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MADRID — A Spanish court absolved four men and upheld the acquittal of a fifth on Thursday in the convoluted legal proceedings relating to the 2004 Madrid commuter train bombings that killed 191 people in the deadliest attack by Islamic militants on European soil. The rulings followed appeals of some of 21 convictions by a lower court after a five-month trial that ended in October. Seven other people were acquitted at that time. Most dramatically, the court on Thursday upheld the acquittal of one of the bombing’s accused masterminds, Rabei Osman, an Egyptian, who was found guilty in 2006 in...

Omar Khadr, a Canadian detainee accused of killing an American soldier during a firefight in 2002, is seen both sobbing and angry in the seven and a half hours of poor quality video issued by his lawyers. Khadr, 21, describes mistreatment at the hands of American guards. But his main complaint, of damaged eyesight, dates from the shoot out with a US patrol in Afghanistan. In one segment he repeatedly cries: "Help me." Khadr, who played in Osama bin Laden's private compounds as a child, was 15 when he was arrested and 16 when the Canadian agents were granted access...

Excerpt - A teenage Omar Khadr sobs uncontrollably as Canadian spy agents question him at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in a brief video excerpt released via the internet early Tuesday morning. The 10-minute video posted just after 5 a.m. ET is of poor quality and the voices are often inaudible, as it was never intended to be viewed by the public. But it shows Khadr, 16 at the time, being interviewed by Canadian officials in late February 2003. ~ snip ~

The GITMO Road Show by: Brooke Rieder, July 10, 2008 Just past Bhutan and Texas, and a stone’s throw away from NASA, stood Guantanamo Bay, ablaze in vibrant orange. On the outskirts of the Smithsonian Folk-life Festival recently, alive with bluegrass music and monastic dancers, members of Amnesty International quietly presented a more somber message. With a 7x8 ft brightly colored replica of a Guantanamo Bay prison cell, the exhibit announced “Welcome to Guantanamo: a global symbol of torture, presumed guilt, unfair trials, and no legal rights—courtesy of the U.S. government.” Life-sized orange cutout figures lined the fence around the...

THE LARK PROGRAM A Lady liberal wrote a lot of letters to the White House complaining about the treatment of a captive insurgent (terrorist) being held in Guantanamo Bay . She received back the following reply: The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Washington, D.C. 20016 Dear Concerned Citizen, Thank you for your recent letter roundly criticizing our treatment of the Taliban and Al Quida detainees currently being held at Guantanamo Bay , Cuba . Our administration takes these matters seriously and your opinion was heard loud and clear here in Washington . You'll be pleased to learn that, thanks to...

Although the Fourth of July is a great day to be alive for most Americans, it causes the bile to boil in moonbats' veins, so that it seeps out through their pores in the most hideous displays. The appalling Chris Satullo is hardly the only example. Below are some lowlights from a seasonal piece at The Progressive: "It's July 4th again, a day of near-compulsory flag-waving and nation-worshipping. Count me out. Spare me the puerile parades. Don't play that martial music, white boy. And don't befoul nature's sky with your F-16s. […]" "For when you stop to think about it,...

President Bush will soon decide whether to close Guantanamo Bay as a prison for al-Qaeda suspects, sources tell ABC News. High-level discussions among top advisers have escalated in the past week, with the most senior administration officials in continuous talks about the future of the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay--and how it will be dramatically changed and/or closed in the wake of the Supreme Court's ruling that gave detainees there access to federal courts. Sources have confirmed that President Bush is expected to be briefed on these pressing GTMO issues--and may reach a decision on the future of the naval...

The two major presidential candidates left standing would make major changes to the national security and foreign policies carried out by the George W. Bush administration over the last seven years. Not surprisingly, exactly what kind of changes depends on who ends up on the steps of Capitol Hill taking the oath of office in January 2009 -- Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) or Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL). The following analysis is based on several indicators: the candidates' U.S. Senate voting records; their national security platforms as laid out in articles, op-eds and speeches; and their responses to queries in debates,...

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba -- No matter what happens to America's offshore military prison, this much is clear: This Navy base will remain open for years to come, and so probably will the McDonald's, the Taco Bell and the golf course. "We're not going anywhere anytime soon," declared Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey M. Johnston, who gets upset when people equate the closing of the detention center for suspected al-Qaida and Taliban figures with a shutdown of this 45-square-mile base. The U.S. maintained this base long before the first detainees arrived in January 2002. U.S. Marines took Guantanamo Bay in 1898...

Peter McDonald, American Library Association [ALA] Councilor and Dean of Library Services at Fresno State, has publicly defamed American troops with known false misinformation, but you be the judge. In an open letter to the ALA Council, Mr. McDonald said: "Where's Mr. Kent's outrage on this travesty where, if we're talking library-related, the prisoners' Korans have been routinely desecrated by soldiers and where they have NO freedom to read?" ....

Video clip from Al Furqan's latest tape, "The Islamic State is Meant to Stay". The video shows the attack on Combat Outpost Inman and images from The Long War Journal of the aftermath of the attack. Al Qaeda in Iraq, through its puppet organization the Islamic State of Iraq, released its latest propaganda video on June 23. The video contains a montage of attacks throughout Iraq, and features two Kuwaiti al Qaeda operatives who conducted strikes in Mosul. One of the operatives was released from the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The Islamic State of Iraq used footage...

A U.S. federal appeals court has struck down the U.S. military's classification of a Guantanamo Bay detainee as an enemy combatant. This is the first time the U.S. court system has overruled the Bush administration's designation of a detainee since the Guantanamo facility began operations in early 2002. The court ruled in favor of a Chinese Muslim, Huzaifa Parhat, who has spent the last six years in detention and is one of more than 100 detainees to challenge their enemy combatant status in the U.S. judicial system. The court directed the U.S. military to release Parhat, transfer him out of...

High-Ranking Abuse by Ben Giles June 20, 2008 High ranking officials at the Department of Defense undertook the process of authorizing illegal interrogation tactics in the year following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, according to the Chairman of the Armed Services Committee. “Senior officials in the United States government sought out information on aggressive techniques, twisted the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees,” said Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) in his opening statement. “In the process, they damaged our ability to collect intelligence that could save lives.” Assisted by questionable legal council from...

John Yoo published this article in the Wall Street Journal yesterday about the Supreme Court's Boumediene ruling. He makes too many claims for me to respond to here in a blog post, but let me address a handful. 1. Yoo: "Under the writ of habeas corpus, Americans (and aliens on our territory) can challenge the legality of their detentions before a federal judge." This is an astonishing statement coming from a former Department of Justice official like John Yoo. I say that because Americans were locked up in military brigs as "enemy combatants." And their attorneys did file habeas corpus...

I am compelled to come to John McCain’s defense against George Will’s column today. With respect to the five justices conferring standing on alien, unlawful, enemy combatants to seek habeas review in federal district courts, Will writes, in part: As such, the Supreme Court’s ruling only begins marking a boundary against government’s otherwise boundless power to detain people indefinitely, treating Guantanamo as (in Barack Obama’s characterization) “a legal black hole.” And public habeas hearings might benefit the Bush administration by reminding Americans how bad its worst enemies are. That “black hole” was neither created yesterday nor by George Bush. It...

Mark Levin pens another cogent analysis in dissenting against George Will's column and the latest Supreme Court assertion of governmental branch supremacy. Within, Mark says: And that "black hole" exists for two primary reasons: 1. to detain unlawful and lawful combatants until the end of hostilities, thereby keeping them off the battlefield where they can kill American soldiers and, in the case of terrorists, kill civilians (as they have extended the battlefield to our cities); and 2. to interrogate the detainees to secure information that might save the lives of American soldiers and civilians. Now, it seems to me that...

When the terrorists attack again — as Homeland Security has repeatedly warned us they will — how many survivors will be consoled because the Supreme Court and the State Department looked out for the "rights" of terrorists before the rights of their dead loved ones? Will the dead be wrapped in a copy of the Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling granting foreign detainees, whose mission is to destroy our Constitution, our country and way of life, the right to appeal to U.S. civilian courts to challenge their detention, a right that should be reserved only for American citizens? Perhaps inside the...

Last week's Supreme Court decision in Boumediene v. Bush has been painted as a stinging rebuke of the administration's antiterrorism policies. From the celebrations on most U.S. editorial pages, one might think that the court had stopped a dictator from trampling civil liberties. Boumediene did anything but. The 5-4 ruling is judicial imperialism of the highest order.

I love President Bush, but his administration has really botched the GWOT on the legal front. Sometimes, doing something badly is worse than doing nothing at all.

Once again, the dictatorship of the black robe has struck. Five Supreme Court justices have legislated from the bench, usurping and abrogating power to themselves that constitutionally belongs to the president and Congress. And the result is that American lives are much more at risk. I am speaking, of course, of the atrocious decision made this week that gives captured terrorist combatants habeas corpus appellate access to American courts. We're talking about murderous monsters who are not U.S. citizens, who haven't even followed the Geneva Convention by wearing a uniform or carrying a flag and by attacking nothing but civilians,...

The White House and allies in Congress have begun exploring how to limit the scope of this week's Supreme Court ruling that says suspected terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay have the right to challenge their detentions in federal court. Administration lawyers were digesting the ramifications of a decision they condemned as an unjustified judicial usurpation of federal and congressional prerogatives in waging war. They said the court provided little guidance for the standards judges should use in evaluating the claims of detainees seeking release, and suggested that they might press Congress to spell out new rules. "We're looking at all...

So it is extraordinary that during the Bush administration's seven years, nearly all of them a time of war that began on Sept. 11, 2001, the court has been prompted to push back four times. Last week's decision in Boumediene v. Bush, in which the court ruled that prisoners at Guantanamo Bay have a right to challenge their detentions in the federal courts, marks only the most recent rebuke. It is not hard to see why the court has traditionally been so quick to side with presidents during armed conflicts. The justices presumably lack the expertise of White House military...

Most people with a brain and with some concern for the future of this country are understandably upset that the five liberal justices of the Supreme Court could render such an terrible decision involving the unlawful enemy combatants who were captured on the field of battle and brought to Guantanamo – upset, frustrated and heartsick that this decision will increase the danger to us all and turn our soldiers into murderers in some situations.

Five members of the US Supreme Court just sided with known terrorists currently detained at Gitmo in Cuba. In doing so, they not only provided “aid and comfort” to enemies of our state, but offered Constitutional Rights written solely to protect the rights of innocent legal US citizens to known terrorists, and placed every American life in mortal danger in that process. You can read the USA Today column on the subject here. Our silence is our consent. We have been far too tolerant for far too long. We can no longer afford to be silent in our dissent my...

Good collection of links on the disaster that was yesterday's 5-4 decision conferring constitutional rights on our sworn enemies in the middle of a war.

The lawyers who are championing the rights of terrorists should tell the public what this decision really means. It means that terrorists will be entitled to Miranda rights, to legal representation and the right to remain silent. And they will. When Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11, was handed over to the U.S. after his capture in Karachi in 2003, he taunted his interrogators with this, "I'll talk to you guys in New York when I see my lawyer." But they won't tell the public, they will continue to talk about preserving the rights of people who would behead...

In a campaign dominated by the economy and the Iraq War, the Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling Thursday on detainees at Guantanamo marks a forceful reminder that John McCain promises one course and Barack Obama pledges another in picking future justices. In the current controversy, McCain quickly expressed his disapproval of the opinion, while Obama issued a statement of support. It fell to outsiders to point out the broader implications in the race for the White House. "With the replacement of a single justice from the majority ... today's four dissenters could become tomorrow's majority," said Nan Aron of the Alliance...

If you want more decisions like this in which al Qaeda receives American Constitutional Rights, vote for Barack Obama. And when crafty American lawyers get their terrorist clients off on a technicality, and the al Qaeda soldier walks out of the federal courthouse in Philadelphia, Chicago, or San Diego and, because he got the all expense paid trip to his enemy's homeland, he decides, while he is here, to blow up the shopping mall in your town, you can look in the mirror and thank yourself.

At his arraignment Thursday, Ramzi Binalshibh admitted he committed an overt act in the 9/11 attack plot: "I've been seeking martyrdom for five years. I tried to get a visa for 9/11, but I could not," said [Ramzi] Binalshibh, who was a member of the German-based Hamburg cell of Al-Qaeda which planned and then carried out the attacks. A native of Yemen, Binalshibh shared a Hamburg apartment with Mohammed Atta, a key leader of the 19 hijackers who took over four planes on the day to use as weapons, but unlike Atta and the others, he was unable to get...

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba - U.S. military officers responsible for defending Guantanamo detainees said they will investigate why five men accused in the Sept. 11 attacks were allowed to talk among themselves at their arraignment, allegedly pressuring one of the defendants to reject his lawyers. All five said they would represent themselves in the death penalty trial, the first U.S. attempt to prosecute those believed to be directly responsible for killing 2,973 people in the bloodiest terrorist attacks ever on U.S. soil. None entered pleas, and two said they hope to become martyrs for their anti-American cause. Lawyers for...

"Lawmakers chastised the Bush administration on Wednesday for allowing the Chinese government to interrogate Chinese Muslim detainees at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and demanded that they be freed in the United States," the Associated Press reports: The two lawmakers, Reps. Bill Delahunt, D-Massachusetts, and Dana Rohrabacher, R-California, said the Uighurs--members of a Chinese ethnic group--should be compensated and apologized to for any abuse they may have suffered while held in the detention center at U.S. naval base in Cuba. Uighurs fled their homeland in western China and settled in Afghanistan and Pakistan, only to be swept...

Within his report ‘9/11 kin barred from Gitmo trial’ yesterday for the New York Daily News, James Gordon Meek questioned Debra Burlingame’s objectivity. Yet is creating a controversy, reporting the outcome, labeling some but not others within that report, and filing it as news ethical journalism? When the architects of the 9/11 attacks are charged this week at Guantanamo Bay for killing nearly 3,000 Americans, the victims' families won't be allowed to witness it. The Defense Department outraged 9/11 families by belatedly disclosing that just one victim's relative - GOP loyalist [all emphasis here added mine] Debra Burlingame, whose brother...

Charges dropped against alleged 20th hijacker: Pentagon WASHINGTON (AFP) - The Pentagon has dropped charges against Mohammed al-Qahtani, the alleged "20th hijacker" in the September 11 attacks on the United States, a Pentagon spokesman said Tuesday. Susan Crawford, the convening authority for war crimes trials by special military commissions, gave no explanation in dropping the charges against al-Qahtani "without prejudice," said Commander Jeffrey Gordon. "They have been dismissed without prejudice, which means they can be reinstituted at any time," he said of the charges.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Between 5 and 10 percent of inmates freed from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay have returned to terrorism since their release, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Thursday. Gates was briefed on the statistics after a Kuwaiti man released in 2005 from the U.S. prison on Cuba carried out a suicide bomb attack in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. "I was told today that the recidivism rate ... those who return to the battlefield, is probably somewhere between 5 and 10 percent -- maybe 6, 7 percent, something like that," Gates said. "We...

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico—The U.S. military is confirming that a former Guantanamo detainee from Kuwait carried out a recent suicide attack in northern Iraq. A spokesman for U.S. military's Central Command told The Associated Press on Wednesday that Abdallah Salih al-Ajmi took part in an attack in Mosul. U.S. Navy Cmdr. Scott Rye says authorities don't know the motive for the attack, which was reported last week by Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television. Iraqi security forces were apparently targeted. The U.S. transferred al-Ajmi to Kuwaiti custody from Guantanamo in 2005. A Kuwaiti court later acquitted him of terrorism charges.

<p>"What does this prove? Nothing really, but I'm sure partisans in the debate over Guantanamo and the treatment and detention of alleged [sic] enemy combatants will see this as evidence that confirms their respective points of view. On the one hand, Abdullah Saleh al-Ajmi may have been a dangerous enemy combatant all along, and should never have been released. On the other hand, he may have been wrongfully detained in the first place, only to become radicalized by his (mis)treatment by the U.S. military. In other words, we either had a terrorist and let him go, or we created one. If Adler is right, though, he has focused on a trivial difference between the two sides of the debate while ignoring both an important point of agreement and the truly crucial area of contention.</p>

U.S. mulls Guantanamo closure as Bush term nears end Fri May 2, 2008 2:01pm EDT By Sue Pleming WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration could announce plans by the end of its term in January to close Guantanamo prison and an upcoming Supreme Court ruling might be the impetus for this, senior U.S. officials and experts say. The government is under international and domestic pressure to close the prison, which opened at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay on Cuba in January 2002 to house terrorism suspects caught after the invasion of Afghanistan. "A decision could be made in...

The manner in which free societies lose their moral compass is always incremental. Step by step by step, certain core values are whittled away. There is rarely a moment at which a government stands up, and asks its people if they wish to abandon such "quaint" notions as the Geneva Conventions, the rule of law, humane interrogation or habeas corpus. These things are abandoned incrementally or secretly, slice by slice, euphemism by euphemism, the chronology always clearer in retrospect than at the time. And each incremental step is always portrayed as a small but essential temporary sacrifice for the sake...

Next month, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni who was once a driver for Osama bin Laden, could become the first detainee to be tried for war crimes in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. By now, he should be busily working on his defense. But his lawyers say he cannot. They say Hamdan, already the subject of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, has essentially been driven insane by solitary confinement in a tiny cell where he spends at least 22 hours a day, goes to the bathroom and eats all his meals. His defense team says he is suicidal, hears voices, has flashbacks,...

Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (AHN)-- Six years after hundreds of suspected terrorists were detained at Guantanamo Bay trials are to begin. However, The New York Times reports that Yemeni Salim Ahmed Hamden, who could be one of the first tried, is seemingly unfit to stand trial due to insanity. Hamden is accused of being a driver of Obama Bin Laden and of transporting weapons for Al Qaeda, as well as helping Bin Laden elude capture after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

8 proud United States Marines have mortgaged nearly all they own, taken donations, and collectively spent a million dollars defending themselves against charges associated with the deaths of twenty-four people in Haditha, Iraq. Conversely, since 2002, more than eight hundred ‘Guantanamo Bay Bar Association’ lawyers, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and many of America’s top-tier legal firms have — “pro bono” — nearly wallpapered our federal court system of behalf of America’s enemies. With the Supreme Court now considering whether the ‘Detainee Treatment Act of 2005′ provides sufficient due process to al Qaeda, the ACLU recently announced it had assembled...

Ashfield (MA) lawyer Stewart 'Buz' Eisenberg visits Guantanamo Bay every 10 weeks. He refers to the base's prison, which now holds about 275 terror suspects, as 'hell's lobby.' For the past three years, Eisenberg has represented several Guantanamo detainees, men suspected of being terrorists or having knowledge of terrorist activities. His clients have spent four to six years, and counting, in isolated cells at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba. All three have been declared 'no longer enemy combatants' by the U.S. government, which means, according to the U.S. Department of Defense, they 'no longer pose a significant threat.' But...

WASHINGTON, (AP) -- A federal appeals court has given a reprieve to a Guantanamo Bay detainee who is fighting the Bush administration's effort to return him to Algeria where he says he likely would be tortured. A panel of appeallate judges in Washington says the case of Ahmed Belbacha (AH-med bel-BA-kah) deserves another review by a U.S. District Court judge. The appeals court ruling Friday says the probability of Belbacha prevailing is far from clear.

If elected president, Hillary Clinton would ask the Justice Department to determine if alleged 9/11 plotters currently held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba , could be tried in civilian courts or regular military courts rather than face military commissions that have sparked controversy both inside and outside the United States , her campaign says. Clinton's response to questions about charges filed last week against six Guantanamo prisoners was the most far reaching of the three leading presidential candidates. Her opponent for the Democratic nomination, Sen. Barack Obama , D-Ill., said that the so-called "high-value detainees'' at Guantanamo should be tried in...

TWENTY-SEVEN years ago, in the final days of the Iran hostage crisis, the C.I.A.’s Tehran station chief, Tom Ahern, faced his principal interrogator for the last time. The interrogator said the abuse Mr. Ahern had suffered was inconsistent with his own personal values and with the values of Islam and, as if to wipe the slate clean, he offered Mr. Ahern a chance to abuse him just as he had abused the hostages. Mr. Ahern looked the interrogator in the eyes and said, “We don’t do stuff like that.” Today, Tom Ahern might have to say: “We don’t do stuff...

General Reports More than 24,000 Interrogations Conducted Since 2002; Assertions that All Interrogations Were Videotaped Affect Impending 9/11 TrialsNewark, NJ—Seton Hall Law’s Center for Policy and Research has discovered new evidence of a longstanding government practice of recording interrogations at Guantánamo Bay. In light of the national debate about the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) destruction of video recordings, the report proves that the two CIA tapes that were destroyed were only a tiny fraction of perhaps 24,000 recorded interrogations. A May 2005 report by Lieutenant General Kevin Kiley confirms that each interrogation at Guantánamo was videotaped. Lieutenant General Randall Schmidt...

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba—The confusion of combat during an intense firefight in Afghanistan five years ago has led to conflicting testimony that is complicating the first U.S. war-crime tribunals since the World War II era. A Canadian terror suspect, Omar Khadr, was 15 when he was captured after the 2002 firefight, in which he is accused of throwing a grenade that killed an American soldier at an al-Qaida compound. Khadr is accused of the murder of Army Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer, a Special Forces commando. But the emergence this week of an unidentified witness, who said Khadr was...

AP Confirms Secret Camp Inside Gitmo Feb 6 05:15 PM US/Eastern By ANDREW O. SELSKY Associated Press Writer GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) - Somewhere amid the cactus-studded hills on this sprawling Navy base, separate from the cells where hundreds of men suspected of links to al-Qaida and the Taliban have been locked up for years, is a place even more closely guarded—a jailhouse so protected that its very location is top secret. For the first time, the top commander of detention operations at Guantanamo has confirmed the existence of the mysterious Camp 7. In an interview with The...

KHARTOUM (Reuters) - A group of Sudanese released from the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay demanded cash payouts and an apology from the United States on Saturday, for mental and physical torture suffered during years spent in jail there. "We have asked for compensation and an apology," aid worker Adil Hassan Hamad told a conference in Khartoum, which was organized by local rights groups to demand the release of seven Sudanese still held at Guantanamo Bay. Hamad, freed just over one month ago, wore orange overalls like those worn by detainees in the U.S. prison camp. He was working with...

Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., said the conditions at the Guantanamo Bay military prison are better than he thought, but he said he's still upset with the lack of legal rights provided to the inmates there. Ellison visited the military prison in Cuba on Thursday. He said the visit left him with mixed feelings about whether the prison should be permanently closed. Ellison has never been a fan of the Bush Administration and has been a vocal critic of the Guantanamo Bay military prison. He said he made the trip because he wanted to see the conditions firsthand. "I felt that...