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Who are the 300 terrorists held in U.S. prisons? By: Byron York Chief Political CorrespondentFebruary 5, 2010 "The Bush administration used the criminal justice system to convict more than 300 individuals on terrorism-related charges," writes Attorney General Eric Holder in a new letter to Republican critics in Congress. The letter is part of the Obama administration's aggressive defense of its decision to grant full American constitutional rights to al Qaeda soldier Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the accused Christmas Day bomber. That defense boils down to one sentence: Bush did it, too.Republicans on Capitol Hill object. They argue that one of the...

What exactly did Bush and Cheney do wrong? Democratic and media elites attack Obama for departing from the prior administration's Terrorism approach Glenn Greenwald Feb. 02, 2010 | (updated below) As I noted several days ago, it is not only Republicans -- but Democratic and media establishment figures as well -- who clearly crave the preservation of the Bush/Cheney approach to Terrorism and civil liberties. When Bush's popularity collapsed to historic lows, political and media elites pretended for awhile to object to his administration's fear-based and radical policies as extremist and an assault on "our values." But that was all...

Five American Muslims in custody in Sargodha threw a handwritten note to reporters from a police vehicle while on their way to a court hearing...Tuesday, stating: “Since our arrest, the U.S.A., F.B.I., and Pakistani police have tortured us,” according to their representative, Khalid Khawaja. A Pakistani relative of one of the men also claimed that the police had threatened to give them electric shocks. A spokesman for the American Embassy in Islamabad, Richard W. Snelsire, said that the United States “categorically rejects those allegations.” Mr. Khawaja, whose organization provided the young men’s lawyer, said a bail hearing would be held...

Washington: Stating that the Guantanamo Bay terrorist detention centre is one of the biggest recruitment propaganda tools for extremist organisations world over, US President Barack Obama today reiterated his commitment to close Gitmo at the earliest. "There's been no bigger propaganda weapon for many of these extremists than pointing to Guantanamo and saying that we don't live up to our own ideals. That's something that I strongly believe we have to resist, even if it has some costs to it, and even if it's not always the most politically popular thing to do," Obama told YouTube in an interview. Soon...

Bill Burck & Dana PerinoJanuary 30, 2010 3:00 P.M. About (Saving) Face Eight reasons why KSM will be tried by military commission.  The end is near for the Obama administration’s plan to try KSM and four other 9/11 conspirators in federal court in downtown Manhattan. The handwriting was on the wall for weeks as the extraordinary costs of the trial — as much as $1 billion in security expenses alone over four or five years — became apparent and the Underwear Bomber reintroduced the American public to domestic terrorism. Then, Mayor Bloomberg told the administration that it should find someplace...

Gibbs won't commit to civilian trial for KSM White House press secretary Robert Gibbs declined several opportunities on Sunday to say whether Khalid Sheikh Mohammed would be tried in a federal or military court. “He will be brought to justice, and he will likely be executed for the heinous crimes he has committed,” Gibbs said on CNN's "State of the Union." “That you can be sure of.” But he dodged repeated questions by CNN host John King about whether the administration might shift the venue back from federal court in New York to a military court, finally saying that “The...

President Obama finally listened to the outcry of New York, and is considering moving the trial of 9/11 terrorist Khalid Sheik Mohammed and other al Qaeda members out of the city, perhaps to Guantanamo Bay. Finally, some wisdom. It would be better there. It's military. They're not going to mess around. These dangerous terrorists will not be allowed to spread their hate, or hurt anyone else. Nobody knows better than me. I was a federal prison guard at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan. In 2000, I was with a prisoner, Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, taking him back to his cell....

For much of President Obama’s first year in office, his national security team worked to devise a secure plan to send dozens of Yemeni detainees held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba — the largest single group at the prison camp — home to Yemen, perhaps to a rehabilitation program. Then came the Christmas Day airliner bombing attempt, which was planned in Yemen, and the president put all transfers there on hold. Since November, the administration had been preparing to move the highest-profile Guantánamo prisoners — Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four accomplices accused of plotting the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks — to...

The detainees, whom the Justice Department declined to identify at the request of the government of Slovakia, arrived there on Sunday. There are still 193 detainees at the Guantanamo prison. The Slovak foreign ministry said last week that it would take the three detainees under an EU-U.S. agreement aimed at helping President Barack Obama close the controversial prison. His January 22 deadline to shutter it passed unmet.

