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War on Terror Alleged al-Qaeda bomb instructor shows mangled hand to court in Guantanamo hearing By Ben Fox ASSOCIATED PRESS 4:41 p.m. April 26, 2006 GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba – Holding up a scarred, mangled hand, an alleged al-Qaeda explosives instructor told a U.S. military court Wednesday his transfer to a maximum security unit has made his life in the Guantanamo Bay prison more difficult. [b]Sufyian Barhoumi, who lost four fingers and damaged his thumb in a land mine explosion in Afghanistan, said he struggles to use the sink[i] and toilet[/i] in the prison's Camp Five.[/b] He also said...

A former CIA officer was charged Monday with illegally leaking the identity of a covert officer and other classified information to journalists. John Kiriakou, a former CIA officer and author who defended waterboarding, was charged by the Department of Justice with one count of illegally disclosing a covert officer’s identity and two counts of violating the Espionage Act for illegally leaking classified national defense information. He was also charged with making false statements for allegedly trying to trick the CIA’s Publications Review Board to let him use information in his 2010 book, The Reluctant Spy. The investigation led by U.S....

Not quite all of them — two cases involving the actual death of a detainee will still be pursued, which is as it should be — but more than 100 involving less significant incidents will be cashiered. This probe was one of the last vestiges of the original Obama counterterror agenda. He banned enhanced interrogation and gave the order to close Gitmo on day two of his administration; a few weeks later, he opened the door to prosecuting Bush-era CIA interrogators. Fast-forward two years and not only is Gitmo still open, he’s now the guy who sent SEALs to shoot...

In a new video message released on the internet Friday, American-born al Qaeda spokesman Adam Gadahn calls on Muslims living in America to carry out deadly one-man terrorist acts using fully automatic weapons purchased at gun shows, and to target major institutions and public figures. "What are you waiting for?" asks Gadahn in English, and then adds that jihadis shouldn't worry about getting caught, since so many have been released. "Over these past few years, I've seen the release of many, many Mujahideen whom I had never even dreamed would regain their freedom." The two-part, two hour video appeared on...

Complete title: Judicial Watch Obtains Bush Defense Department Documents Detailing Terrorist Threat Posed by Guantanamo Detainees “There is substantial risk that detainees at Guantanamo, upon release, would set out to kill Americans or other innocent civilians around the world.” White House Spokesman Jay Carney on February 17, 2011: “The president remains committed to closing Guantanamo.” Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that it received documents from the Department of Defense (DOD) detailing the policies of the Bush administration related to the detention of “enemy combatants” at Guantanamo Bay, as well as the...

A journalist working for Arabic TV news channel al-Jazeera has been arrested in Egypt for allegedly fabricating videos of police torturing suspects. Huweida Taha Metwalli was stopped on her way to Qatar and 50 video tapes were found in her luggage, the Egyptian interior ministry said. She is reportedly charged with "tarnishing Egypt's reputation and harming Egyptian national interests". Al-Jazeera said the tapes showed a "documentary reconstruction" by actors.

US Politicians Duped By The Brotherhood In the United States, one individual maintained a pretense of "moderation" which would later embarrass the left and the right. According to the testimony of Dr. Michael Waller to the US Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Abdurahman Alamoudi was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. A man born in Eritrea in 1951, he arrived in the US in 1979 and became a naturalized US citizen on May 23, 1996. From 1985 onwards he became involved in many Muslim groups. In 1990 he founded the Washington DC-based American Muslim Council (AMC), which Waller states "has...

LONDON — Tony Blair was accused yesterday of undermining decades of British campaigning for international human rights by using the war on terror to give a “green light” to torture. Amnesty International will today launch an unprecedented global campaign against the British government after ministers admitted that they would use information gained by torture to prevent attacks on the United Kingdom. Mike Gapes, Labour chairman of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, reacted with anger after Ian Pearson, the Foreign Office minister responsible for human rights, said the government could not ignore evidence obtained under torture if it could prevent a...

