countries suspected he was innocent. Kurnaz concludes by stating how he continues to "wonder how it is possible that a democratic government can detain people in intolerable conditions and without a fair trial."

Opinion: My Guantanamo nightmare

01/08/12: The New York Times features an opinion piece by Lakhdar Boumediene, Guantanamo detainee from 2002 to 2009 and the lead plaintiff in Boumediene v. Bush.  Boumediene discusses how this Wednesday marks the ten year anniversary of Guantanamo, and how for seven of them, he was held at the military prison without explanation or charge.  He describes how some American politicians say that people at Guantánamo are terrorists, but argues that he has never been a terrorist. "Had I been brought before a court when I was seized, my children’s lives would not have been torn apart, and my family would not have been thrown into poverty," he says.  

Why Obama hasn’t closed Guantánamo

01/08/12: The Miami Herald reports that the responsibility for failing to close Guantanamo lies not so much with the White House but with Congress because it has used its spending oversight authority both to forbid the White House from financing trials of Guantánamo captives on US soil and to block the acquisition of a state prison in Illinois to hold captives currently held in Cuba who would not be put on trial. The 2009 Task Force Review concluded that about 80 of the 171 detainees now held at Guantánamo could be let go if their home country was stable enough to help resettle them or if a foreign country could safely give them a new start. But Congress has made it nearly impossible to transfer captives anywhere.

Opinion: Terror on trial

01/08/12: The Wall Street Journal features an essay by William Shawcross, author of Justice and the Enemy: Nuremberg, 9/11 and the Trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, to be released next week. Shawcross discusses the upcoming trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the accused mastermind of 9/11, and his associates, and its parallels to Nuremberg.  He concludes: "Since the beginning of the 20th century, America's commitment and sacrifices have been essential to the world's ability to resist the forces of nihilistic aggression. That was certainly true in the war against fascism, and it is still true today." HT to Neal R. Sonnett.

Trial begins for Guantanamo protesters arrested in House gallery

01/03/12: The Blog of Legal Times reports that jury selection began this morning in a trial against protesters arrested inside the US House of Representatives gallery this summer while demonstrating against funding for the US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay. The original group of 14 defendants arrested during the June 23 demonstration was later whittled down to five people. All of the protesters are representing themselves at trial, although their attorney advisers are First Amendment law veterans Ann Wilcox and Mark Goldstone, both solo practitioners.

Secret Guantánamo cell block cost nearly $700,000

12/26/11: The Miami Herald reports that a once-secret Guantánamo cellblock now used to punish captives was built in November 2007 for $690,000 from a crude, then 5-year-old temporary prison camp design. Navy Cmdr. Tamsen Reese confirmed the existence of the block earlier this month, and released a photo of one steel-walled cell after detainee defenders called conditions inhumane. It’s called Camp Five-Echo, and “serves as a disciplinary block for those non-compliant detainees in Camps 5 and 6,” Reese said in an email Friday that for the first time revealed the cost of the 4-year-old prison camps construction project.

Obama signs NDAA and issues signing statement

12/24/11: The New York Times reports that President Obama signed the defense authorization bill on Friday.  When doing so, he also issued a signing statement claiming a right to bypass dozens of provisions that placed requirements or restrictions on the executive branch, saying he had “well-founded constitutional objections” to the new statutes. Among them, he singled out two sections barring the use of money to transfer prisoners from the naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, into the United States and limiting the ability of the government to transfer them to the custody or control of foreign countries.

Judge dismisses lawsuit brought by former GTMO detainee

12/23/11: The BLT reports that US District Court Judge Richard Leon on Thursday tossed out the lawsuit of a former Guantanamo Bay detainee seeking damages for the alleged physical and psychological abuse he was subjected to at the US military base. Syrian national Abdul Rahim Abdul Razak Al Janko's case was dismissed on the grounds that “Congress has specifically barred the Judicial Branch from reviewing ‘any aspect of the detention...treatment...or conditions of confinement of an alien who is or was detained by the United States and has been determined by the United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such determination.’”

Commentary: British Court of Appeal decision implicitly repudiates Goldsmith memo

12/20/11: Opinio Juris features commentary by Kevin Jon Heller concerning the Court of Appeal judgment ordering the UK government to seek the release of Yunus Rahmatullah, an alleged member of Lashkar-e-Taiba who has been detained at Bagram since 2004, from US custody.  What is particularly interesting about the decision is that it directly — though implicitly — rejects a little-known memo written by Jack Goldsmith while he was at the Office of Legal Counsel, in which he argued that “operatives of international terrorist organizations” were not “protected persons” for purposes of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which provides that “[i]ndividual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of motive.”

Rights groups accuse Europe of CIA flights coverup

12/20/11: The San Francisco Chronicle reports that a majority of 28 mostly European countries have failed to comply with freedom of information requests about their involvement in secret CIA flights carrying suspected terrorists, two human rights groups said Monday. London-based Reprieve and Madrid-based Access Info Europe accused European nations of covering up their complicity in the so-called "extraordinary rendition" program by failing to release flight-traffic data that could show the paths of the planes. The groups said only seven of 28 countries had supplied the requested information.

