In the last week, Omar Khadr, the only Western citizen still held in Guantánamo, has sacked his US lawyers and stated that he will boycott his forthcoming trial by Military Commission, scheduled to begin on August 10. He has also refused to have anything to do with a plea deal that was being negotiated between [...]
Since coming to power 15 months ago, promising to close Guantánamo within a year, and suspending the much-criticized Military Commission trial system for terror suspects, President Obama’s zeal for repudiating the Bush administration’s “War on Terror” detention policies has ground to a halt. The rot set in almost immediately, when the new administration invoked the “state secrets doctrine” last February, to combat a lawsuit brought by several men subjected to “extraordinary rendition” and torture, and was sealed last May, when Obama delivered a major national security speech in which he announced that the Military Commissions were back on the table, and also announced his intention to continue holding some prisoners at Guantánamo without charge or trial.
As evidenced by the recent outpouring of generous support for the people of Haiti, America remains a caring and compassionate nation. But when it comes to human rights and the rule of law, the United States falls woefully short, trailing behind the rest of the civilized world. Case in point, the U.S. government is seriously considering indefinite detentions for some Guantanamo detainees.
Last Tuesday, a little known court — the Court of Military Commissions Review — convened to hear appeals in the cases of the only two men sentenced in the Military Commission trial system established by Congress in 2006, after the first version, conceived by Vice President Dick Cheney and his close advisors in November 2001, was ruled illegal by the US Supreme Court.
The Obama administration has signaled that it wants the Justice Department to relocate the 9/11 terror trials, according to Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY). The Senator’s spokesman, Josh Vlasto, said Schumer spoke “with high-level members of the administration and urged them to find alternatives.” The move comes a little more than a day after Mayor Michael Bloomberg called on the Justice Department to change the venue of the trial.
A federal court found today that, based on the facts presented to it so far, the Library of Congress likely violated Col. Morris Davis’s rights when it fired him from his job at the Library’s Congressional Research Service (CRS) because of opinion pieces he wrote about the Guantánamo military commissions system that ran in the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post in November. The court denied Davis’s request for an immediate injunction to compel the Library to reinstate him, however, finding that Col. Davis had not yet demonstrated the irreparable injury necessary for an injunction because Davis might be able to recover monetary damage in the future.
On Wednesday evening, the Associated Press reported that, in court filings, Justice Department lawyers stated that Attorney General Eric Holder has decided that a sixth Guantánamo prisoner — an Afghan named Obaidullah — will be put forward for trial by Military Commission.
Last Tuesday, in a letter to Illinois governor Pat Quinn, five senior Obama administration officials — Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Attorney General Eric Holder, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, and Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano — announced that “the President has directed, with our unanimous support, that the Federal Government proceed with the acquisition” of Thomson Correctional Center, a maximum-security prison about 150 miles north-west of Chicago, to house prisoners from Guantánamo.
The Iraq war inquiry has insisted that Tony Blair will be questioned “very much in public.” The statement follows claims that key evidence from the former Prime Minister would be heard behind closed doors. Newspaper reports claimed Mr Blair’s meetings with US President George W. Bush and details of the decision-making process that led to war would be dealt with in secret on grounds of national security and the need to protect Britain’s relationship with the US.
Fouad Mahmoud al-Rabiah, a Kuwaiti national, has been transferred from the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay to the control of the government of Kuwait, the Justice Department announced Wednesday.
