Free Republic

On Wednesday Barack Obama thanked Pope Francis for playing a key role finalizing a deal between the US and Cuba.Pope Francis is now set on closing Gitmo.World Net Daily reported: Having helped broker the agreement to normalize relations between the United States and communist Cuba, Pope Francis plans next to turn his attention to closing the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, a goal he shares with President Obama.In a meeting last week at the Vatican with Secretary of State John Kerry, the Vatican secretary of state, Pietro Parolin, second in authority to the pope, offered to assist U.S. efforts to...

The Vatican on Monday offered to help the United States in its efforts to close Guantanamo prison, a goal fervently supported by Pope Francis. Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said the Holy See welcomed recent signs President Barack Obama appears to have accelerated efforts to close the controversial facility... He said the Vatican stood ready to "help find adequate humanitarian solutions through our international contacts...

Relying on allies that aren’t allies is yet another consequence of the Washington establishment’s determined refusal to face the realities of the jihad, and to formulate policy based on those realities. “Qatar ‘broke promise to US over Guantanamo detainee,'” by David Blair, the Telegraph, December 12, 2014 (thanks to Lookmann): Qatar broke an “explicit” promise by allowing a former Guantánamo detainee who had trained with al-Qaeda to leave the country and visit Britain, a new report has found. Jarallah al-Marri, who attended an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan before the terrorist attacks on September 11, was freed from Guantánamo in...

A majority of American voters want any ISIS terrorist captured by the United States sent to Guantanamo Bay rather than a federal prison. That’s a key finding of the latest Fox News poll, as President Obama wants to close Gitmo amid widespread fears ISIS will try to strike the homeland soon. If an ISIS fighter were to be captured by the U.S., where should that prisoner be sent? By a 59-29 percent margin, voters say the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba. Veterans are more likely to think the prison at Guantanamo Bay should stay open by nearly 50 points...

An imprisoned man known as the "20th hijacker" in the 9/11 terror attacks is asking a South Florida federal judge for a transfer to the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The request is part of a rambling, handwritten letter filed Wednesday in Miami federal court by Zacarias Moussaoui. He is serving a life prison sentence after pleading guilty in 2005 to conspiring with the Sept. 11 hijackers to kill Americans.

The release of the already discredited Senate “torture report” has left liberals in a state of gleeful pearl clutching as they pretended to be shocked by the shocking revelation that enhanced interrogation can mean sleep deprivation and assorted mind games.Meanwhile here’s a little reminder of what real torture looks like as perpetrated by the Taliban. I was one of the Taliban’s torturers: I crucified peopleInstead of just searching for criminals, the night patrols were instructed to seek out people watching videos, playing cards or, bizarrely, keeping caged birds. Men without long enough beards were to be arrested, as was any...

The Senate Intelligence Committee’s $40 million investigation of the CIA (that involved no CIA directors or interrogators) culminated yesterday in the release of a 545 page executive summary (the complete report is 6000+pages so you can’t expect anyone to read that). I can summarize it for you in far fewer words: America conducted what Diane Feinstein considers illegal torture techniques such as waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and death threats against Taliban operatives  captured following that World Trade center “incident” that led to our National Day of Remembrance Service. That makes us as bad as they are. Somehow.Do you see the equivalence?...

Almost 13 years after the CIA established secret prisons to hold and interrogate detainees, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a report on the CIA’s programs listing 20 key findings. Click a statement below for a summary of the findings: 1 “not an effective means of acquiring intelligence” “The CIA’s use of its enhanced interrogation techniques was not an effective means of acquiring intelligence or gaining cooperation from detainees.” The Committee finds, based on a review of CIA interrogation records, that the use of the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques was not an effective means of obtaining accurate information or gaining detainee...

The detainees from Guantanamo Base in Cuba that arrived in Uruguay on Sunday as part of an agreement with the US, “can leave the country whenever they wish”, since they come as 'refugees', announced President Jose Mujica.In an interview with the Ecuadorean government television channel, Mujica revealed that Uruguay did not accept the US demand that the six detainees freed from Guantanamo must remain in the country for at least two years.

U.S. Transfers 6 Guantánamo Detainees to Uruguay WASHINGTON– The United States transferred six detainees from the Guantánamo Bay prison to Uruguay this weekend, the Defense Department announced early Sunday. It was the largest single group of inmates to depart the wartime prison in Cuba since 2009, and the first detainees to be resettled in South America. The transfer included a Syrian man who has been on a prolonged hunger strike to protest his indefinite detention without trial, and who has brought a high-profile lawsuit to challenge the military’s procedures for force-feeding him. His release may moot most of that...