<p>November 2, 2002 -- Remember those hysterical charges early this year claiming that America was "torturing" and otherwise violating the human rights of Taliban and al Qaeda detainees at Camp X-Ray?</p> <p>Well, four of those prisoners have now been released, and you can hear the truth about America's "brutality" straight from the horse's mouth.</p>

WASHINGTON, Nov. 29 - The International Committee of the Red Cross has charged in confidential reports to the United States government that the American military has intentionally used psychological and sometimes physical coercion "tantamount to torture" on prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The finding that the handling of prisoners detained and interrogated at Guantánamo amounted to torture came after a visit by a Red Cross inspection team that spent most of last June in Guantánamo. The team of humanitarian workers, which included experienced medical personnel, also asserted that some doctors and other medical workers at Guantánamo were participating in planning...

RUSH: "A Senate panel was told there was no torture at G'itmo." Club G'itmo featured no torture whatsoever. "The military investigation of interrogations at Club G'itmo found no torture occurred but one high-value al-Qaeda operative was subjected to abusive and degrading treatment when he was forced to wear a bra, do dog tricks, and stay awake for 20 hours a day. 'We look at this very, very carefully. No torture occurred,' Air Force Lieutenant General Randall Schmidt testified yesterday before the Senate Armed Services Committee. 'Detention and interrogation operations across the board looking through all the evidence that we could,...

On a rainy afternoon in mid-October 2005, a white bus climbed the brush-covered hills near Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, carrying a group of visitors to Camp Delta, the desolate spot on the island's southern coast where the U.S. military holds more than 500 prisoners captured in the war on terror. It rolled through the detention camp's stockade-style gate and turned onto the dirt track inside the outermost of three high fences. Like others in the small group of civilian doctors, psychologists, and ethicists visiting that day, I peered through the bus's windows, eager for a glimpse of detainees. Since our arrival...

What's Eric Holder trying to hide now! For an Attorney General of an administration that promised to be the most open and transparent in history the guy sure keeps a lot of secrets. Holder continues to ignore serious incidents of corruption that could impact the friends of the White House, and continues to stonewall inquiries into why he is not investigating those incidents.

ustice Department on So-called ”Al Qaeda Seven”: We Will Not Participate in An Attempt to Drag People’s Names Through the Mud March 03, 2010 4:19 PM For several weeks, Republican lawmakers and a conservative group have been attacking the Justice Department for refusing to reveal the names of nine officials who have in some way advocated for or represented detainees at Guantanamo Bay. "The administration has made many highly questionable decisions when it comes to national security, " Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said in a recent statement, arguing that the public has “a right to know who advises the Attorney...

Al Qaeda, Gitmo & National Security Bethany Stotts, March 9, 2010 Are the Obama Administration’s actions putting Americans at increased risk of a terrorist attack? Keep America Safe and its board members argue that it is. A recent ad released by KAS questions the loyalties of “The Al Qaeda 7,” the seven unnamed Department of Justice lawyers who have either represented terror suspects, worked on related cases, in some cases, advocated for detainees. In a February 18 letter to Senator Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, Assistant Attorney General Ron Welch wrote (pdf) that “To the best of our knowledge, during their employment...

Why, hire private investigators to take surveillance photos of CIA agents and hand them off to other latter day Adamses, who then showed them to top members of al Qaeda — thereby identifying for the terrorists the agency's interrogators and, potentially, tipping the terrorists off to the locations where the agents' families live. And while the lawyers are at it, why not call the whole enterprise the "John Adams Project." Actually, I would call the enterprise — just for starters — a wartime felony violation of the federal law barring disclosure of the identities of U.S. intelligence officers (Title 50,...

By labeling the U.S. anti-terrorism prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the "gulag of our times," the people of Amnesty International must think we're stupid or ignorant. Stupid or ignorant enough to fall for the assertion that whatever is happening at Guantanamo is the legal and moral equivalent of what happened in the hundreds of slave labor and concentration camps scattered throughout the former communist Soviet Union. Equivalent to a system that brutalized tens of millions, of which untold millions died of starvation, exposure, exhaustion, torture, illness or execution. OK, maybe in light of this generation's dismal ignorance of history, we...

