Free Republic

Following Boumediene’s Rules by: Ben Giles, July 29, 2008 Attorney General Michael Mukasey suggests that national security must remain a prominent concern as legislation is created to adhere to the Supreme Court’s recent decision in the case of Boumediene vs. Bush. “It is worth stressing that the Boumediene decision is about the process afforded to those we detain in our conflict with al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated groups,” said Mukasey, “not about whether we can detain them at all.” In an address given July 21 at the American Enterprise Institute, Mukasey discussed the need to back the Court’s ruling, which...

Gitmo Merry-Go-Round by: Emily Miller, July 25, 2008 The Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (U.S. Helsinki Commission) held a congressional hearing last week to revisit Guantanamo policies in the wake of Boumediene v. Bush, a recent Supreme Court decision that extends habeas corpus rights to detainees in Guantanamo Bay. Co-Chairman Senator Benjamin L. Cardin (D-MD) says that in light of Boumediene the U.S. should “reopen entirely the question of how we handle terrorism suspects.” Calling Guantanamo a “lightning rod for international human rights criticism of the United States,” he encourages the U.S. to look abroad to see how...

This is brutalization by American interrogators? Please.

Federal District judges in Washington, D.C., who will handle scores of pending and likely future challenges by Guantanamo Bay detainees to their confinement, decided on Monday to shift them temporarily to one judge to work on ways to coordinate the courts’ response. Attorneys for detainees began receiving notices Tuesday that the judges, in a closed-door session earlier in the day, had agreed that District Judge Thomas F. Hogan would handle “coordination and management” issues. The underlying cases will remain with the individual judges for future action on the merits. The judges acted after holding two meetings with lawyers for the...

The Supreme Court ruled last Thursday that the writ of habeas corpus should apply to non-American terrorist detainees held at Guantanamo Bay. The Taliban delivered its own commentary on the ruling the very next day, when it busted into a prison in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar and freed 1,150 prisoners, of whom 400 are Taliban members and the other 750 easy potential conscripts. Call it habeas corpus, Taliban-style. The connection between these events is not merely their timing. The point of keeping enemy combatants at a remote location like Guantanamo is that it offers some assurance that they...

May 14, 2008, 0:00 a.m. The Yuccafication of AmericaPolitical elites commit themselves to noble goals, and then nuke the best means available to achieve those goals. By Jonah Goldberg What do Yucca Mountain and Guantanamo Bay have in common? Well, there’s the obvious stuff. Both have Spanish names. Neither is a great spot for a family vacation. Each is controlled by the federal government. Oh, and both are essential tools in wars a lot of people claim they want to win. See, Yucca Mountain is where the government wants to keep incredibly dangerous substances — nuclear waste — until...

Oh the outrage! The gift shop at Guantamo Bay sells a T-shirt that features a guard tower and barbed wire with wording that says: "The Taliban Towers at Guantanamo Bay, the Caribbean's Newest 5-star Resort." Another T-shirt from the same gift shop dares to praise, "the proud protectors of freedom". And yet another T-shirt shows an iguana with this "heartless" wording: "Greetings from paradise GTMO resort and spa fun in the Cuban sun." Does this even sound remotely like some cruel human rights abuse? Perhaps not to rational people but Daily Mail (UK) reporter, Angela Levin, works herself into a...

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba -- Defendants at Guantanamo Bay are turning their backs on U.S. war crimes trials, creating complications in the long-stalled effort to prosecute suspected terrorists. Three alleged al-Qaida operatives have now chosen to boycott their upcoming trials and more are expected to do the same as the military attempts to prosecute dozens of Guantanamo prisoners at this isolated, high-security U.S. base overlooking the Caribbean. Two men, a Saudi and a Yemeni, at pretrial hearings this week denounced the tribunals as a sham and said they would not cooperate with their defense or appear for future hearings....

