Posted on 12/21/2016 1:07:00 AM PST by Candor7
The Department of Defense and the Office of Military Commissions will allocate seats for news media aboard military chartered aircraft for travel from Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland to Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to cover military commission pre-trial proceedings scheduled for United States v. Khalid Shaikh Mohammad et. al., Jan. 25 - Feb. 3, 2017.
Travel originates at Andrews AFB, Maryland on Monday, Jan. 23, 2017; return flight from Guantanamo to Andrews AFB, Saturday, Feb. 4, 2017.
Due to a limited number of seats aboard the flight and limited accommodations at Guantanamo Bay, selection is not guaranteed. However, there is additional opportunity for media members to view the proceedings by closed circuit television (CCTV) from a media work center at Fort George G. Meade, Maryland, from Jan. 25 - Feb. 3, 2017.
Media desiring to view either or both of these hearings should send their requests via email to osd.pentagon.pa.mbx.gtmo-press@mail.mil. All requests must be received no later than 5 p.m. EST, Jan. 4, 2017. Media members should submit their names, positions, sponsoring organization, contact information, birthdate, and passport information to the above email address. Multiple names from the same organization may be listed. Requesters should indicate each individual's desire to be considered for travel to Guantanamo or attendance at Fort Meade.
NOTE 1: There are no tours of detention camps scheduled during military commissions. Requests for reporting on Guantanamo topics not related to the military commission (courtroom) must be coordinated through OSD Public Affairs and Joint Task Force-Guantanamo public affairs. The primary purpose of travel to Guantanamo is courtroom reporting.
NOTE 2: All media must ensure their passports and visas (foreign press) are up-to-date and eligible to enter and exit the United States.
Expeditionary Legal Complex B-Roll:
(2014)
http://www.dvidshub.net/video/384521/expeditionary-legal-complex-guantanamo-bay-cuba
(2011)
http://www.dvidshub.net/video/283025/expeditionary-legal-complex-video-2011#.VLAbBzZOk-4
Expeditionary Legal Complex Photos:
http://www.dvidshub.net/image/1710409/expeditionary-legal-complex-guantanamo
-bay-cuba#.VLAavzZOk-4
Further information including the media ground rules can be viewed at the
Office of Military Commissions website at http://www.mc.mil.
Obama will no longer be able to interfere.
Would be great if FR had its own representative there.( GRIN!)
Wiki entry:
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Khalid Sheikh (Shaikh) Mohammed (born March 1, 1964) is a militant held by the United States at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp under terrorism-related charges. He was named as "the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks" in the 9/11 Commission Report.[5]
According to the prosecution, Sheikh Mohammed was a member of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization, leading al-Qaeda's propaganda operations from around 1999 until late 2001. He confessed to FBI and CIA agents to a role in many of the most significant terrorist plots over the last twenty years, but the use of enhanced interrogation techniques on him has put his confessions into question.[6]
Mohammed was captured on March 1, 2003, in the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi by a combined operation of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), and immediately extradited to the United States. By December 2006 he had been transferred to military custody at Guantanamo Bay detention camp. In March 2007, while being interrogated, Mohammed confessed to masterminding the September 11 attacks, the Richard Reid shoe bombing attempt to blow up an airliner, the Bali nightclub bombing in Indonesia, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the murder of Daniel Pearl, and various foiled attacks, as well as numerous other crimes.[7][8] He was charged in February 2008 with war crimes and murder by a U.S. military commission at Guantanamo Bay detention camp which could carry the death penalty if convicted. In 2012, a former military prosecutor criticized the proceedings as insupportable due to confessions gained under torture.[8]
In Boumediene v. Bush (2008), the United States Supreme Court ruled that detainees had the right of access to US federal courts to petition under habeas corpus to challenge their detentions, and that the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 and the Military Commissions Act of 2006 were flawed. A revised Military Commissions Act was passed by Congress in 2009 to address court concerns.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalid_Sheikh_Mohammed
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Ping to trial of Khalid Shaikh Mohammad
I thought Obama let him go. If not, maybe he will pardon him so he can join the democrat party and continue with the fight to destroy America.
