War on Terrorism

Appeals Court Extends President’s Wartime Powers, Limits Guantánamo Prisoners’ Rights

by Andy Worthington January 11, 2010

On the eighth anniversary of the opening of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the implications of a ruling ( PDF.) last week in the federal Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia have added another layer of uncertainty to the prisoners’ future, in a week that was notorious for a barrage of 

Guantánamo and Yemen: Obama Capitulates to Critics and Suspends Prisoner Transfers

by Andy Worthington January 7, 2010

For the last 12 days, since Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab slipped through every security net going, and allegedly tried and failed to blow up Northwest Airlines Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit, Republican critics of Barack Obama have tried every trick in the book to undermine the president’s authority, with former Vice President Dick Cheney claiming that the incident demonstrated ...

Serious Problems with Obama’s Plan to Move Guantánamo to Illinois

by Andy Worthington December 21, 2009

Last Tuesday, in a letter to Illinois Governor Pat Quinn, five senior Obama administration officials — Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Attorney General Eric Holder, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, and Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano —announced. that “the president has directed, with our unanimous support, that the ...

What Does It Take to Get Out of Obama’s Guantánamo?

by Andy Worthington December 14, 2009

On August 21, District Court Judge Gladys Kessler granted the habeas corpus petition of Mohammed al-Adahi, a Yemeni prisoner in Guantánamo who was 39 years old when he was seized on a bus in Pakistan. I described the broad outline of al-Adahi’s story in my book The Guantánamo Files as follows: Married with two children, al-Adahi had never left ...

Cleared for Release and Still in Limbo

by Andy Worthington December 7, 2009

In the first detailed announcement about prisoners cleared for release from Guantánamo since September 28, when a military spokesman announced that a list of 78 cleared prisoners had been posted in the prison, Defense Secretary Robert Gates told a Senate hearing last Thursday that officials were “in the process of identifying detainees that we believe can be ...

The Material-Witness Charade

by James Bovard December 1, 2009

Last September, a federal appeals court ruled that former Attorney General John Ashcroft could be personally sued for the unjustified incarceration of innocent people as “material witnesses” in the wake of 9/11. The case involved a former college football star — Lavoni T. Kidd — who converted to Islam, changed his name to Abdullah al-Kidd, and was seized at Dulles ...

Guantánamo: Idealists Leave Obama’s Sinking Ship

by Andy Worthington December 1, 2009

Last week, lawyer, ex-Army Captain, and Iraq veteran Phillip Carter, described by Glenn Greenwald as “a very harsh critic of the Bush administration's detention and interrogation policies,” suddenly resigned his post as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Policy, which he had occupied since April. Carter claimed that he was leaving due to “personal issues,” which ...

Judge Orders Release of Algerian from Guantánamo (But He’s Not Going Anywhere)

by Andy Worthington November 24, 2009

On Friday, District Court Judge Gladys Kessler ordered the release from Guantánamo of Farhi Saeed bin Mohammed, a 48-year-old Algerian, after granting his habeas corpus petition. Her ruling has not yet been declassified, so the reasons for her decision are not yet clear, but it is significant that the ruling now brings to 31 the number of prisoners who ...

The Trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (Video)

by Jacob G. Hornberger November 16, 2009

The Trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (Video from Judge Andrew Napolitano’s Freedom Watch FoxNews.com)

Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo (Video)

by Andy Worthington November 8, 2009

On November 8, 2009, Andy Worthington gave a talk on his new documentary film, Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo. The speech can viewed below in its entirety.

Ali al-Marri’s Eight-Year Sentence

by Andy Worthington November 2, 2009

So it’s finally over. Ali al-Marri, a legal U.S. resident from Qatar, who was held as an “enemy combatant” on the U.S. mainland for five years and eight months without charge or trial, was finally sentenced in a federal court last Thursday. The prosecution was seeking a 15-year sentence, following al-Marri’s guilty plea in April, when, as part ...

Continued Incarceration of the Innocent

by Andy Worthington October 26, 2009

After railing against Senators and Representatives for their cowardly, uninformed, and unacceptable attempts to prevent President Obama from bringing any Guantánamo prisoner to the U.S. mainland for any reason — even for trials — which I wrote about most recently in an article entitled “Dick Cheney’s Pawns On Guantánamo,” I’m delighted to report that, last Tuesday, the Senate ...