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The Pentagon announced Monday war crimes charges carrying the death penalty against a Tanzanian inmate held in Guantanamo Bay arising from Al-Qaeda attacks on US embassies in East Africa a decade ago. The Defense Department said Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani would face a special military tribunal on nine counts including murder related to the August 1998 bombing of the embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, which killed 11 people and injured hundreds. Military prosecutors said that after the twin bombings in Tanzania and Kenya, which altogether killed more than 200, Ghailani worked as a bodyguard for Al-Qaeda leader...

What it's really like behind the wire. The mood is grim as we descend on Guantanamo Bay and the unnerving shudder of our turboprop plane as it tilts toward the runway isn't even the chief concern. I'm traveling with a contingent of lawyers for the detainees, and the three-hour flight from Florida has felt like an extended trial at the detention facility, complete with a unanimous guilty verdict. Summarizing the hostile consensus, a blond-haired lawyer from San Diego mutters something about a "black hole." He's not entirely wrong. In the deep blackness of the Caribbean night, Guantanamo, outlined by a...

Hoover senior fellow Peter Berkowitz, chairman of Hoover's Koret-Taube Task Force on National Security, explains that the war against terror does indeed pose formidable challenges for the American legal system, in part because the United States is facing a threat "unlike any other in its history." Berkowitz states that, unlike previous enemies of the United States, this new enemy is "not part of a nation-state, does not fight in uniformed troops against other armies in uniformed troops, and does not limit itself to conventional armed conflict but instead targets civilians or operates in civilian areas, and its threat could continue...

"Has there ever been a more repugnant example of political pandering than John McCain’s decision to vote against a bill banning waterboarding, putting hoods on prisoners, forcing them to perform sex acts, subjecting them to mock executions, or depriving them of food, water, and medical treatment? That’s right, John McCain, the former POW who has long been an outspoken critic of the Bush administration’s disturbing embrace of extreme interrogation techniques. But that was before his desperate attempt to win over the lunatic fringe that is running the Grand Old Party. Earlier this week, I showed how outdated the image of...

CUBA has demanded the US return Guantanamo Bay to the island nation and denounced the "war on terror" prison, where six detainees could face the death penalty. Cuba's Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque claimed today that suspects held in the US naval base in the southeastern tip of Cuba have been subjected to torture and face unfair legal treatment. Cuba rejects "the violation of human rights, unjust incarceration of prisoners held there without charges, and their appearance in courts without guarantees and in which they are convicted in advance,'' he told reporters. He did not directly refer to the case...

Congressional Democrats, trying to have the first word on President Bush's State of the Union speech, challenged him Friday to renounce use of waterboarding in interrogations, close Guantanamo Bay to detainees and outline new policies toward Pakistan and Iran. Domestically, Democrats said they expect Bush to invest more in the development of renewable energy and to support any compromise Republicans and Democrats strike to renew a law governing the president's secretive surveillance program. At the National Press Club, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid launched into a tightly coordinated pair of speeches in which Pelosi...

WATERLOO, IOWA -- For the first time since he started his presidential campaign, Fred Thompson took a position directly opposite that of his friend John McCain. “When I hear one of the fellows running say that we should shut down Guantanamo and bring those prisoners over here ... I wonder if he understands how the world really operates,” Thompson said. “Well, I don’t wonder, either, I think I have a pretty good idea.” The Thompson campaign later clarified that the senator was referring to Mike Huckabee, the only other Republican running that has talked about shutting down the Guantanamo Bay...

In the post-9/11 Republican Party, there is one line that us conservatives don't cross. We do not critique Bush's handling of foreign policy and national security issues from a leftist perspective. Those who do, like Lincoln Chafee, Chuck Hagel, and Walter Jones, get "primaried". After improvements in Iraq finally begin to take place and victory appears to be attainable, Mike Huckabee, in his latest Foreign Affairs piece, attacked President Bush's handling of the War on Terror from the left. Even Ron Paul has not crossed that line. At least when Ron Paul says everything about blowback, and leaving Iraq, it...

Compare this to [1] Huckabee’s view on waterboarding. From the [2] Charlie Rose interview: Thompson: I’m telling you, as President, if the lives of a bunch of American citizens were at stake and I thought that there was a good chance that an individual had information and could impart information that would help save those lives, I’m just saying, that I would do whatever is necessary to get that information from that person. I would authorize that. Whatever is necessary to save a number of American lives. Thanks to Cuffy who says this locks up the [3] Jack Bauer Caucus....