More Afghan captives head for Cuba Security at the base has been massively beefed up Another 30 Taleban and al-Qaeda prisoners have left Afghanistan by plane for Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, it is reported. The prisoners, who were shackled and had white caps covering their faces, boarded a C-17 transport plane at trhe US base in Kandahar, the Associated Press reports. Each prisoner was flanked by two US soldiers as they walked across the tarmac to the aircraft. Most lights at the US base were switched off and security was tight. The first group of 20 detainees arrived in Guantanamo ...

Most people have to deal with the reality that confronts them. They start with that reality and try to do the best they can within its limitations and within their own limitations. But there are large and growing numbers of people -- especially among the intelligentsia -- whose starting point is some abstraction that they wish to apply to reality. For example, even in the face of a worldwide terrorist organization that has declared open warfare on every American man, woman and child, those whose starting point is abstraction focus on the "civil rights" of terrorists. No one in World ...

&nbsp; www.thejakartapost.com Print January 23, 2002 &nbsp; Taliban's detention The premature and hypocritical concern voiced by otherwise reputable international organizations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International over detention conditions of Taliban and al-Qaeda prisoners at the U.S. Guantanamo Bay Naval Station in Cuba is not just utterly misplaced, but outright ridiculous. If given the choice, millions of destitute, hungry and freezing Afghan refugees would gladly change places with Taliban prisoners in their roofed, albeit open-air, wire cage accommodations with three square meals a day, medical attention, sanitary facilities, not to ...

Detainees or POWs? Ancient distinctions. By Mackubin Thomas Owens is professor of strategy and force planning at the Naval War College in Newport. His views do no necessarily reflect those of any agency of the U.S. government. January 24, 2002 8:55 a.m. as President Bush's decision launch a "war against terrorism" in response to September 11 now hoisted the United States on its own petard? That would seem to be the case as international organizations and even officials of allied countries such as Great Britain have intensified criticism of the United States concerning its treatment of captured al Qaeda and ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- Since the United States leased land in Guantanamo Bay from Cuba in 1903, the government has used this site for incarcerating prisoners of war. Guantanamo Bay, officially still Cuban, is not subject to U.S. law, rendering activities there largely free from public scrutiny. Today it is the temporary home of 140 imprisoned Taliban and al-Qaeda combatants captured in Afghanistan. Despite the crimes of which these prisoners are accused, the United States has a responsibility under international law to respect certain standards of imprisonment. The International Committee of the Red Cross and other human rights organizations currently ...

Now that the fighting in Afghanistan is largely over, the sophisticated have emerged, blinking into the new sunlight to explain — again — why America is bad. As is usually the case with such storms, the America-bashing wind blows in from the East, picking up speed in Western Europe before it reaches our shores. But, not surprisingly, there are plenty of people watching Europe and nodding their heads like Weather Channel addicts. I had to read about them while I was writing about this absurd controversy over our treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo yesterday. I don't want to spoil ...

Guantanamo Detainees Said Plotting Sun Jan 27, 9:08 AM ET By TONY WINTON, Associated Press Writer GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) - Military guards at a detention camp at Guantanamo Bay say they have noticed a command structure emerging among the terrorist suspects being held there, camp leaders said Saturday. The leaders seem to surface during prayer sessions. Photos AP Photo Slideshows AP Photo Camp X-Ray, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba Of the evolving leadership structure, Brig. Gen. Mike Lehnert said, "We have indications that many have received training, and that they are observing actions such as security procedures." Lehnert, a ...

The National Post's Stewart Bell reported from Afghanistan during the U.S. bombing of al-Qaeda and Taliban forces. Yesterday he was the only Canadian among a group of foreign reporters granted access to the U.S. detention site at Guantanamo Bay. His report: The Taliban and al-Qaeda prisoners held at the U.S. military base here on Cuba's southern coast are being guarded partly by female Military Police officers, a shocking role reversal for Afghan fighters unaccustomed to taking orders from women. During the Taliban's five years in power, women were banned from showing their faces, working or going to school. They were ...

U.N.'s Robinson: Cuba Detainees Are Prisoners of War Jan. 16 GENEVA (Reuters) - U.N. human rights chief Mary Robinson said Wednesday the 50 Taliban and al Qaeda fighters being held at a U.S. Navy base in Cuba were prisoners of war and entitled to the protection of international law. Robinson said most legal experts disagreed with Washington's view that the fighters were "illegal combatants" and therefore not protected by the Geneva Conventions on prisoners rights. "The situation is complex (but) ... the overwhelming view of legal opinion is that they were combatants in an international armed conflict," the United Nations ...

The Rules of War Can't Protect Al Qaeda By RUTH WEDGWOOD NEW HAVEN — It makes no sense to win a trial but lose the war. With this in mind, a majority of the American public favors giving President Bush the option to use military tribunals against the Qaeda terror network. The tribunals are designed to permit a "full and fair trial" of war crimes without compromising our ability to track the network's future plans. Al Qaeda's skill at countersurveillance has made plain the need to protect sensitive intelligence sources at trial. But some international-law scholars suggest that President Bush's ...

Thanks to the New York Times, we now know the dreaded torture methods the sadistic CIA used on captured Al Qaeda big shots shortly after the 9/11 attack. I warn you: Reading this column any further will subject you to unvarnished brutality. According to a front-page article in the Times on Sunday, Sept. 10, Pakistani authorities captured Abu Zubaydah, Al Qaeda's personnel director, a few months after the terror attack five years ago. Zubaydah, wounded in the confrontation, was turned over to American authorities and whisked away to Bangkok, Thailand, where FBI interrogators began questioning him. According to unnamed sources...

Justice Department officials have stopped short of recommending criminal charges against Bush administration lawyers who wrote secret memos approving harsh interrogation techniques of terror suspects. A person familiar with the inquiry, who spoke on condition of anonymity, says investigators recommended referring two of the three lawyers to state bar associations for possible disciplinary action. The person was not authorized to discuss the inquiry. The person noted that the investigative report was still in draft form and subject to revisions. Attorney General Eric Holder also may make his own determination about what steps to take once the report has been finalized....

Democrats demand CIA detainee documents By LAURIE KELLMAN, Associated Press Writer 53 minutes ago A Senate Democrat who will chair its Judiciary Committee next year asked the Justice Department to release newly acknowledged documents setting U.S. policy on how suspects in the war on terrorism are detained and interrogated. "The American people deserve to have detailed and accurate information about the role of the Bush administration in developing the interrogation policies and practices that have engendered such deep criticism and concern at home and around the world," Sen. Patrick Leahy (news, bio, voting record), D-Vt., wrote Attorney General Alberto Gonzales....

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration is considering overhauling the way terror suspects are interrogated by creating a small team of professionals drawn from across the government, according to people familiar with a proposal that will be submitted to the White House. The new unit, comprising members of spy services and law-enforcement agencies, would be used for so-called high-value detainees, they said. In a switch from Bush-era efforts, it wouldn't be run by the Central Intelligence Agency, though who might be in charge isn't specified.

In tucked-away corner, war on terror takes off By Scott Shane, Stephen Grey and Margot Williams The New York Times WEDNESDAY, JUNE 1, 2005 SMITHFIELD, North Carolina The airplanes of Aero Contractors Ltd. take off from Johnston County Airport here, then disappear over the scrub pines and fields of tobacco and sweet potatoes. Nothing about the sleepy Southern setting hints of foreign intrigue. Nothing gives away the fact that Aero's pilots are the discreet bus drivers of the battle against terrorism, routinely sent on secret missions to Baghdad, Cairo, Tashkent and Kabul. When the CIA wants to grab a suspected...

