Free Republic

An attorney for the only terrorism suspect known to have been waterboarded during Gina Haspel’s time leading a secret CIA facility in Thailand is blasting her “failure to stand up for what’s right,” just ahead of her confirmation hearing to be CIA director. Navy Lt. Alaric Piette, a military defense attorney representing Guantanamo Bay inmate Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, emailed the statement to the Washington Examiner ahead of Haspel’s Wednesday confirmation hearing, where she is likely to be grilled on her post-9/11 actions. "I was an enlisted sailor during 9/11 and I understand the impulses that led people to want to...

“We did call her Bloody Gina. Gina was always very quick and very willing to use force. Gina and people like Gina did it, I think, because they enjoyed doing it. They tortured just for the sake of torture, not for the sake of gathering information.”-John Kirakou I would take anything John Kirakou says with a grain from the salt pit.  I question his credibility. What does anyone really know about Gina Haspel, President Trump's nominee to be the next director of the CIA? Not a heck of a lot. So far what we have is media and ideology-driven hysteria:...

<p>The former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, in a venomous tweet Saturday, accused President Trump of political corruption and warned, "America will triumph over you."</p> <p>John Brennan's biting two-sentence statement came in response to a Friday evening tweet in which the president celebrated the ouster of FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe. "When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history," he wrote. "You may scapegoat Andy McCabe, but will not destroy America... America will triumph over you."</p>

The Supreme Court is leaving in place a decision that the alleged mastermind of the 2000 attack on the USS Cole that killed 17 U.S. sailors should face a trial by a military commission. The court on Monday declined to take up the case of Saudi national Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri. Al-Nashiri had sought to challenge the authority of a military commission in Guantánamo Bay hearing his case. But an appeals court ruled last year that al-Nashiri’s challenge would have to wait until after his trial. …

A federal appeals court on Tuesday refused to halt the military commission trial of a Saudi national charged with orchestrating the 2000 attack on the USS Cole that killed 17 U.S. sailors. The 2-1 ruling said that Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri can’t challenge the commission’s authority to hear his case until after the proceeding has run its course. Al-Nashiri argued that military commissions only have authority over offenses that take place during an armed conflict. He said his actions were not war crimes because the U.S. was not officially at war with al-Qaida at the time of the attack. But...

When President Obama declares something a "success story," you know it has "TOTAL FAILURE" embedded in its DNA. Four months ago, America's King Midas in Reverse crowed about the fruits of his triumphant foreign policy in jihad-infested Yemen. A "light footprint" approach to counterterrorism operations, he claimed, was the most effective path to stability. In addition, Obama has shoveled nearly $1 billion in American tax-subsidized foreign aid to Yemen. Four months later, Iran-backed Shia rebels seized a Yemeni presidential palace. The president and his entire cabinet tendered their resignations on Thursday, creating a vacuum that al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula...

The leftist human rights groups pushing for Guantanamo terrorists to be tried in the civilian legal system should take note that a famously liberal federal appeals court affirmed the Military Commission at Gitmo has jurisdiction in the case against an Al Qaeda operative who bombed a U.S. Navy ship in Yemen. The ruling, issued by the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, is a blow to the powerful leftwing organizations—including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch—that have long fought to afford Islamic terrorists the same rights as American citizens. For years they have...

Problems with defense lawyers’ e-mails and computer files prompted a military commission judge on Thursday to postpone a pretrial hearing that had been scheduled for next week in the case of a Guantánamo Bay detainee accused of helping [He is the accused MASTERMIND] to plot the 2000 bombing of the destroyer Cole. It was the latest delay to bog down the death-penalty case against the detainee, a Saudi named Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. His last hearing, in February, was cut short when prosecutors asked that his mental health be evaluated, apparently to foreclose any future appeal based on the potential argument...

October 12 marks the 12th anniversary of the bombing of the USS Cole. The grim milestone comes as President Obama faces mounting questions about his administration's dereliction of duty during the murderous attack on our consulate in Benghazi, Libya. And it comes just a day after resurgent al-Qaida thugs pulled off the drive-by assassination of a top Yemeni security official who worked at the U.S. embassy in Sanaa. These are not "bumps in the road." These are gravesites on the blood-spattered path to surrender. Seventeen U.S. sailors died in the brutal suicide attack on the guided Navy missile destroyer as...

MIAMI (Reuters) - Guantanamo war crimes prosecutions of five prisoners charged with plotting the September 11 hijacked planes attacks will be delayed by two months because of lost files caused by Pentagon computer problems, U.S. military officials said on Wednesday. A weeklong pretrial hearing had been set to begin on Monday in the death penalty case against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the accused mastermind of the attacks, and four alleged co-conspirators. The judge overseeing the case postponed the hearing until June 17 at the request of defense lawyers who said three to four weeks' worth of their confidential work files had...