Weeks ago Mike Huckabee courageously bucked the “international community” by opposing the U.N.’s Law of the Sea Treaty and calling for the impeachment of federal judges who use foreign law in making decisions. Now he’s in favor of closing the terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay because “the rest of the world” is demanding it. What’s more, the Washington Post reports that, after meeting with a delegation from a liberal “human rights” group, Huckabee has decided to join the erratic Senator John McCain in opposing the use of the effective technique known as waterboarding in getting life-saving information out of...

June 23 (UPI) -- A Los Angeles civil rights lawyer who has represented a detainee at Guantanamo Bay and plaintiffs in police-abuse cases was indicted by federal prosecutors on charges of tax evasion and bankruptcy fraud. Stephen Yagman and his firm, Yagman & Yagman, failed to pay federal and state taxes and lied in a 1999 bankruptcy declaration to hide assets from the Internal Revenue Service, the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles said in the 19-count indictment. With the money on which he didn't pay taxes, Yagman and his girlfriend financed a lifestyle ``that included high-priced vacations, gourmet restaurants,...

To believe that this corruption will simply evaporate when the Bush presidency is done is to underestimate the permanent erosion inflicted over the past six years. What was once shocking and unacceptable in America has now been internalized as the new normal. This is most apparent in the Republican presidential race, where most of the candidates seem to be running for dictator and make no apologies for it. They’re falling over each other to expand Gitmo, see who can promise the most torture and abridge the largest number of constitutional rights.

Dutch lawmakers who recently visited the Guantanamo Bay military prison said they were offended by a testy exchange in Washington with a senior congressional Democrat. The lawmakers said that Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told them that "Europe was not as outraged by Auschwitz as by Guantanamo Bay." Lantos, a Holocaust survivor, was responding to arguments that the United States should shut down the prison, located on a U.S. naval base in Cuba, the lawmakers said. Mariko Peters, a member of the Dutch Green Party, who began the exchange with Lantos, said she took...

It wasn’t long ago that most conspiracy theories came from conservatives. The right, after all gave our country the John Birch Society. But these days, liberals have a virtual monopoly on loony ideas -- and they seem to be getting crazier all the time. For example, in case you haven’t noticed, the United States is sliding into fascism. Well, not sliding, actually. We’re being driven into fascism. By you-know-who. “Beneath our very noses, George Bush and his administration are using time-tested tactics to close down an open society,� Naomi Wolf wrote this year in Britain’s Guardian newspaper. “There is essentially...

Wyatt Earp, Doc Holiday and William Barclay "Bat" Masterson are samplings of tough guys who governed Dodge City in yesteryear. Fort Dodge, Boot Hill and the Long Branch Saloon were well known locations back then. And gambling, buffalo hunting, cattle trading and bullfighting drove local forms of commerce for the less than 1,000 citizens of that American West legendary town. Today, the more than 25,000-resident "Queen of the Cowtowns" has also been nicknamed "Little Mexico," because of its extensive Latin influx and influence. Mexican restaurants and stores now line Main Street, and Mexican flags fly at many homes. Even Fourth...

WASHINGTON -The military compiled sufficient evidence to show that all but a few of the 516 terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2004-05 were a threat to the U.S., according to a new government report. The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point said in a 39-page report that only six captives posed no risk based on an analysis of the military's publicly available profiles of each detainee. The Bush administration is under pressure from human rights groups to close Guantanamo and bring the detainees under the U.S. judicial system. If that happens, the Pentagon says, it would have...

A former Guantanamo Bay prisoner wanted for the 2004 kidnapping of two Chinese engineers in Pakistan blew himself up with a grenade during a clash with security forces on Tuesday, officials said. One-legged Taliban militant Abdullah Mehsud killed himself to avoid capture after troops raided his hideout, interior ministry spokesman Brigadier Javed Cheema told AFP. The Islamic rebel's death comes amid intensifying US pressure on President Pervez Musharraf to take military action against Al-Qaeda and Taliban safe havens in tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan. "Abdullah Mehsud blew himself up with a grenade and died when security forces raided...

