guantanamo

The Administration Guts Its Own Argument for 9/11 Trials

"What I'm absolutely clear about is that I have complete confidence in the American people and our legal traditions and the prosecutors, the tough prosecutors from New York who specialize in terrorism" -- Barack Obama, yesterday.

The Weekly Standard's ACLU Smear Indicts Only Itself

Even for The Weekly Standard, this bitter, juvenile McCarthyite attack on the ACLU by Thomas Joscelyn sputters with so much fact-free, impotent, and self-defeating rage that it's hard to believe it was printed.  Right in the headline, it oh-so-cleverly smears the ACLU as "Al Qaeda's Civil Liberties Union"; it ends by proclaiming the group to be "al Qaeda's useful idiots"; and it's filled in the middle with all sorts of trite innuendo circa Posted in civil liberties, guantanamo, rightwing, war on terror

Obama Admits Guantanamo Won't Close by Jan. Deadline

A detainee stands at an interior fence at the US military prison for \"enemy combatants\" on October 28, 2009 in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.  (AFP/Getty Images/File/John Moore)

BEIJING -- President Obama directly acknowledged for the first time Wednesday that the prison facility at Guantanamo Bay will not close by the January deadline he set, but he said he hoped to still achieve that goal sometime next year.

Obama refused, however, to set a new deadline.

In an interview in the Chinese capital with Major Garrett of Fox News, Obama said he was "not disappointed" that the Guantanamo deadline had slipped, saying he "knew this was going to be hard."

Posted in guantanamo

Profiles In Hypocrisy: James Inhofe

Hypocrisy, thy name is James Inhofe when it comes to prosecuting terrorists.

Illinois Jail is Lined Up to Hold Guantánamo Detainees

A significant number of the remaining 215 inmates of Guantánamo Bay could be transferred to a maximum-security prison in rural Illinois, according to a source in President Barack Obama's administration.

Posted in guantanamo

The Only Anchor

Attorney General Eric Holder announced Friday that some top al-Qaeda 9/11 conspirators will be tried by jury in New York not far from the scenes of devastation that they had wrought.

This decision by the Obama administration demonstrates faith in the American way of life, and a conviction that even the worst mass murderers can be dealt justice by democratic institutions.

Trials at Ground Zero for September 11 Accused

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a new picture, reportedly taken by the International Red Cross, which purports to show him at Guantanamo Bay. (AP)

More than eight years after two hijacked planes smashed into the Twin Towers of lower Manhattan killing thousands and sparking foreign wars, five men accused of helping to plot the carnage are to be brought to face trial in a civilian courthouse just a few blocks away from Ground Zero.

The defendants, who include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-declared mastermind of the al-Qa'ida attacks of 2001, will be transferred, possibly in a matter of weeks, to New York City from the fortified US military camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where they are currently being held.

Posted in guantanamo

Detainees to Get 'The-State-Always-Wins' System of 'Justice'

According to The Associated Press, Eric Holder will announce later today that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other 9/11 defendants will be brought from Guantanamo to New York to stand trial, in a real criminal court, for the crimes they are accused of committing.  This is a decision I really wish I could praise, as it's clearly both politically risky and the right thing to do.

Guantanamo Conditions 'Deteriorate'

A year after Obama's election win, Al Jazeera has learnt that despite the new president's pledge to close the prison and improve the conditions of detainees held by the US military, prisoners believe that their treatment has deteriorated on his watch.(AFP/Getty Images/File/John Moore)

On the night that Barack Obama won the 2008 presidential election, 21-year-old Mohammed el Gharani was sitting in a segregation cell in Guantanamo Bay's high security Echo Block.

He remembers the excitement among his fellow prisoners at the prospect of an Obama presidency. "Everyone was very hopeful; people were saying he was going to change things, that he would close the prison," Gharani, who was released in June, says.

"Even the guards were telling us that if he won, things would improve for us." 

Posted in guantanamo, torture

When Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib Come Home

The Louisiana Board that licenses psychologists is facing a growing legal fight over torture and medical care at the infamous Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib prisons. In 2003, Louisiana psychologist and retired colonel Larry James watched behind a one-way mirror in a U.S. prison camp while an interrogator and three prison guards wrestled a screaming near-naked man on the floor.
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