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DEVELOPING: A military jury has convicted a man who was accused of being an aide of Usama bin Laden and making propaganda videos for Al Qaeda in the second Guantanamo war crimes trial. A jury of officers announced the verdict Monday at the U.S. base in Cuba.

A federal judge has ordered the Bush administration to release 17 detainees at Guantánamo by the end of the week, the first such ruling in nearly seven years of legal disputes over the administration's detention policies. The judge, Ricardo Urbina of U.S. District Court, ordered Tuesday that the 17 men be brought to his courtroom Friday from Guantánamo, where they have been held since 2002. He indicated that he would release the men, members of the restive Uighur Muslim minority of western China, into the care of supporters in the United States, initially in the Washington area. "I think the...

Federal Judge Release Gitmo Detainees into U.S.by Kenneth Hanner (more by this author) Posted 10/07/2008 ET Updated 10/07/2008 ET A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the release of several Chinese Muslim detainees from Guantanamo Bay into the United States. The men all are ethnic Uighurs and come from a region of China that borders Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Chinese government considers them terrorists and the U.S. has refused to return them to their home country due to fears they will be persecuted. The men were detained by the U.S. since their capture in 2001. In 2004, their status as enemy...

US judge orders Chinese Muslims at Guantanamo freed 07 Oct 2008 16:40:00 GMT Source: Reuters WASHINGTON, Oct 7 (Reuters) - A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the release in the United States of 17 Chinese Muslims who have been held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, a landmark ruling that dealt a major setback to the Bush administration. U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina read his ruling from the bench at a hearing to consider the appeals by the members of the Uighur ethnic group, who are seeking their release from the military prison and and asking to come...

The father of John Walker Lindh, who has spent nearly seven years in federal prison for serving in an Afghan army, told a room full of law students at University of San Francisco on Wednesday his son has been used as a scapegoat for the faults of the U.S. government. Frank Lindh of Marin County spoke for the fourth consecutive year about how he believes U.S. troops in northern Afghanistan in 2001 illegitimately captured his son, known as an "American Taliban," for fighting as a Taliban soldier just after the Sept. 11 attacks. Frank Lindh said he believes his son...

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba: Confessed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed offered Monday to help persuade one of his co-defendants to leave his prison cell for a pretrial hearing at Guantanamo Bay. ~ snip ~

“The people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions, and all else, meddles no more and longs eagerly for just two things - bread and circuses.” - Juvenal, Satire X Of all the Supreme Court decisions of recent months, the one I find most interesting is Boumediene v. Bush, the case in which, by 5-4 decision, the court extended habeas corpus rights to prisoners being held at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay. Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority, included in his argument a fascinating summary of English constitutional history, covering everything from Magna Carta to the adoption of...

U.S. officials have found that many militants captured in Iraq and Afghanistan know a lot more about the U.S. than one would suspect. The Washington Post reports the FBI and the U.S. military began a joint fingerprinting effort after 9/11. It says that in December 2001 a team of FBI agents in Afghanistan found that at least one in every 100 detainees had an arrest record in the U.S.A similar FBI team fingerprinted 3,800 fighters along the Iraq-Iran border in 2004. It found that more than 40 had previous criminal records in the agency's database.The Post reports that one militant...

As the lipstick war rages, Barack Obama is standing up for the rights of suspected terrorists On Monday in Michigan, Obama became exercised when talking about the need to give even suspected terrorists legal rights. “We may think this is Mohammed the terrorist,’’ he said at a campaign rally, but “it might be Mohammed the cab driver. You might think it’s Barack the bomb thrower. But it might be Barack the guy running for president.’’ Continuing, he got more heated, his voice booming. Referring to the Constitution, he said: “Don’t mock the Constitution! Don’t make fun of it! Don’t suggest...

A private jet that crash-landed almost one year ago in eastern Mexico carrying 3.3 tons of cocaine had previously been used for CIA "rendition" flights, a newspaper report said here Thursday, citing documents from the United States and the European Parliament. The plane was carrying Colombian drugs for the fugitive leader of Mexico's Sinaloa cartel, Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman, when it crash-landed in the Yucatan peninsula on September 24, El Universal reported. The daily said it had obtained documents from the United States and the European Parliament which "show that that plane flew several times to Guantanamo, Cuba, presumably to transfer...

A woman prisoner accused of supporting al Qaeda skipped her federal court hearing Thursday because she did not want to be stripped searched, her lawyer said. Aafia Siddiqui is currently being held at the metropolitan Detention Center on charges she tried to shoot U.S. soldiers and FBI agents in Afghanistan. Officials said strip searches are mandatory for all high-risk prisoners before they are transported from their cell to another location. "She's a mess your honor," said defense lawyer Elizabeth Fink about her client's medical and psychological condition and her absence from court. Fink reminded Judge Richard Berman that her client...