Washington D.C. - House Armed Services Committee Ranking Republican Duncan Hunter (R-CA) today sent a letter to President Bush urging him to continue detaining dangerous terrorists at the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. "It is my view that Guantanamo serves an essential national security function. The military has reviewed the situation of every detainee at Guantanamo, and determined that, if released, they would continue to pose a threat of rejoining al-Qaeda or the Taliban. The danger that these detainees pose is indisputable. The intelligence community has confirmed that a sizeable number of detainees released from Guantanamo rejoined hostilities in...

Congressman Duncan Hunter (R-52nd District) says Khalid Sheikh Mohammad could be coming to a military base near you. "Those places include the Brig at Miramar, places that have been disseminated by the democratic leadership. They include places like the Brig at Pendleton." he said Friday. Hunter points to a list he says was created by Congressional Democrats in Washington. It lists our two local brigs as potential sites to house some of the nearly 400 detainees. Hunter does not want to see that happen. But others, like Richard Quinonez, disagree. He lives near Miramar but is not concerned. "They've gotten...

The Bush administration is nearing a decision to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and move terror suspects from there to military prisons on U.S. soil. According to the Associated Press, President George W. Bush's top national security and legal advisers are expected to discuss the move at the White House on Friday and it appears a consensus is developing for the first time among Bush's inner circle. They will consider a new proposal to shut the highly controversial prison, built at a US military enclave on the southern tip of Cuba, and transfer nearly 400 detainees to one or...

A US Navy lawyer has been sentenced to six months in prison after being found guilty of leaking the names of Guantanamo Bay detainees to a rights attorney, his attorney said. Lieutenant Commander Matthew Diaz, 41, was also dismissed from the navy as part of his punishment following a week-long court martial at a naval base in Norfolk, Virginia, said the lawyer, Patrick McLain. Diaz, who worked as a legal adviser at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba for six months between 2004-2005, was found guilty Thursday of leaking documents containing the names of "war on terror'' detainees....

U.S. Supreme Court won't hear Khadr's case CBC News Last Updated: Monday, April 30, 2007 | 10:57 AM ET The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear the case of Omar Khadr, a Canadian imprisoned at the U.S. detention centre in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The top American court also refused to hear the case of another prisoner, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, the court announced Monday. Both prisoners were challenging the legality of the military commissions that are hearing their cases. Khadr, 20, is accused of killing a U.S. medic in Afghanistan in 2002. He also faces charges of attempted murder,...

THIRTEEN detainees are on hunger strike at the US military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and are being force-fed through tubes, the US Navy said overnight. "Currently, there are 13 hunger strikers at Guantanamo. Two of the 13 have been on hunger strike since August 2005. Most of the others began their hunger strike in January or February," navy Commander Robert Durand said. He said the group were being fed via tubes, but were otherwise "in good health". "The involuntary feeding is not designed to break the hunger strike, it is a medical procedure to deliver the appropriate calories and...

The middle-aged Muslim woman, her traditional headscarf helping to shield her from the Caribbean sun, seemed to believe that at the end of her walk to Guantanamo Bay, she just might see her son Omar. He has been shackled inside the US base, without trial, for the last four-and-a-half years. Instead, Mrs Zewawi did not even glimpse the bay, let alone the man she so obviously desperately misses. The band of protesters was stopped at the Cuban entrance to the area. "It's a military zone, and entry is prohibited" said the soldier from Cuba's Revolutionary Armed Forces, when asked why...

Several media outlets have been citing FBI documents claiming mistreatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay. However, these documents are the basis of what is really a big non-story. Why? Because the allegations of torture based on these documents have already been investigated by the Department of Defense (DOD) in 2005 and found to have no basis in fact. The documents in question? They are the same FBI memos that formed the basis of Senator Richard Durbin's comparison of Guantanamo Bay to the actions of the Nazis and Khmer Rouge, and have been released in the course of a lawsuit by...

U.S. NAVAL STATION GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba, Nov. 30, 2006 -- Even as deployed National Guard members make history serving with Joint Task Force Guantanamo, they find history at the base’s Northeast Gate. The Northeast Gate separates U.S. Naval Station Guantanamo Bay from the rest of Cuba. Joint Task Force Guantanamo maintains safe care and custody of enemy combatants detained in the global war on terrorism. About 13 percent of the task force is made up of National Guard members. Photo by Sgt. Jim Greenhill, USA  '(Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Minutemen and women helping fulfill JTF-GTMO’s mission of...

No quarter in dealing with terrorists By KARL WEINBERG COMMUNITY VOICE On the subject of how to treat terrorists once caught in our fight against Islamofascists, the mainstream media would have us believe that we are torturing the captives by using sleep deprivation, loud rock'n' roll music, female interrogators and such. Many Americans, including me, do not believe this is torture at all. Instead, we believe that much harsher treatment should be used to get information from these terrorists. While the U.S. Supreme Court, Sens. John McCain and Lindsay Graham have said these terrorists are covered under Common Article three...

GET me home or let me die, is the latest heart-rending message from Bahraini Guantanamo Bay detainee Juma Al Dossary. "I cannot bear this life anymore," 32-year-old Juma Al Dossary says in a letter to his lawyer Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, dated July 12. "Please tell my government that if they do not take me within a month, I swear they will be receiving my remains. "I have no need to live the life that I live now, death will be a relief from this torment. "This attitude is not mine alone, but is held by many detainees here. "I have learned...

The prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay during the war on terror have attacked their military guards hundreds of times, turning broken toilet parts, utensils, radios and even a bloody lizard tail into makeshift weapons, Pentagon reports say. Incident reports reviewed by The Associated Press indicate Military Police guards are routinely head-butted, spat upon and doused by "cocktails" of feces, urine, vomit and sperm collected in meal cups by the prisoners. They've been repeatedly grabbed, punched or assaulted by prisoners who reach through the small "bean holes" used to deliver food and blankets through cell doors, the reports say. Serious assaults...

Gov't in no rush to bring Khadr to Canada Janice Tibbetts, with file from Sheldon Alberts, CanWestNews Service (viia National Post) Thursday, July 13, 2006 OTTAWA -- Canada appears in no hurry to bring Omar Khadr home from Guantanamo Bay any time soon. While the government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper has remained silent on the fate of the accused teenage terrorist, officials with Foreign Affairs and the Federal Justice Department confirm there are no plans for either extradition or repatriation on the horizon. "There are serious allegations against this individual so that isn't to be forgotten in this,"...

(Australian) FOREIGN Minister Alexander Downer says the United States has always treated terror suspect David Hicks and his fellow Guantanamo Bay detainees in accordance with the Geneva Convention. The Bush administration said overnight that all detainees in US military custody in Cuba and elsewhere would be treated in accordance with the Geneva Convention. The new policy appears to reverse Washington's earlier insistence that Guantanamo detainees, including Mr Hicks, were not prisoners of war and therefore not subject to Geneva protections. It reflects the recent five to three US Supreme Court decision blocking military commissions set up by US President George...

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon said Tuesday it will grant the 450 terrorist suspects at the Guantanamo Bay prison protection under the Geneva Conventions, a dramatic policy shift for the Bush administration after the Supreme Court recently rejected its plan to use military tribunals to try the detainees. The White House had previously promised the detainees humane treatment, but had also insisted that they were not covered by the conventions because they were not considered prisoners of war. Most of the Guantanamo inmates were detained during fighting in Afghanistan, although several of them were also arrested in anti-terrorism operations in other...

Senators of both parties yesterday said Congress would provide President Bush with legislation to deal with the terror suspects detained at the U.S. Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, following a Supreme Court decision that limited the White House's authority in dealing with the detainees. Some Republicans said they hoped to have legislation in place by September, with influential liberal Democrats saying they expected to give Mr. Bush the necessary tools for handling the issue and not obstruct the bills. "I would hope Congress would have hearings about what to do in light of this decision," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, South...

