From New York Times Guantanamo specialist William Glaberson, providing a little insight on the highly complicated case and journey of Salim Ahmed Hamdan:

GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba — A panel of six military officers convicted a former driver for Osama bin Laden of a war crime Wednesday, completing the first military commission trial here and the first conducted by the United States since the end of World War II.

But the commission acquitted the former driver, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, of a conspiracy charge, arguably the more serious of two charges he faced. His conviction came on a separate but lesser charge of providing material support for terrorism.

UPDATE: Hamdan Speaks at Sentence Hearing

Continue reading "Hamdan Found Guilty by Military Commission in Split Decision" »

Interesting article on Slate about the Supreme Court's deliberation of the right to Habeas Corpus regarding a dual U.S.-Iraqi citizen and U.S.-Jordanian citizen held in US prisons in Iraq.

http://www.slate.com/id/2187385

The BBC has published a brief Q&A about waterboarding on their news website. It is a concise overview of the Bush administration's policies and procedures. In response to the question of whether or not waterboarding is effective, BBC references the case of Al-Qaeda suspect Abu Zubayda.

According to ex-CIA officer John Kiriakou, al-Qaeda suspect Abu Zubaydah "broke" within half a minute. Abu Zubaydah said later that he had made things up to satisfy his interrogators.

A Yemeni man, Khaled al-Maqtari was reportedly held in CIA prisons known as 'black sites' for more than 2 years. He was arrested in 2004 in Falluja, Iraq on the suspicion of being an insurgent.

Although Bush banned "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" of terrorist suspects in 2007, he has also admitted previously to the existence of black sites (in Eastern Europe) and the CIA has not remarked on the issue.

Amnesty International has apparently been in contact with al-Maqtari and the organization has noted the existence of flight records which may correspond with the dates he would have been transferred. Amnesty also reports his claims of torture while in the jail.

read about the torture on BBC news:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7292974.stm

New news about legislation:
The House of Representatives failed to overturn Bush's veto of the bill which would ban the CIA from using "specialized interrogation procedures". These include waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and other harsh measures. A 225-188 vote wasn't the 2/3 needed to overturn the veto. White House press secretary Perino spun the decision nicely, appealing to the public fear of terrorism. According to Ms. Perino, an overturn

would have diminished the intelligence community's ability to protect our nation

The CIA has claimed to use waterboarding on only 3 people. If these procedures do in fact protect our nation, we must be using plenty of other equally inhumane methods.

In a move that many expected but hoped would not happen, Bush has resolutely used his executive power in his few remaining months to veto a recently Congressionally-approved bill that would have prohibited waterboarding and other harsh CIA interrogation techniques.

Amnesty International has an action letter already drafted, if you wish to write to your local newspaper or senator protesting Bush's measure (but be sure to commend the Senate on theirs!): Click here to write an action letter.

You can also read the full New York Times article/review of the decision and its implications here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/washington/09policy.html?ref=washington

US Rejects Race Link to Rendition
Associated Press

GENEVA (AP) -- The United States on Friday rejected any link between racial discrimination and the U.S. practice of sending terrorism suspects to countries where they may be tortured.

''Anything that would be done in this area would not be done on the basis of racial discrimination,'' Robert Harris, assistant legal adviser with the Department of State, told a U.N. panel on racism.

The independent experts on the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racism told Harris and other members of the U.S. delegation that they had received claims that American authorities were being racist in the way they are conducting the so-called war on terror.

Countries ''should ensure that non-citizens detained or arrested in the fight against terrorism are properly protected by domestic law that complies with international human rights,'' said Morten Kjaerum, a Danish member of the panel.

''It seems there is a problem in relation to those who are being involved in the rendition program,'' said Kjaerum. He referred to ''extraordinary rendition'' the expression used by the U.S. for such transport of terror suspects.

''The moment the U.S. authorities take into custody a person wherever in the world, you have the responsibility for this person,'' he added.

Continue reading "LIES!" »

A day after the Senate voted to expand the executive branch's spy powers EVEN MORE and irritated me to no end, they are in my good graces again after their decision today to ban waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques used by the CIA...albeit with a very slim majority. Of course, the entire world is fairly sure Bush will just veto the bill, but I think we can take any small victory at this point.

Find the full New York Times article here: Senate Passes Interrogation Ban

UPDATE: U.S. Said to Seek Death Penalty for the 6 Detainees

Read: the Bush administration's rush to enact their ultimate reforms officially sets in...

From William Glaberson, the New York Times main columnist on issues in Guantanamo:

Military prosecutors are in the final phases of preparing the first sweeping case against suspected conspirators in the plot that led to the deaths of nearly 3,000 Americans on Sept. 11, 2001, and drew the United States into war, people who have been briefed on the case said.

The charges, to be filed in the military commission system at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, would involve as many as six detainees held at the detention camp, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the former senior aide to Osama bin Laden, who has said he was the principal planner of the plot.