You may remember that more than two months ago, amid the controversy over the Obama administration's decision to grant full American constitutional rights to, and hold a civilian trial for, accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed, Republican Sen. Charles Grassley asked Attorney General Eric Holder about Justice Department lawyers who before joining the Obama/Holder team had represented Guantanamo detainees or worked for groups representing them. Grassley pointed to one high-ranking Obama Justice official who formerly represented Osama bin Laden's driver and another who works on detainee issues despite previous advocacy for detainees. "This prior representation, I think, creates a conflict...

As the anniversary of the deadline set by President Barack Obama to close the controversial prison passed, a task force led by the US justice department reached a decision that infuriated civil liberties groups and will bring accusations that the president is aping George W Bush's war on terror policies. The administration believes their continued detention - justified because they are too dangerous to be released though the evidence against them is too weak to secure a conviction - is legal because Congress authorised the use of force against the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

SARGODHA, Pakistan — Five Americans being held in Pakistan on suspicion of terrorism alleged they were being tortured in comments shouted to reporters Monday as they were driven from court. Police and prison authorities denied any ill-treatment, and said the men did not bring up their complaints in court. The allegations could add to political sensitivities surrounding the case, which comes amid growing anti-American sentiment in Pakistan. Washington is also calling for the Muslim country to do more to fight al-Qaida and the Taliban.

This is so ironic, teroritz throwing a curve to liberals. Via Weasel Zippers Buried in a blog item by Newsweek's ace reporter Michael Isikoff is a bombshell. Apparently lawyers for Guantanamo detainees want to keep their clients in Guantanamo, rather than transfer them to the Obama administration's proposed new prison in Illinois:

Detainees: On the same day three inmates break out of an Illinois prison, a state legislative panel approves selling another Illinois prison to the feds to house former Gitmo detainees. What is wrong with this picture? Only two weeks after a failed al-Qaida attempt to bomb a plane bound for Detroit, an Illinois legislative commission voted Wednesday to support the sale of the abandoned Thomson Correctional Center in Thomson, Ill., to the federal government to house other terrorists who want to kill Americans. What caught our eye is that on the very same day, Illinois experienced a good old-fashioned jail...

This article tells what President Obama does not. That’s the way I figured it, and my figuring is confirmed. As I noted on Jan. 22, 2009, President Obama had no plan at all -- let alone a workable one -- to close Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay. He won’t meet his self-imposed deadline, and now many think Gitmo may never be closed. Hat tip to Morrissey at Hot Air. The treatment and conditions terrorists at the Club Gitmo Resort and Spa receive is much better than locked-down conditions at federal Supermax sites, and possibly much better than state prisons across...

This should come at NO SUPRISE. A classified Pentagon assessment measuring the recidivism rate of released Guantanamo detainees indicates one in five – 20 percent – of them return to jihad. Previous reports in Dec. 2008 (11 percent) and April 2009 (14 percent) shows a trend as the more dangerous terrorists are released over time. In increase could also just be a reflection of time. Maybe they are taking less “time off” before jumping into the game or getting bored trying to work in the real world. The recidivism rate can only get worse as those remaining in Guantanamo must...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A classified Pentagon assessment shows one in five detainees released from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay has joined or is suspected of joining militant groups like al Qaeda, U.S. officials said on Wednesday. The disclosure comes amid revelations that former detainees were playing a leadership role in al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula -- a Yemen-based group believed to be behind a failed plot to blow up a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day. Under pressure to increase safeguards, President Barack Obama announced on Tuesday he had suspended the transfer of additional Guantanamo detainees to Yemen,...

"Make no mistake, we will close Guantanamo prison, which has damaged our national security interests and become a tremendous recruiting tool for al-Qaeda," he said. "In fact, that was an explicit rationale for the formation of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula."

US President Barack Obama has said a Yemen-linked plot to bomb an airliner will not prevent the closure of the US prison at Guantanamo Bay. The US has suspended the repatriation of Yemeni prisoners held there in the wake of the plot, claimed by a Yemen-based al-Qaeda offshoot. Nearly half of those remaining at the detention centre at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are from Yemen. Mr Obama originally set a January 22 deadline to close the prison camp. But he admitted last November that that deadline had slipped to later in 2010. Officials fear that Yemenis released from Guantanamo and sent...

January 04, 2010, 4:00 a.m. The Constitutional Crisis and the Security CrisisOn detainees, either ignore the judges or rein them in. By Andrew C. McCarthy ‘We do not want a situation where the executive is defying the courts,” a senior Obama administration official told the Washington Post. The spokesman was rationalizing the administration’s release of jihadist detainees, who are returning to the jihad and targeting Americans. Such defiance, said the official, would be “a recipe for a constitutional crisis.” Evidently, the president doesn’t appreciate that we already have a constitutional crisis. The administration claims that it simply had to...