Obozo freed loads of the worst terrorists at Gitmo. Amazing that he hasn’t freed KSM yet.
Things will get interesting because the left believes that the military commission does not make a fair trial available.
The Eric Holder approach was to get defendants to America ( via habeous corpus)so they could receive a “fair “ trial. This was done in order to exclude from evidence Khalid Shaikh Mohammad’s confessions allegedly extracted under water boarding.
However this is a military commission , not bound by the rules of evidence in the Federal Code, and his cponfessions should be eneterd into evidence. Military commissions sentenced defendants to death for war crimes in Japan and Germany after WWII. No “fair trial” requirement was necessary then and should not be now.These are enemy combatants, not invested with the rights and privileges of a Domestic US defendant, nor of the Geneva Convention because they act for no nation. They are regarded like pirates, an accused with persona non grata status.
Here’s to him swinging from a yard arm at GITMO, live via FOX News, for the entire Arab World to see.
An excellent place for Trump to start cutting expenses.
There are limited accommodations at Gitmo for the journalists? What about all those empty cells. You could put a lot of reporters up in realistic accommodations so they could see how well the prisoners are treated.
Coincidentally his trial starts right after Zero leaves office....
Amazing....
It took 15 years to even get to a trial....shame does not describe what Zero has done to justice...
It would be great to simnply move the press right into the luxurious cells! Keep them for a while, give them a little re-education on their 1st amendment duties to report fact, not fiction.
How so?
This is the guy that Fox News used to show a picture of in a white T shirt looking very disreputable. The same day that it was announced that a Saudi had made a huge investment in Fox News parent company, they started showing him all cleaned up and wearing his Arab head gear.
Actually, under the Military Commissions Act that authorizes the trials at Gitmo, statements obtained through the use of “torture” are not admissible at the trial. So if the commission has ruled waterboarding to be torture, the exclusion of those statements is in accordance with the law of the proceedings.
While not all of the Federal Rules of Evidence are applicable, most of them are. The biggest deviation is in the use of hearsay. The Court can consider hearsay if it deems the statement “reliable.” Other non-FRE differences are: 1) No exclusionary rule for evidence obtained without a warrant, 2) Closed proceedings for introduction of classified evidence, 3) No right to speedy trial, and 4) Guilty verdicts need only be by 8 of 12 members of the Commission, except in a death penalty case, where the verdict must be unanimous.
Personally, I thought Johnson v. Eisentrager controlled the law of these military commissions for non-state actors committing acts outside the United States. However, the Bush Administration was obstinate in denying even the facade of due process to the Gitmo detainees. The prior cases, In re Quirin, Matter of Yamashita, and Johnson v. Eisentrager, all had the trappings of due process. The military commissions were created by acts of Congress, not executive fiat. The accused had public proceedings, notice of the charges, defense counsel, and speedy trials. Some would say too speedy. But they had trials, were found guilty and most of the defendants very quickly executed by hanging. That’s the way it should have gone here.
However, with the Gitmo prisoners, initially none of those rights were afforded and it left a bad taste in the mouths of five U.S. Supreme Court justices. If Congress had passed the MCA or something like it from the get-go, none of this crap would be an issue and KSM would already be taking the dirt nap he deserves.
Whoever advised Bush on the “legalities” of the Gitmo detainees gave him some bad legal and PR advice.
Well, lets hope he will indeed have the nap he has earned.
I hope he does, but I think the government waited too long and dicked around too much. People forgot why this turd needed to be flushed. Proof of the public’s forgetfulness will occupy the White House for another 22 days or so.
KSM deserves “Obama Waterboarding”
Remember the video of Ossama, or whomever it was, sliding down that board from the ship?
Now that’s real waterboarding and they wouldn’t need a ship. I recall one particular cliff from my time in Gitmo where old KSM would launch faster than a liberal at a KKK rally.
Who made a dookie in the urinal?
I want to see his lights go out.
The stuff I see would make you cry.
There are commercial flights to Guantanamo
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