The case could begin to fulfill a longtime goal of the Bush administration: establishing culpability for the terrorist attacks of 2001. It could also help the administration make its case that some detainees at Guantánamo, where 275 men remain, would pose a threat if they are not held at Guantánamo or elsewhere. Officials have long said that a half-dozen men held at Guantánamo played essential roles in the plot directed by Mr. Mohammed, from would-be hijackers to financiers.

Continue reading "6 Guantánamo Detainees Will Face Trial Over 9/11" »

In other news outside of our country's Guantanamo debacle, the state of Nebraska has finally forbidden the use of the electric chair. At this point, Nebraska was the only state to rely on electrocution as the sole method of execution for the death penalty, so this essentially suspends any potential executions in the state in the near future -- mostly because of an ongoing debate in the Supreme Court over the three-chemical combination in a typical lethal injection, which is known to cause extreme pain.

Nebraska's Supreme Court did thankfully rule that electrocution was cruel and unusual punishment, saying that it causes “unnecessary pain, suffering and torture.” But they are also, of course, looking for "new methods" of execution, so, as a person who is avidly against the death penalty, I'm not quite sure what to make of their "progress" just yet. It is interesting to note that last year, Nebraska's unicameral legislature was one vote away from abolishing the death penalty entirely in their state...

...and Cheney gives his two cents worth.

CIA director Michael Hayden also jumps in and relates the idea that "waterboarding is necessary though probably not legal..." (?) My goodness. The CIA recently officially admitted to having used waterboarding as an interrogation technique for three terrorism suspects, but claims that the technique has not been used since 2003. Attorney General Mukasey, as a result, has flatly stated that he does NOT plan to launch a criminal investigation into the CIA's use of waterboarding.....

Many of you are probably familiar with the debate that raged on in the Senate last year concerning now Attorney General Michael Mukasey's remarks on waterboarding practices and whether or not they qualified as torture....it appears that he is still hedging on this point. Some of the remarks he makes frankly disgust me, but, well, we'll see what happens. For more information on waterboarding, please see our Amnesty group's research on the issue, and the statement below from Human Rights Watch gives a more literal picture:

Water Boarding: The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner's face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt.

According to the sources, CIA officers who subjected themselves to the water boarding technique lasted an average of 14 seconds before caving in. They said al Qaeda's toughest prisoner, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, won the admiration of interrogators when he was able to last between two and two-and-a-half minutes before begging to confess.

"The person believes they are being killed, and as such, it really amounts to a mock execution, which is illegal under international law," said John Sifton of Human Rights Watch.

Article from the New York Times:

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey said Tuesday that the harsh C.I.A. interrogation technique known as waterboarding was not clearly illegal, and suggested that it could be used against terrorism suspects once again if requested by the White House.

Mr. Mukasey’s statement came in a letter delivered Tuesday night to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which has scheduled for Wednesday its first oversight hearing for the new attorney general. The conclusions of the letter are likely to be a focus of severe questioning by Senate Democrats who have described waterboarding, which creates the sensation of drowning, as torture.

Continue reading "Mukasey Offers (New?) View on Waterboarding" »

The verdict on the Jose Padilla case has arrived - 17 years and 4 months in prison for his conspiracy case. Because he was not handed a life sentence, the verdict has been called a "setback" for the Bush administration....although in any respect, it is a grave and debatably unfounded legal result for a case in which even presiding Judge Marcia G. Cooke admitted that there was no evidence linking Mr. Padilla and two co-defendants to specific terrorism acts anywhere...

“There is no evidence that these defendants personally maimed, kidnapped or killed anyone in the United States or elsewhere,” Judge Cooke said. “There was never a plot to overthrow the United States government.”

Read the full New York Times article for a review of the decision, including a history of Padilla's "enemy combatant" case and the alleged torture he endured during interrogation.

From the New York Times..William Glaberson's "From a Critic of Tribunals to Top Judge"

This should be enough of a hook:

Back in 2002, a master’s degree candidate at the Naval War College wrote a paper on the Bush administration’s plan to use military commissions to try Guantánamo suspects, concluding that “even a good military tribunal is a bad idea.”

It drew little notice at the time, but the paper has gained a second life because of its author’s big promotion: Col. Ralph H. Kohlmann of the Marines is now the chief judge of the military commissions at the naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Continue reading "An interesting read..." »

From Reuters: (for full text from website, click here).

U.S. lawmakers on Tuesday began investigating why the CIA destroyed videotapes that recorded al Qaeda suspects undergoing waterboarding, while a former interrogator said the controversial technique yielded important information but amounted to torture.

CIA Director Michael Hayden testified behind closed doors to the Senate Intelligence Committee, which has launched one of several investigations to determine if the agency broke any laws when it destroyed the tapes in 2005.

"There are other people in the agency who know about this far better than I, and I have committed them to come on down and answer all the questions the committee might have," Hayden said after the hearing.

Many countries, U.S. lawmakers and human rights groups have denounced the simulated drowning technique as torture. Reports of its use, as well as harsh treatment of terrorist suspects, have damaged the U.S. image around the world.

The full House of Representatives could vote as early as Wednesday to outlaw waterboarding. Drafted by negotiators for the House and Senate Intelligence committees, the measure would require U.S. interrogators to comply with the Army Field Manual, which bans interrogation methods seen as torture.

Continue reading "Lawmakers Launch Investigation into CIA's Use of Waterboarding" »

William Glaberson gives a current and fairly comprehensive analysis of the complications surrounding the possible closure of Guantanamo detainee camps, which paints a fairly frustrating outlook, but it's a good read nonetheless. (From the International Herald Tribune):

WASHINGTON: U.S. officials are considering granting Guantánamo Bay detainees substantially greater rights as part of an effort to close the detention center and possibly move much of its population from Cuba to the United States, according to officials involved in the discussions.

One proposal that is being widely discussed in the administration would overhaul the procedure for determining whether detainees are properly held by granting them legal representation at detention hearings and by giving judges, not military officers, the power to decide whether detainees should continue to be held.

The Bush administration has insisted for more than five years that a central legal pillar of its war on terrorism is that the military alone has the power to decide which foreigners should be held and for how long, and backing away from that would be a sharp change of course.

Yet some officials say that enhancing detainees' rights could also help the administration strategically, by undercutting a case now before the Supreme Court that could wind up winning those at Guantánamo even more power to challenge their detentions.

Continue reading "The U.S.'s continuing debate on closing Guantanamo" »

A wonderful outspoken moment with former President Carter on CNN: read it here or below:

Pres. Carter: US tortures prisoners, 'I know it'
David Edwards and Jason Rhyne

Former president Jimmy Carter isn't just suspicious that the US is using torture to extract intelligence from detainees -- he's absolutely convinced.

Asked by CNN's Wolf Blitzer if, by Carter's definition of the word, the United States had used torture during the Bush administration, the Nobel Peace Prize winner was adamant:

"I don't think it, I know it," he said. "Certainly."

Pressed by Blitzer on whether that meant that President Bush was lying, Carter was equally clear.

"The president is self-defining what we have done and authorized in the torture of prisoners," said Carter."Yes."

Earlier in the interview, Carter said Bush's denial this week that the US did not in fact torture detainees was "not an accurate statement if you use the international norms of torture as has always been honored in the last 60 years, since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was promulgated."

"But you can make your own definition of human rights and say we don't violate them," he added, "and you can make your own defintion of torture and say we don't violate them."

Carter was equally outspoken in a Wednesday interview with the BBC, calling Vice President Dick Cheney a "disaster," according to Reuters.

"He's a militant who avoided any service of his own in the military," he said of Cheney, adding that the vice president "has been most forceful in the last 10 years or more in fulfilling some of his more ancient commitments that the United States has a right to inject its power through military means in other parts of the world."

"You know he's been a disaster for our country," Carter continued. "I think he's been overly persuasive on President George Bush and quite often he's prevailed."

Washington officials have revealed to the New York Times that a series of classified, undisclosed documents from the U.S. Justice Department details their "secret" endorsement of severe, torture-laden interrogation techniques used by the CIA. As the Times reports, in early 2005 (shortly after former attorney general Alberto Gonzales assumed his duties), the Justice Department issued a secret legal opinion that was essentially "an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency." This was in stark contrast to the opinion the department issued only a couple months earlier, where they publicly denounced the use of torture as "abhorrent."

However, as officials report, the newly revealed secret opinion "explicit[ly]" authorizes and allows "a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures" to be used in interrogating terror suspects. Then, of course, comes the kicker. From The Times:

Later that year, as Congress moved toward outlawing “cruel, inhuman and degrading” treatment, the Justice Department issued another secret opinion, one most lawmakers did not know existed, current and former officials said. The Justice Department document declared that none of the C.I.A. interrogation methods violated that standard.

Although the Supreme Court has repeatedly attempted to impose limits on interrogation tactics, and the Bush administration has reportedly renounced their most extreme techniques, the disturbing fact remains that this 2005 secret opinion is actually still in effect, and reaffirmed by several subsequent, recent legal memorandums.

The Times staff interviewed about 24 current and former counterterrorism officials over three months as they gathered more information about this secret authorization; the article also provides a good history of the U.S.'s legal struggle over interrogation techniques and revelations of torture since the Bush administration started detaining suspects post-September 11th. With this latest eruption of secret documents, there is now a renewed debate in Congress, as they demand that the documents be disclosed.

UPDATE: President Bush's response to the chaos erupting in Congress (from the Times): "Bush Defends Interrogations, Saying Methods Aren't Torture."

Ex-U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has been appointed as a "distinguished visiting fellow" at the Hoover Institution, as stated in the Stanford Report. There have already been quite a few strong reactions on and off campus to news of the appointment, with everything ranging from skepticism to anger. Many students and faculty members are disappointed that Stanford would honor a man who many believe completely mis-handled the war in Iraq, has been accused repeatedly of allowing torture and disastrous human rights abuses to occur in the process, a la Abu Ghraib, and has made remarks that characterize critics of the war as unpatriotic.

Students and faculty are currently circulating an online petition objecting to the Rumsfeld appointment for these reasons, amongst others. If you wish to sign, you can read and sign the petition here.