US hands over alleged terrorist Daqduq to Iraq

12/17/11: Politico reports that The US handed over to the Iraqi government on Friday a Lebanese man accused of killing American soldiers in Iraq, Ali Musa Daqduq. The move by President Barack Obama helps ease the US effort to withdraw from Iraq by the end of the year, but the decision to turn Daqduq immediately drew harsh criticism from lawmakers who want the alleged Hezbollah operative to stand trial before a military commission. A White House spokesman, Tommy Vietor, said President Barack Obama agreed that Daqduq should be tried by a military tribunal.

Congress clears $662 billion defense bill

12/16/11: ABC News reports that Congress passed a massive $662 billion defense bill Thursday after months of wrangling over how to handle captured terrorist suspects without violating Americans' constitutional rights. A last-minute compromise produced a truce but lawmakers said the fight's not over. The Senate voted 86-13 for the measure and will send it to President Barack Obama for his signature. The bill would authorize money for military personnel, weapons systems, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and national security programs in the Energy Department for the fiscal year beginning October 1.

Commentary: Locking up terrorists, but not in Guantánamo

12/13/11: Homeland Security Watch comments on the New York Times published reporter Scott Shane’s investigation into the domestic system of detention for those convicted of terrorism.  It turns out Guantanamo, and military tribunals, are far from the full story when it comes to locking up terrorists. The numbers involved are eye-opening, even considering what some consider the generally inflated reporting on every far-fetched plot broken up in the planning stages. Compared against the costs and success of military tribunals and incarceration at Guantanamo, it should be a no-brainer to depend on domestic prisons and existing civilian judicial instruments.

The ‘fill in the blanks’ court game of indefinite detention

12/13/11: The New York Times reports that recent opinions from the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit are studded with redactions that call to mind the zany game of Mad Libs. Consider the case of a Yemeni man who was picked up near the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan in December 2001. The main question in his case was whether a decade-old intelligence report could justify his indefinite detention at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. It is hard to tell just what the report was, much less what it said, thanks to the extravagant redactions in the appeals court’s decision, entire pages of which are blacked out.

Egypt's military to decide fate of Guantamo returnee

12/12/11: The Miami Herald reports that Adel el Gazzar emerged from eight years of imprisonment at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, with one leg, no US charges against him and no chance of returning to his native Egypt, where he was sure to have been locked up again by President Hosni Mubarak's government. So, Gazzar was transferred instead to a Slovakia migrants center until last winter, when Mubarak fell in the Arab Spring uprisings. The revolt against three decades of authoritarian rule presented Gazzar with a gamble: Would the new Egypt grant a fair trial and eventual freedom to a man once branded as a terrorist? His answer is expected December 27, in a military court case that could set precedent for how Egypt deals with the jihadists who are trickling back now that the Mubarak has gone.

Beyond Guantánamo, a web of prisons for terrorism inmates

12/11/11: The New York Times reports that it is the other Guantánamo, an archipelago of federal prisons that stretches across the country, hidden away on back roads. Today, it houses far more men convicted in terrorism cases than the shrunken population of the prison in Cuba that has generated so much debate. An aggressive prosecution strategy, aimed at prevention as much as punishment, has sent away scores of people. They serve long sentences, often in restrictive, Muslim-majority units, under intensive monitoring by prison officers. Their world is spare.  Among them is Ismail Royer, serving 20 years for helping friends go to an extremist training camp in Pakistan.

To State Department, WikiLeaks or not, secrets are secrets

12/08/11: The New York Times reports that the quarter-million confidential State Department cables obtained by WikiLeaks last year have been public on the Web for months. But don’t tell the government. It is pretending otherwise. Asked in April by the American Civil Liberties Union under the Freedom of Information Act for copies of 23 cables on Guantánamo, rendition and other matters, the State Department responded as if the confidential documents were still confidential.

Inside Romania's CIA 'black site' prison

12/08/11: The Miami Herald reports that in northern Bucharest, in a busy residential neighborhood minutes from the center of Romania's capital city, is a secret that the Romanian government has tried for years to protect. For years, the CIA used a government building -- codenamed Bright Light -- as a makeshift prison for its most valuable detainees. There, it held al-Qaida operatives Khalid Sheik Mohammad, the mastermind of 9/11, and others in a basement prison until 2006, the year some were sent to Guantánamo Bay.

Detainee allowed to petition Supreme Court under seal

12/07/11: The Courthouse News Service reports that the Supreme Court has decided it will accept a sealed petition for writ of certiorari from a Guantanamo Bay detainee, Hussain Salem Mohammed Almerfedi. Originally captured in Tehran by Iranian authorities about three or four months after the September 11 terrorist attacks, Almerfedi was later transferred to the custody of Afghanistan and then to the United States. Despite calling Almerfedi's explanations of his travels to Afghanistan "perplexing" and unconvincing," a federal district court judge granted Almerfedi’s habeas petition, deciding that government failed to prove he was part of the terrorist group, and that the testimony of a jailhouse snitch was unreliable. HT to Neal R. Sonnett.

US hands over all detainees to Iraqis except for Hezbollah agent

11/22/11: The Denver Post reports that the US handed over all of the remaining detainees in US custody in Iraq Tuesday, except for a Lebanese Hezbollah commander linked to the death of four American troops, Iraqi and American officials said. The prisoner transfer marks another step toward the American military's withdrawal from Iraq, as it plans for all US troops to be out of the country by the end of this year. It still leaves the contentious issue of what to do with a prisoner that many in the US worry will walk free if he's handed over to the Iraqi government.

Opinion: Reneging on justice at Guantánamo

11/20/11: The New York Times features an editorial on jurisprudence concerning Guantanamo detainees. In 2008, the Supreme Court ruled that Guantánamo Bay prisoners who are not American citizens have the right of habeas corpus, allowing them to challenge the legality of their detention in federal court and seek release. The power of the ruling, however, has been eviscerated by the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The appellate court’s wrongheaded rulings and analyses, which have been followed by federal district judges, have reduced to zero the number of habeas petitions granted in the past year and a half.

Inside Guantanamo, detainees live in limbo

11/20/11: NPR features an audio reporting piece by Dina Temple-Raston who has reported on Guantanamo for years. She reports that the prison is beginning to feel different, in the sense that it is beginning to feel permanent. Temple-Raston notes that while “in regular prisons [she’s] had some sort of contact with the inmates, […] in Guantanamo, the prisoners are behind glass. It's like a terrorist museum.”

Opinion: The torture candidates

11/15/11: The New York Times features an editorial criticizing the Republican candidates for president. The piece argues the contenders seem to have learned very little from the moral calamities of the administration of George W. Bush. Three of the contenders for the party’s nomination have now come out in favor of the torture known as waterboarding. Only two have said it is illegal, and the rest don’t seem to have the backbone to even voice an opinion on the subject.

GOP hopefuls would keep Guantanamo

11/13/11: The San Francisco Chronicle reports that several Republican presidential hopefuls say they would continue to hold terror suspects at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay. In Saturday night's debate, businessman Herman Cain, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum and Minnesota's Representative Michele Bachmann all say they want to keep the prison open, allow the use of controversial techniques to interrogate terrorists and use military courts to try the terrorism suspects who are held there.

Life in Guantanamo Bay: Praying and playing at the world’s most notorious prison

11/13/11: The Express Tribune features one reporter’s take on the present state of affairs at Guantanamo Bay. The article reflects details uncovered during a trip under stringent supervision of the US Department of Defense, which has allowed the media, under certain rules, to cover the arraignment hearing of Abdal Rahim alHusayn Mohammad Nashiri, accused of bombing the USS Cole. HT to Neal R. Sonnett.

Major win for US government on detainees

11/13/11: ScotusBlog reports that continuing its caustic criticism of the Supreme Court’s most important ruling on the rights of Guantanamo detainees, the DC Circuit Court has given the Pentagon a significant new legal advantage that will bolster its chances of keeping prisoners at the military prison in Cuba.  A divided three-judge Circuit panel ruled that government intelligence reports will be treated routinely as if they are reliable, even though the data they contain was obtained under questionable circumstances in or near foreign battle zones.  The heavily redacted decision was made in October, but was released only last Wednesday; it took that long for court security officers to edit out material they considered secret.

Appeals court hears case of ex-Guantanamo prosecutor fired from Library of Congress over writings

11/10/11: The Washington Post reports that the former chief military prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay is suing the Library of Congress for firing him after he wrote opinion columns in two leading newspapers criticizing the Obama administration’s decision to try some suspected terrorists before military tribunals. Attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union argued Thursday in federal appeals court in Washington that retired Air Force Colonel Morris Davis should be allowed to continue the lawsuit against the ex-supervisor who fired him.

Annual cost to house a captive at Guantanamo Bay is $800,000

11/10/11: Stars and Stripes reports that the Pentagon detention center that started out in January 2002 as a collection of crude open-air cells guarded by Marines in a muddy tent city is today arguably the most expensive prison on Earth, costing taxpayers $800,000 annually for each of the 171 captives by Obama administration reckoning. That’s more than 30 times the cost of keeping a captive on US soil.

Officials say US had advance warning of abuse at Afghan prisons

10/31/11: The Washington Post reports that long before the world body publicly revealed “systematic torture” in Afghan intelligence agency detention centers, top officials from the State Department, the CIA and the US military received multiple warnings about abuses at Department 124 and other Afghan facilities, according to Afghan and Western officials with knowledge of the situation. Despite the warnings, the United States continued to transfer detainees to Afghan intelligence service custody, the officials said. Even as other countries stopped handing over detainees to problematic facilities, the US government did not.