After years of stonewalling, the U.S. Defense Department has released the names of people imprisoned at the notorious Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. Made available in response to an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, the list contains the names of 645 prisoners who were detained at Bagram as of [...]
Carol Rosenberg at the Miami Herald broke the news on Saturday that 12 prisoners have been released from Guantánamo. The news followed hints in the Washington Post on Friday that six Yemenis and four Afghans were set to leave, but Rosenberg — and the East African media — reported that the men had already been freed and that two Somalis were also released. I’ll be writing soon about the Afghans and the Yemenis, but for now I’d like to focus on the stories of the two Somalis: Mohammed Sulaymon Barre and Ismail Mahmoud Muhammad (identified as Ismael Arale).
On Monday, one day after the New York Times and the Washington Post reported that the Obama administration was planning to introduce tribunals for the prisoners held in the US prison at Bagram airbase, Afghanistan, the reason for the specifically-timed leaks that led to the publication of the stories became clear.
Human rights activists and legal experts reacted swiftly today to disclosures that the U.S. Government is planning to introduce new measures they claim would give inmates at Afghanistan’s notorious Bagram prison more opportunities to challenge their detention. Their views range from cautious optimism to total condemnation. There are some 600-plus prisoners being held at the [...]
The war in Afghanistan hangs like some cloud of poison gas over Washington that won’t blow away. It sickens everything as it spreads. It continues to suck precious tax dollars out of the Treasury, money this country cannot afford to squander, especially as millions of Americans are sinking into poverty and joblessness exceeds 10 percent.
It sounds like the plot for the latest summer horror movie. Imagine, for a moment, that George W. Bush had been allowed a third term as president, had run and had won or stolen it, and that we were all now living (and dying) through it.
You see, here’s the thing. When you hear about the sick, twisted things that America’s torturers have been doing, courtesy of President George W. Bush and Vice President Darth Cheney, you have to remember that the U.S. military and the CIA were not really all that reliable when it came to picking up the real [...]
Rejecting arguments from both the Bush and Obama administrations, a federal judge has ordered the release of an Afghani who may have been as young as 12 when he was detained 6 ½ years ago for allegedly wounding two U.S. soldiers and an Afghan translator by throwing a grenade at their unmarked jeep. U.S. District [...]
Faced with impending defeat in a U.S. District Court habeas corpus case, the Obama administration devised a new strategy for continuing the detention of Mohammed Jawad, an Afghani who may have been as young as 12 in 2002 when he allegedly wounded two U.S. soldiers with a grenade. Justice Department lawyers announced Friday that they [...]
The Justice Department said in a federal court filing Wednesday that it would not rely upon evidence obtained through torture in the habeas corpus case of a Guantanamo detainee. Two weeks ago, the American Civil Liberties Union accused the Obama administration in court papers of relying on statements obtained through torture to support the indefinite [...]