The US government said it could not find the men that Guantánamo detainee Abdullah Mujahid believes could help set him free. The Guardian found them in three days. Two years ago the US military invited Mr Mujahid, a former Afghan police commander accused of plotting against the United States, to prove his innocence before a special military tribunal. As was his right, Mr Mujahid called four witnesses from Afghanistan. But months later the tribunal president returned with bad news: the witnesses could not be found. Mr Mujahid's hopes sank and he was returned to the wire-mesh cell where he remains...

US President George W Bush said that a US Supreme Court ruling on the fate of Guantanamo Bay detainees would not set any suspected terrorists free and that he still hoped to try them in military courts. "We will analyse the decision. To the extent that the Congress is given any latitude to develop a way forward using military tribunals, we will work with them," said Mr Bush. "I want to find a way forward." His remarks came during a joint appearance with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi following a US Supreme Court ruling that Bush overstepped his powers in...

OBSERVER EXCLUSIVE Military launches Guantanamo inquiry SCOTT DODD sdodd@charlotteobserver.com After the public got a rare glimpse this week inside the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, military officials forced journalists off the island and launched a formal inquiry into whether its officers allowed classified or sensitive material to be revealed. The investigation was ordered the same day that an Observer story from Guantanamo, in Cuba, caused controversy within the Defense Department. The story reported on the details of an officers' staff meeting at the prison in the wake of three detainee suicides. Observer reporter Michael Gordon was allowed to listen in...

I can't believe the hypocrisy that is on display by ther radical left on a "successful" suicide by three terrorists in Gitmo bay. Instead of the entire west celebrating that the mass murderers killed themselves this time without any western innocent lives together with them, heck, thank you so much, Good bye! - A death (Suicide/homicide/genocide) cult by Al Qaeda or "Palestinians" that celebrate death more than life. - "Palestinian" death cult that sends it's kids as human bombs and as human shields or kids used as cannon fodders, this evil death cult cares about lost lives? - The Al...

3 Gitmo Detainees Reportedly Hang Selves (AP) WASHINGTON Three Guantanamo Bay detainees hanged themselves with nooses made of sheets and clothes, the commander of the detention center said Saturday. They were the first reported deaths among the hundreds of men held at the base in Cuba — some of them for up to 4 1/2 years and without charge. Two men from Saudi Arabia and one from Yemen were found "unresponsive and not breathing in their cells" early Saturday, according to a statement from the Miami-based U.S. Southern Command, which has jurisdiction over the prison. Attempts were made to revive...

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba -- On Sunday, the Tribune editorial page asked readers: What should the U.S. do with the Guantanamo Bay detention camp? Harry B. Harris Jr., the commander of the Joint Task Force Guantanamo, offered this essay in response. I lead the soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, Coast Guardsmen and civilians responsible for the safe and humane care and custody of the unlawful enemy combatants held here at Guantanamo--a responsibility we take very seriously. The question of what to do with enemy combatants--committed jihadists and terrorists--is relevant and important. As the person responsible for the detention of our nation's enemies...

Gary McKinnon leaves Bow Street Magistrates' Court yesterday after a judge recommended that he be extradited to the US (DAVID BEBBER) A BRITISH man accused of the biggest military hacking operation yet faces trial in the US after a judge recommended him for extradition yesterday. Gary McKinnon believes that he could be sent to Guantanamo Bay and tried by a military tribunal if his extradition goes ahead. He said that he was “practically already hung and quartered” if US government claims that he would face a federal court in Virginia proved correct. Mr McKinnon, 40, is alleged to have caused...

WASHINGTON -- The United States is planning to release 141 terror suspects being held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. The decision to release the men follows a year-long review of their cases in which interrogators determined the detainees could provide no further intelligence and would pose no threat to U.S. security, the Los Angeles Times reported. (snip) Peppler said the majority would be leaving the island "in the near future," but noted some detainees who had been cleared might remain until an appropriate release site could be found. About 250 detainees have been released since...