Uruguay's President Jose Mujica has confirmed his country will resettle six Guantanamo Bay prisoners on humanitarian grounds. President Mujica was himself held for over a decade in terrible prison conditions during his country's period of military rule in the 1970s and 80s. He made the decision to take detainees from Guantanamo in March but the move was delayed until after the elections in November. An October opinion poll showed 58% of Uruguayans were opposed to bringing in the prisoners. Newspaper reports say they are expected to arrive by Tuesday morning.

It’s no secret that Barack Obama wants to close the terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, although his zeal for the project has often been questioned. Obama’s first action as President consisted of a directive to close the prison, but almost six years later, it’s still in operation — and relatively popular, at least in contrast with the alternatives. Obama has embarked on a strategy to close Gitmo through default by emptying it of its detainees, but there has been one impediment to that strategy. Congress requires the Secretary of Defense to attest that any released detainees pose no threat...

On June 4, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) warned that President Barack Obama could face "impeachment" if he continued to release terror detainees from the military prison facility at Guantánamo Bay without Congress's explicit approval. On Thursday, however--the same day that the president announced his unilateral executive amnesty--Obama released five more terror detainees from Guantánamo, including four Al Qaeda fighters. At the time, Graham told The Hill: “It’s going to be impossible for them to flow prisoners out of Gitmo now without a huge backlash....There will be people on our side calling for his impeachment if he did that.” The context...

President Obama has opened a new front in his hard line against the incoming Republican Congress by releasing more detainees from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, against lawmakers' objections. The Pentagon announced Thursday that four al Qaeda fighters from Yemen, including a senior figure who facilitated travel to Afghanistan for Arab extremists, and a Tunisian extremist would be transferred to Slovakia and Georgia. The transfers leave 143 detainees at Guantanamo, which Obama has vowed to close. Republican lawmakers, who have been pressing the administration to stop releasing detainees amid reports that some former prisoners had joined the Islamic State of Iraq and...

So much attention has been paid to the matter of whether or not detainees at Guantanamo Bay should be released and allowed to return to their home countries, but little has been paid to American warfighters wrongly convicted in the military justice system. Wrongly-convicted Americans deserve at least as much attention as GITMO detainees, don’t they? EXAMPLE: Two years ago this week, the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces denied former Army Green Beret Sgt. 1st Class Kelly A. Stewart‘s appeal of the wrongful conviction and eight-year prison sentence handed down by a court-martial panel in Germany almost 39...

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, CUBA -- A federal judge has refused to intervene in the forced-feeding of a hunger-striking prisoner awaiting his transfer from the war-on-terror prison, declaring that U.S. military medical staff do not show deliberate indifference to the health and welfare of long-held captive Abu Wa’el Dhiab. “The evidence produced at the hearing regarding pain was very mixed,” Judge Gladys Kessler wrote in her 20-page decision the up-to twice-daily insertion of a feeding tube into the 43-year-old Syrian’s stomach through his nose. “There is evidence in the record, including Mr. Dhiab’s medical chart, that he often tolerates the...

Fellow Conservative, This is just disgusting. A few days removed from a complete shellacking in the midterm elections, Obama has decided to stick his nose up at the American people and release another dangerous terrorist from the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility. Fawzi al-Odah was one of the longest-held terrorists in GITMO. Instead of keeping him in Guantanamo where we know he can be stopped, the Obama administration released him back to Kuwait. Once home, al-Odah will be forced to spend a year in a Kuwaiti “militant-rehabilitation center,” however after six months he will become eligible for ‘parole,’ specifically more time...

U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice pushed back on Sunday against GOP claims that the administration negotiated with terrorists by transferring five Taliban prisoners in Guantanamo Bay to Qatar in exchange for the release of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl on Saturday. "I wouldn't put it that way," Rice said on CNN's "State of the Union" when asked if the exchange means that U.S. officials can no longer say they don't negotiate with terrorists. "Why didn't you notify Congress?" Crowley asked, referencing the law that requires the president to alert Congress in 30 days before transferring any prisoners from Guantanamo Bay....

So there was a ransom in the works. Fox News heard whispers about that soon after Bergdahl was released. So did the Free Beacon, from an intel official who speculated that a criminal syndicate like the Haqqani Network would have been much more interested in cash than prisoners. If you believe BuzzFeed, though, it wasn’t the U.S. government that was considering a ransom, it was Bergdahl’s father. And it’s unclear if it was a pipe dream or something he might have actually pulled off. Also, Bergdahl’s parents reportedly had “extraordinary insider access” to the military’s hunt for their son, replete...

Tuesday on NewsMax TV, former U.S. Marine Corps Lt. Col. Oliver North said U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl was not a prisoner of war because he was actually being held "hostage" by the Haqqanis, a terrorist group separate from the Taliban and associated heavily with al Qaeda. North said he knew there was at least a $1 million dollar ransom being demanded for Bergdahl some time ago so he estimated the price paid to release the hostage must be close to $5-6 million now. ...more (w/audio)...