Alleged WikiLeaks source suffers out of spotlightThe Irish Times - Tuesday, December 21, 2010 Concern is growing over the harsh conditions of Bradley Manning’s detention as he awaits his court martial, writes LARA MARLOWE, Washington Correspondent WHILE JULIAN Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, celebrated his release on bail last week with cocktails before being driven to “mansion arrest” at a 650-acre estate in Sussex, Private First Class Bradley Manning was mouldering away in solitary confinement in the brig at the Marine Corps base at Quantico, Virginia, deprived of exercise, news or even a sheet or pillow. Assange (39) is preparing...

Bradley Manning, who allegedly leaked hundreds of thousands of secret government documents to Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks, turns 23 in jail Friday. The Daily Beast’s Denver Nicks, in an exclusive interview with Manning’s attorney, reports on his solitary confinement, what he’s reading (from George W. Bush to Howard Zinn), and his legal strategy. The last time Bradley Manning saw the world outside of a jail, most Americans had never heard of WikiLeaks. On Friday, Manning, the man whose alleged unauthorized release of hundreds of thousands of classified documents put the website and its controversial leader, Julian Assange, on the map, turns...

If you needed any more proof of WikiLeaks’ extremist agenda, look no further than Israel Shamir, the Holocaust denier who is in charge of distributing the organization’s documents to the Russian media. The involvement of Shamir, who also supports Ahmadinejad and refers to Palestinian terrorists as “martyrs,” should put to rest any doubt that WikiLeaks’ rhetoric about transparency is just a cloak for its anti-American and anti-Western agenda. As Michael C. Moynihan exposed, Shamir has a long track record of anti-Semitism, including Holocaust denial. Shamir described Auschwitz as “an internment facility, attended by the Red Cross (as opposed to the...

Illinois Republicans were successful Friday in stripping a provision from a House defense bill that would have given permission for the transfer to the U.S. of detainees in the Guantanamo Bay military prison. The issue is of special importance to Illinois GOP lawmakers because earlier this year the Obama administration moved to buy an underutilized state prison in Thomson, Ill., in part to house Guantanamo detainees. Closing Guantanamo was a central Obama pledge that the president has not been able to keep — a promise made during his campaign and on his first day in office. Congress needs to give...

An appellate court in Milan upheld on Wednesday the conviction of 23 Americans charged with kidnapping an Egyptian cleric in 2003 and ordered even harsher sentences. All but one of the Americans are Central Intelligence Agency operatives.

To the United States, Julian Assange may now be Public Enemy Number One. Some American politicians have even called for his execution. But less than a year ago, the founder of WikiLeaks was officially entertained at a US Embassy cocktail party by one of the very diplomats whose secrets he would soon spill to the world. Mr Assange's site had already published dozens of leaks embarrassing to the US, including secret Guantanamo Bay detainee handling manuals and the full emails of Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican vice-presidential candidate. The US State Department condemned the manuals' publication as "a criminal act."

It's known that Julian Assange, the Wikileaks chief, has Guantanamo files, however this sounds fairly explosive. Reuters (via The Nation): WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, jailed in Britain this week, has told media contacts he has a large cache of U.S. government reports about inmates at the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, known as GITMO, the last of four major tranches of U.S. government documents which WikiLeaks had acquired and at some point would make public. "He's got the personal files of every prisoner in GITMO," said one person who was in contact with Assange earlier this year.

Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, has circulated across the internet an encrypted “poison pill” cache of uncensored documents suspected to include files on BP and Guantanamo Bay.

British officials complained to U.S. diplomats about secret American spy flights using foreign U.K. airbases, fearing that the data collected during those missions could implicate their country in potential human rights violations, according to secret diplomatic memos released by WikiLeaks. The British officials demanded from American diplomats that all such flights in the future be cleared by London, according to the cables sent by U.S. Embassy in London in 2008, and which were released by WikiLeaks on Wednesday. American officials dismissed the British concerns and demands as burdensome and obstructive to counterterrorism efforts, the cables showed.

