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Sunday, November 16, CBS News's 60 Minutes broadcast the first interview with President-elect Barack Obama. The exchange touched on a wide range of topics, from Obama's distaste for college football's computerized selection of a national champion to his plans for changing course in economic and foreign policy. At one point, Obama was asked about the terrorist detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. He responded: I have said repeatedly that I intend to close Guantánamo, and I will follow through on that. I've said repeatedly that America doesn't torture and I'm going to make sure that we don't torture. Those are...

The detention center at Guantánamo hangs on the US like a ball and chain. Both presidential candidates and President Bush want it closed. But that won't be easy without broad consensus on how to deal with current and future detainees. On the tip of Cuba at a US naval base, the facility was set up in 2002 for the interrogation and detention of terrorist suspects after the 9/11 attacks. It now holds about 265 prisoners, including 14 of "high value." It may have helped prevent any other 9/11-style attacks, but Guantánamo has cost America considerable moral standing in the war...

BAGHDAD — A former Kuwaiti detainee at the United States prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, was one of the bombers in a string of deadly suicide attacks in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul last month, the American military said Wednesday. Meanwhile, the Iraqi foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, urged American and Iranian officials to return to talks about Iraqi security, but said he understood that it was a difficult moment for reconciliation between the countries. Cmdr. Scott Rye, a spokesman for the American military, identified one of the Mosul bombers as Abdullah Salim Ali al-Ajmi, a Kuwaiti man who...

Secret evidence. Denial of habeas corpus. Evidence obtained by waterboarding. Indefinite detention. The litany of complaints about the treatment of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay is long, disturbing and by now familiar. Nonetheless, a new wave of shock and criticism greeted the Pentagon's announcement on February 11 that it was charging six Guantánamo detainees, including alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, with war crimes--and seeking the death penalty for all of them. Now, as the murky, quasi-legal staging of the Bush Administration's military commissions unfolds, a key official has told The Nation that the trials have been rigged from the start....

<p>"The White House suffered an embarrassing setback in its effort to try detainees at Guantánamo Bay on Monday when military judges threw out all charges against the first two prisoners to come before the newly-constituted commission," the Financial Times reports. Note the way the FT immediately portrays this as a matter of domestic politics--an "embarrassing setback" for "the White House"--rather than reporting the legal story straight.</p>

Cuba is believed to have retired its three submarines after the loss of Soviet subsidies. Analysts describe its navy today as a tiny, short-range force whose purpose is to defend the coast and intercept civilian vessels on unauthorized trips. The United States and Cuba started monthly meetings here a decade ago to avert misunderstandings between U.S. Marines and Cuban soldiers who face off across a 17.4-mile fence.

This weekend Amnesty International is holding a conference in London which brings together the biggest gathering of former "war on terror" detainees. Around 25 former inmates at Guantánamo Bay are attending and speakers will include former detainees from the UK, Russia and Afghanistan. Ahead of the three-day conference, Amnesty conducted interviews with four former Guantánamo detainees and transcripts of these are below. You can also listen to audio files of the first and second interviews.

WASHINGTON, Nov. 12 - Troubled by news accounts of medical participation in coercive interrogations at Guantánamo Bay and the resulting unease in the professional medical community, the Pentagon led an intense one-day tour of the detention camp last month, several participants said in recent days. The purpose of the trip, some of the participants said, was for the military leadership to convince the ethicists, psychiatrists, psychologists and others who visited the detention camp at the United States Naval Station in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, that what was occurring there did not violate medical ethics and was necessary to strengthen the nation's...

[page 1 of Miami Herald] An Army chaplain cleared of espionage suspicions described the Guantánamo prison during his 2003 tour as a hotbed of anti-Muslim feelings. As a Muslim chaplain, Army Capt. James Yee made sure terrorism suspects at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, got pork-free halal meals and rugs for five-times-a-day prayer and wrote rules for soldiers to treat Islam's holy book, the Koran, with dignity. But, while the U.S. captain was held on suspicion of espionage, the military took away his Koran, refused him a prayer rug at a Navy brig -- and even for a few days fed him...