SYDNEY, Australia - Australian special forces in Afghanistan detained four suspected Taliban militants captured in April in pens sometimes used to hold dogs, the defense minister said Tuesday. Many Muslims consider dogs impure and the head of Australia's main Islamic group strongly criticized the actions of the special forces. Afghanistan's ambassador to Australia Amanullah Jayhoon said the reports were troubling but stopped short of criticizing the soldiers. Australian Defense Minister Joel Fitzgibbon defended the special forces, saying the detainees arrested on April 29 were held in the most secure place available before they were transported to a detention center in...

THE detention of Taliban prisoners at a dog-holding facility in Afghanistan has disgusted Muslim leaders in Australia, but the Rudd Government has defended the diggers responsible and the opposition says they should be cut "a bit of slack". Both sides of Parliament today spoke out in support of the soldiers' treatment of the four prisoners, with Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon says were suspected of "atrocious" acts. But reports of the incident, which occurred in late April, angered the leadership of Australia's Muslims, who regard dogs as unclean. "I am appalled that Australian soldiers have been implicated with such disgusting treatment...

More than 200 militants returned to home countries The United States military has secretly handed over more than 200 militants to the intelligence services of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and other countries, nearly all in the past two years, as part of an effort to reduce the burden of detaining and interrogating foreign fighters captured in Iraq and Afghanistan, American military officials have told The New York Times. The system is similar in some ways to the rendition program used by the Central Intelligence Agency since the Sept. 11 attacks to secretly transfer people suspected of being militants back to their...

Five months in jail for driving Mr. bin Laden? Only in America! Salim Hamdan, Osama bin Laden’s former chauffeur, recently won an appallingly light sentence for aiding al-Qaeda. Hamdan’s apologists call him a hapless, innocent motorist. If so, anyone steering a bank-job getaway car is “just a driver.” Hamdan is no naïf. He is a camp-trained al-Qaeda member who a Guantanamo military tribunal convicted of giving “material support” to America’s chief enemy in the War on Terror. Hamdan transported weapons (including two shoulder-launched missiles with which he was caught), drove and hid bin Laden, and guarded this mass murderer with...

Mr. Hamdan, We're Ready For Your Closeup Aug. 17, 2008(CBS) Attorney Andrew Cohen analyzes legal issues for CBS News and CBSNews.com.Of course George Clooney’s production company has just purchased the rights to a book written about Salim Hamdan, the most famous mechanic and driver in the history of the world. The sensitive star knows a good story when he sees one, and Hamdan’s story (the final chapters of which have yet to be written) over the past six years surely ranks as one of the best of the decade. Hamdan drove Osama bin Laden for a while (imaging having that...

They have closely studied suspects, looking for mental quirks. They have suggested lines of questioning. They have helped decide when a confrontation is too intense, or when to push harder. More than those in the other healing professions, psychologists have played a central role in the military and C.I.A. interrogation of people suspected of being enemy combatants. But now the profession, long divided over this role, is considering whether to make any involvement in military interrogations a violation of its code of ethics. At the American Psychological Association’s annual meeting this week in Boston, prominent members are denouncing such work...

THE DISGUSTING ['APPEASEMENT'] SONG BY NPRAugust 11, 2008 What is it about the bad guys that provoke "compassion" from NPR type of journalists? Regarding the case against Bin Laden's driver: Salim Hamdan, though only having a short time to serve under the current verdict, he still might be held indefinitely according the Bush's administration as an 'enemy combatant', John Mcchesni of NPR 'lamented' that the jury will be very disappointed if that happens. Juror Questions U.S. Pursuit Of Salim Hamdan : NPR's John McChesney has this exclusive interview ... http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93483533 Rhetorical question, Does Mr. Michesni think that these type of...

By see-dubya  •  August 15, 2008 06:02 AM I’ve been griping about the Gitmo lawyers for over a year now–I first started noticing the problem back in this post when I first guest-blogged for Michelle back in January 2007. Back then I quoted Rob Pollock’s interview with a Gitmo official we now know to be Cully Stimson*: Guantanamo detainees don’t lack for legal representation. A list of lead counsel released this week in response to a Freedom of Information Act request reads like a who’s who of America’s most prestigious law firms: Shearman and Sterling; Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr;...

Last week saw three human rights episodes play out in Russia, China and the United States. These events show us how America stacks up against the rest of the world. This past week the world saw the resurgent danger of the old Soviet Union in the modern Russian Federation. Russian military forces invaded the sovereign neighboring nation of Georgia. Although Russia claims to be aiding people in the disputed Georgian province of South Ossetia, the reality is that covert Russian agents have been fomenting upheaval, and Russia had been moving forces into place for this invasion. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin...