Civil Liberties & Privacy

No Surprise at Obama’s Guantánamo Trial Chaos

by Andy Worthington August 31, 2010

Surprise is the last thing that anyone ought to feel on hearing the news that the Obama administration “has shelved the planned prosecution,” in a trial by military commission, “of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the alleged coordinator of the October 2000 suicide attack on the USS Cole in Yemen,” as the Washington Post reported on Thursday, ...

The Great Repeal Bill

by Wendy McElroy August 11, 2010

Legal and political trends in the United Kingdom often parallel or precede ones within the United States. For example, the politically correct crusades against smoking and child obesity raged in Britain prior to jumping the Atlantic. A particularly interesting trend is currently unfolding in the UK and, for once, its spread might bring welcomed change. The new coalition government is ...

Guantánamo: A Mentally Ill Yemeni and a Minor Taliban Recruit

by Andy Worthington August 2, 2010

As of today, the results of the Guantánamo prisoners’ habeas corpus petitions stand at 38 victories for the prisoners against 15 victories for the government, after two recent rulings. On July 21, Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. granted the habeas petition of Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif, a 34-year old Yemeni, while, in another courtroom, Judge Reggie Walton ...

Guantánamo and Habeas Corpus: Wins and Losses, Part 2

by Andy Worthington July 26, 2010

Part 1 | Part 2 Last week, in the first part of this two-part series, I began looking at how the conservative-dominated D.C. Circuit Court has responded to the rulings in the District Court regarding the habeas petitions of the prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay, where, to date, 38 out of 53 cases have been won ...

Guantánamo and Habeas Corpus: Wins and Losses, Part 1

by Andy Worthington July 19, 2010

Part 1 | Part 2 For the last two years, the prisoners held in the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, have been challenging the basis of their detention through habeas corpus petitions filed with the District Court in Washington, D.C., where they have met with a notable degree of success. Of the 51 cases decided,

Freeing the Innocent from Guantánamo

by Andy Worthington July 13, 2010

On Thursday, in the District Court in Washington, D.C., Judge Paul Friedman took the tally of victories by the Guantánamo prisoners to 37, out of 51 cases decided, when he granted the habeas corpus petition of Hussein Almerfedi, a 33-year old Yemeni, and instructed the Obama administration to “take all necessary and appropriate steps to facilitate the release of ...

Freedom and the War on Terrorism

by James Bovard July 9, 2010

On June 4, 2010, FFF policy advisor James Bovard gave the following speech at The Future of Freedom Foundations Restoring Liberty and the Constitution supper seminar in Bernville, Pennsylvania. The speech can be viewed below in its entirety.

Who Are the Three Ex-Guantánamo Prisoners on Hunger Strike in Slovakia?

by Andy Worthington July 6, 2010

A week ago Thursday, three former Guantánamo prisoners who were released in Slovakia in January this year, after the U.S. government concluded that it was unsafe for them to be returned to their home countries, which all have poor human rights records, embarked on a hunger strike to protest the conditions in which they are ...

Obama’s Moral Bankruptcy Regarding Torture

by Andy Worthington June 28, 2010

Saturday was the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, established twelve years ago to mark the day, in 1987, when the UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Punishment or Treatment came into force, but you wouldn’t have found out about it through the mainstream U.S. media. No editorials or news ...

Obama Thinks about Releasing Innocent Yemenis from Guantánamo

by Andy Worthington June 21, 2010

Three weeks ago, I wrote a bitter commentary about the repeated failures of the U.S. government to release an innocent Yemeni prisoner in Guantánamo — a student, Mohammed Hassan Odaini, now aged 26, but just 18 when he was seized — even though he was cleared for release by a military review board under President Bush in 2006, ...

Suicide or Murder at Guantánamo?

by Andy Worthington June 7, 2010

On June 2 last year, the Pentagon announced that a Yemeni prisoner at Guantánamo, Mohammed al-Hanashi (also known as Muhammad Salih) had died, reportedly by committing suicide. He was the fifth reported suicide at Guantánamo, following three deaths on June 9, 2006, and another on May 30, 2007, and he was the sixth man to die at ...

Why is a Yemeni Student in Guantánamo, Cleared on Three Occasions, Still Imprisoned?

by Andy Worthington June 1, 2010

On the evening of March 28, 2002, Mohammed Hassen, an 18-year-old Yemeni student at Salafia University in Faisalabad, Pakistan, made a decision that was to change his life forever. He had been visiting fellow students in another house connected with the university, had stayed for dinner, and had decided to stay the night rather than traveling back to his ...