Just four months before the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the reported death of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan ought to signal an end to the “War on Terror” declared by the Bush administration in the wake of the attacks — the “war” that led to “extraordinary rendition,” the establishment of secret American torture [...]
The Pentagon spent $50,000 of our money to buy up the first edition of Operation Dark Heart by Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer and destroy every copy. The second printing has lots of words blacked out. WikiLeaks claims to have a first edition, but hasn’t shared it. However, reading the bleeped-through version reveals plenty. [The New York Times, [...]
Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda, released a new audio recording in which he threatens to kill any captured Americans if Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, considered to be one of the masterminds behind the September 11 attacks, is executed.
The director of U.S. national intelligence told the House Intelligence Committee the government has the right to kill Americans abroad. Here are 10 problems with this: 1. Acts that are crimes under national and international law don’t cease to be crimes because you cross a border. 2. Acts that are crimes under national and international law don’t cease to be crimes because you engage in them frequently. Assassinating non-Americans is just as illegal as assassinating Americans. The leap here is not to victims of a different citizenship but to the legalization of murder.
Civil liberties advocates and organizations representing Muslims believe the Obama administration’s decision to require extra scrutiny for travelers to the U.S. from 14 predominantly Islamic countries will lead to practices that are discriminatory and ineffective. The Obama administration announced Sunday it will subject the citizens of 14 nations who are flying to the United States to intensified screening at airports, including being subjected to full-body pat downs or body scanners.
So much for the First Amendment. Morris Davis, the retired Air Force Colonel who served as the Chief Prosecutor of the Military Commissions at Guantánamo from September 2005 until his resignation in October 2007, has just lost his job at the Congressional Research Service (a branch of the Library of Congress) for writing, in his [...]
Al Jazeera reports: Yemen is struggling with the possible release of the largest group of detainees at the US detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The release of more than 90 Yemenis still being held at the facility may be delayed due to US fears that Yemen does not have the capacity to ensure the [...]
On Sunday, following the revelation of the identity of one of two Uzbeks released from Guantánamo to take up a new life in the Republic of Ireland, I published a letter from Guantánamo written by this man, Oybek Jabbarov. The letter also included a statement by his lawyer, Michael J. Mone Jr., to a Committee of the US House of Representatives, in which Mone explained that Jabbarov was a refugee, living in northern Afghanistan with his pregnant wife, infant son, elderly mother and other Uzbek refugees at the time of the US-led invasion in October 2001,
US District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly struck another decisive blow to the credibility of the Bush administration’s detention policies at Guantánamo by granting the habeas corpus petition of Kuwaiti prisoner Fouad al-Rabia, a 50-year old aeronautical engineer and a father of four who had been accused of fundraising for Osama bin Laden and running a supply depot for al-Qaeda in Afghanistan’s Tora Bora mountains.
A month ago, rulings made by District Court judges in the habeas corpus appeals of prisoners held at Guantánamo seemed, for the most part, to confirm that the courts were uniquely placed to deliver justice to the prisoners after their long years of imprisonment, largely without charge or trial.