Conditions at the prison at Guantánamo are inhumane. Inmates are deprived their right to religious worship, receive scant nutrition and suffer constant verbal and physical abuse from guards. It's a humanitarian outrage. I refer, of course, to Castro's Guantánamo Provincial Prison in Cuba proper, the prison across the fence from the U.S. naval base compound holding the terrorists. Fidel's lock-up makes the U.S. prison look like a five-star tropical resort. Torture, deprivation and isolation of political prisoners at the "other" Guantánamo -- or at any of Fidel's gulags across the island -- are no secret. They've been loudly denounced by...

A bit about Guantánamo, terrorism, due process, US foreign policy blunders in Latin America, Noam Chomsky, pathological guilt, and the Devil. Folks, my latest newspaper column, Gitmo facility necessary for national security has been triggering reactions from friends, relatives, and perfect unknowns for the last three days. I'm moved by the thoughtful ones, which usually result in thoughtful responses. I want to share with you the following exchange. The original note came from a Mr. Gavin Hymes, via e-mail. I present my own remarks slightly edited for Vivificat's readers:I read your editorial in the Tribune-Democrat last Sunday, and was taken...

A movement is afoot to dismantle the detention facility built at Guantanamo Air Station in Cuba, and either free the terrorists housed there or absorb them into the civilian judicial system. Liberal carpers such as Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., have gone so far as using the alleged irregularities committed there as fodder to go after President Bush. In a speech before the Committee for a Democratic Majority last June 15, Kennedy said: "We need a thorough investigation of what happened there and in other detention and interrogation facilities around the world. In particular, we need to know whether it was...

With new details emerging about detainee treatment at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, several legislators called this weekend for the administration to consider closing the detention center there, and a prominent Republican said top officials appeared split on the matter. The Defense Department, meanwhile, issued a detailed defense of its interrogation of one of the Guantánamo detainees, Mohamed al-Kahtani, who it has said was trained to join the 19 hijackers in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. In apparent response to a Time magazine article that describes an 84-page interrogation log of Mr. Kahtani - including the use of sleep deprivation, a...

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba -- Three years after the Pentagon shook up life here by opening a prison for al Qaeda and Taliban suspects, another sensation has just arrived at this remote U.S. outpost: Starbucks. A kiosk opened earlier this month outside the open-air cinema, the Lyceum. Troops and civilians stood in long early-morning lines to buy coffee -- at reduced, military-set rates -- and consumed the first 340 pounds of beans so fast that, last week, the military flew in another 150 pounds from Miami. Starbucks sent down beans and equipment, including special filters to soften the water,...

WASHINGTON, March 10 - The Pentagon is seeking to enlist help from the State Department and other agencies in a plan to cut by more than half the population at its detention facility in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in part by transferring hundreds of suspected terrorists to prisons in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Yemen, according to senior administration officials. The transfers would be similar to the renditions, or transfers of captives to other countries, carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency, but are subject to stricter approval within the government, and face potential opposition from the C.I.A. as well as the...

On November 8, 2004, a U.S. federal judge ruled that the Bush administration had improperly ignored the Geneva Conventions in establishing military commissions to try detainees at the Guantánamo Bay U.S. naval base as war criminals. Ted Lapkin's timely article delves into the complexities of the Geneva Conventions, and how much they should apply to the war on terrorism. —The Editors. From Manhattan to Mindanao, Islamist zealots draw no distinction between combatants and non-combatants. Jihadists target women, children, and the elderly without even the pretence of discrimination. In June 2004, an Al-Qaeda affiliated group distributed a video proudly documenting...

  A Majority for Tax EvasionJuly 8, 2004  With country club indifference, the Supreme Court has protected the “rights” of terrorists...and left you, the taxpayer, holding the bill.  To be fair, Justices Scalia, Rehnquist and Thomas can still be counted as real Americans. From the Rasul vs. Bush decision of June 28th, six of the court's benchwarmers evaded the issue of barbarians murdering Americans and decided, “The question now before us is whether the habeas statute confers a right to judicial review of the legality of Executive detention of aliens in a territory over which the United States exercises plenary and exclusive...

Nation & World 6/3/02 By Michael Barone Our enemies the Saudis Fifteen of the 19 September 11 hijackers were Saudis. Perhaps as many as 80 percent of the prisoners held at Guantánamo are Saudis. Osama bin Laden is a Saudi, and al Qaeda was supported by large contributions from Saudis, including members of the Saudi royal family. The Saudis' cooperation with our efforts to track down the financing of al Qaeda appears to be somewhere between minimal and zero. They got us to let members of the bin Laden family scamper out of the United States on a private jet...