Guantanamo Bay Naval Station, Cuba -- November 9, 2011 Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri was escorted into a top security courtroom at Guantanamo Bay Naval Station Wednesday morning by an army of military officers. Clean shaven and with short-cropped hair, the al-Qaeda terrorist charged with orchestrating the 2000 attack on the Navy destroyer USS Cole chose to wear his white prison jump suit to the arraignment of his military tribunal. In fact, he told the judge through his Arabic interpreter that he “intended to show up” in his “prison uniform” though he knew of his right to wear civilian clothes. Al-Nashiri...

WikiLeaks: al-Qaeda leader put jihad before a sex life One of the most senior members of al-Qaeda held at Guantánamo took injections “to promote impotence” to avoid being “distracted” by women, according to evidence uncovered by investigators. By Holly Watt 10:31PM BST 26 Apr 2011 Abd al-Rahim Hussein Muhammad Abdah al-Nashiri, a Saudi Arabian, was said to have reported directly to Osama bin Laden. His interrogators reported: “Detainee is so dedicated to jihad that he reportedly received injections to promote impotence and recommended the injections to others.” He received the injections “so more time could be spent on jihad –...

Thousands of pages of previously secret military documents about detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison now put a name, a history and a face on hundreds of men in captivity there. The documents include details on 158 men on whom no information has ever been released. The hundreds of classified documents - marked "secret" and "noforn" meaning the information is not to be shared with representatives of other countries - are assessments, interviews and internal memos from the Pentagon's Joint Task Force at Guantanamo. The task force was supposed to determine who the detainees were, how they might be connected...

Four of the nation's most highly valued terrorist prisoners were secretly moved to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2003, years earlier than has been disclosed, then were whisked back into overseas prisons before the Supreme Court could give them access to lawyers, The Associated Press has learned. The transfer allowed the U.S. to interrogate the detainees in CIA "black sites" for two more years without allowing them to speak with attorneys or human rights observers or challenge their detention in U.S. courts. Had they remained at the Guantanamo Bay prison for just three more months, they would have been afforded those...

The 10th anniversary of the bombing of the USS Cole on Tuesday conjured up painful memories for the families of the 17 Navy sailors who died in the terrorist attack, but it also revealed simmering anger at the Obama administration over the lack of concrete progress in bringing an alleged perpetrator to justice. In February 2009, less than three weeks after his inauguration, President Barack Obama held an emotional meeting with family members of victims of the Cole bombing and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Families said the new president promised swift action yet pleaded for their patience so his...

Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri is a man with blood on his hands. A year before 9/11, the Saudi al Qaeda operative masterminded the bombing of the guided-missile destroyer USS Cole, killing 17 sailors as the vessel refueled in the Yemeni port of Aden. A Guantanamo tribunal was ready to arraign him last year, but since the Obama administration took office, it's been a case of trial and error. No trial -- plenty of error. As the 10th anniversary of the Oct. 12, 2000, attack looms, the White House has inexplicably frozen the prosecution. The Justice Department said this week that "no...

The Obama administration has shelved the planned prosecution of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the alleged coordinator of the Oct. 2000 suicide attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, according to a court filing. The decision at least temporarily scuttles what was supposed to be the signature trial of a major al-Qaeda figure under a reformed system of military commissions. And it comes practically on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the attack, which killed 17 sailors and wounded dozens when a boat packed with explosives ripped a hole in the side of the warship in the port of Aden.

The Obama administration has shelved the planned prosecution of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the alleged coordinator of the Oct. 2000 suicide attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, according to a court filing. The decision at least temporarily scuttles what was supposed to be the signature trial of a major al-Qaeda figure under a reformed system of military commissions. And it comes practically on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the attack, which killed 17 sailors and wounded dozens when a boat packed with explosives ripped a hole in the side of the warship in the port of Aden. In...

WASHINGTON - Pakistani authorities have captured a man accused of playing a leading role in the Sept. 11 attacks and the bombing of an American warship in Yemen, a catch President Bush called a "major, significant find" in the war against the ailing al-Qaida network. Waleed bin Attash, also known as Tawfiq Attash or just Khallad, coordinated the activities of at least two of the hijackers who crashed into the Pentagon during the Sept. 11 attacks, U.S. counterterrorism officials said. He is also one of two figures described as masterminds of the bombing of the U.S. Navy destroyer on Oct....

Note: The following text is a quote: IMMEDIATE RELEASE No. 917-09 November 20, 2009 DOD Announces Military Commissions Actions Today, prosecutors in the Office of Military Commissions announced they intend to ask the convening authority to refer new charges under the recently-enacted Military Commissions Act of 2009 against Abd al-Rahim Hussein Muhammed Abdu al-Nashiri, in connection with the bombing of the USS Cole in the port of Aden, Yemen, in October 2000. The bombing resulted in the deaths of 17 sailors and injuries to many more. This announcement follows the attorney general's determination on Nov. 13, 2009, that a military...