<p>NewsletterShare Close this Share Box154 Comments | Post Comment.Wed Dec. 1, 2010 2:47 PM PST In its first months in office, the Obama administration sought to protect Bush administration officials facing criminal investigation overseas for their involvement in establishing policies the that governed interrogations of detained terrorist suspects. A "confidential" April 17, 2009, cable sent from the US embassy in Madrid to the State Department—one of the 251,287 cables obtained by WikiLeaks—details how the Obama administration, working with Republicans, leaned on Spain to derail this potential prosecution.</p>

Note: Photo included. PHOTO CAPTION: "Former Guantanamo Bay detainee Othman Ahmed al Ghamdi, in a tape released by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula." SNIPPET: "A videotape released by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) earlier this week says that a former Guantanamo detainee is now a commander within the terrorist organization. The former detainee, Othman Ahmed al Ghamdi, has risen to the rank of operational commander within AQAP as other senior terrorists within the organization have been killed in recent strikes. The tape, which is titled “America and the Final Trap,” confirms that three AQAP leaders were killed...

Ministers insisted that British secret agents would only be allowed to pass intelligence to the CIA to help it capture Osama bin Laden if the agency promised he would not be tortured, it has emerged. MI6 believed it was close to finding the al-Qaida leader in Afghanistan in 1998, and again the next year. The plan was for MI6 to hand the CIA vital information about Bin Laden. Ministers including Robin Cook, the then foreign secretary, gave their approval on condition that the CIA gave assurances he would be treated humanely. The plot is revealed in a 75-page report by...

The American Civil Liberties Union, which for years has scorned the Pentagon's military commissions as "kangaroo courts," has announced that it will mount an effort to provide top civilian defense attorneys for alleged terrorists facing trial at Guantanamo, notably the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Former Attorney General Janet Reno is among top lawyers who have endorsed the $8.5 million effort, which will helpdefray the expenses of civilian defense attorneys working on the terrorism cases. Under the military commissions scheme, the Pentagon will not reimburse volunteer civilian attorneys for their expenses. ACLU executive director Anthony Romero...

Mr. Meltzer played a leading role in the administration’s efforts to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and related policies affecting terrorism detainees. He was also the White House’s main contact with the Justice Department’s powerful Office of Legal Counsel, which evaluates whether proposed policies would be lawful.

U.S. Rep. William Delahunt blew nearly $560,000 in campaign cash last year - much of it on lavish meals and a family-friendly payroll that includes his ex-wife, son-in-law and daughter - stoking speculation the Quincy Democrat is emptying his war chest and won’t seek re-election. -snip- Delahunt told the Herald last week that he was still weighing whether to seek re-election, but Democratic Party sources have privately indicated his departure is anticipated - and expected to draw a host of candidates-in-waiting out of the woodwork.

From yesterday, Thursday, February 25, 2010:Intel bill pulled over controversial added interrogation provision "A controversial bill that would have levied criminal punishments on intelligence officers for harsh interrogations was pulled Thursday evening [Feb 25, 2010] . House Republicans charged Democrats with trying to sneak a provision into the intelligence authorization bill that would establish criminal punishment for CIA agents and other intelligence officials who engage in “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment” during interrogations."... Intelligence committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas) added the language, originally offered by Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.), to his manager’s amendment, which makes several changes to the bill...

From Bloomberg: Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian who faces terrorism charges for his role in the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies, asked a judge to order U.S. prosecutors to surrender information about “black sites” where he was held. Ghailani faces federal charges over the bombings of U.S. embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, that killed 224 people, including 12 Americans. Ghailani had been held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, since 2006, before being transferred to the U.S. in June. He is the first detainee from Guantanamo Bay to be tried in a U.S. civilian court. In a...

Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the Fort Hood gunman, had sought military prosecutions against soldiers he claimed confessed "war crimes" to him during counselling sessions. Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, last threatened to pursue prosecutions against other soldiers on Nov 2. Two days later he went for extra target practice at a shooting range where he bought 10 targets and fired more than 200 rounds He also closed his bank safety deposit box, telling a bank worker: "You'll never see me again." The day after that he went on a murderous rampage at Fort Hood, America's largest military installation, killing 13 people...