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In 2010, I was branded a member of the “Al Qaeda 7” — a notorious label attached to Department of Justice lawyers who were mocked by critics claiming they had “flocked to Guantánamo to take up the cause of the terrorists.” My crime: I advocated for the closure of the detention facility — a position that has also been taken up by the likes of former President George W. Bush, former Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates and former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell — and for more humane living conditions for those imprisoned there.

At the time, I reacted defensively.…  Seguir leyendo »

Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, wearing white prison clothes, seemed by turns amused and bewildered as he sat in a bright room last week during a pretrial hearing at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Nashiri is charged with being a key organizer of Al Qaeda's attack on the U.S. destroyer Cole on Oct. 12, 2000, off the coast of Yemen, which killed 17 U.S. servicemen, as well as of two other attacks. He faces the death penalty if convicted in a trial before a military commission that is scheduled to begin in November.

The Nashiri case is seen as a dry run for the trial of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four other alleged planners of the Sept.…  Seguir leyendo »

Last week I stood before a military judge at Guantánamo Bay to argue that the press and public had a constitutional right to observe the proceedings of military commissions. It is an argument I’ve made scores of times on behalf of news organizations objecting to closed proceedings in criminal and civil trials, but this was the first time that a military commission — part of a system of tribunals created in 2006 to try terrorism suspects — agreed to hear such arguments from the press.

Whether this marks a new openness, or is another in a long line of false starts, remains to be seen.…  Seguir leyendo »

This week marks 10 years that my client Abu Zubaida has been held in U.S. custody. After a decade of imprisonment, Abu Zubaida has never been charged with a crime, much less found guilty. This week there was movement: Charges were unveiled — not against Abu Zubaida but against a senior government official involved in the CIA’s rendition program.

The development occurred in Poland, where the former head of the Polish intelligence services is charged with unlawful deprivation of liberty, abuse of office by a public official, unlawful corporal punishment (i.e., torture) and — notably — unlawful deprivation of access to a court of justice.…  Seguir leyendo »

Of all the hangovers from the George W. Bush years, the thorniest may be what to do about the U.S. military prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. There are still 171 detainees at Guantanamo and little consensus on what to do with them. Last spring, President Obama announced the resumption of military trials for some of those charged with participating in the 9/11 attacks. These trials, known as military commissions, have been stalled for years by legal challenges. Recently, the official in charge of the Guantanamo prison, Rear Adm. David Woods, issued a draft order that compounds these challenges. The order requires all correspondence between the accused and their appointed military lawyers to be reviewed by federal officials.…  Seguir leyendo »

This week marks the 10th anniversary of the opening of the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the hand-wringing is in high gear. There have been op-eds by former detainees, a statement by retired military personnel, denunciations of President Obama for his failure to close the site and tear-stained statements by human rights groups.

In a decade of policy experimentation at Guantanamo, some efforts have succeeded, some have failed tragically and some are still in process. But far more interesting than the past 10 years is what the next 10 will look like. And that subject seems oddly absent from the current conversation.…  Seguir leyendo »

Ten years after its opening, mention Guantanamo, and a thousand images emerge. Men in orange jumpsuits wearing goggles, hoods and handcuffs, hunched over in the relentless Caribbean sun; zoo-like cages, exposed to the elements, with nothing but buckets as toilets; secret areas of the prison compound where “enhanced interrogation techniques” were tested; a detainee deprived of sleep, and injected forcibly with fluids to cause swelling, until he broke; men found hanging from ropes in their cells.

What would a world without Guantanamo be like? That’s two questions, really. First, one must imagine a world in which the detention facility had never opened its doors.…  Seguir leyendo »

"I have here in my hand a list of ... names."

When Sen. Joseph McCarthy told the Ohio County Women's Republican Club of Wheeling, W.Va., on Feb. 9, 1950, that he held a list of 205 communists employed by the State Department, he ignited a firestorm and launched a career.

We now know there was no list. Even then, it was obvious McCarthy was not particularly punctilious about the numbers. In Wheeling it was 205; in Salt Lake City it was 57; on the Senate floor it was 81. Nor was he especially careful about the allegation. Maybe they weren't all "card-carrying" communists.…  Seguir leyendo »

In the 10 years since the Guantánamo detention camp opened, the anguished debate over whether to shutter the facility — or make it permanent — has obscured a deeper failure that dates back more than a century and implicates all Americans: namely, our continued occupation of Guantánamo itself. It is past time to return this imperialist enclave to Cuba.

From the moment the United States government forced Cuba to lease the Guantánamo Bay naval base to us, in June 1901, the American presence there has been more than a thorn in Cuba’s side. It has served to remind the world of America’s long history of interventionist militarism.…  Seguir leyendo »

I left Guantánamo Bay much as I had arrived almost five years earlier — shackled hand-to-waist, waist-to-ankles, and ankles to a bolt on the airplane floor. My ears and eyes were goggled, my head hooded, and even though I was the only detainee on the flight this time, I was drugged and guarded by at least 10 soldiers. This time though, my jumpsuit was American denim rather than Guantánamo orange. I later learned that my C-17 military flight from Guantánamo to Ramstein Air Base in my home country, Germany, cost more than $1 million.

When we landed, the American officers unshackled me before they handed me over to a delegation of German officials.…  Seguir leyendo »

In his inaugural address, President Obama called on us to “reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.” We agree. Now, to protect both, he must veto the National Defense Authorization Act that Congress is expected to pass this week.

This budget bill — which can be vetoed without cutting financing for our troops — is both misguided and unnecessary: the president already has the power and flexibility to effectively fight terrorism.

One provision would authorize the military to indefinitely detain without charge people suspected of involvement with terrorism, including United States citizens apprehended on American soil. Due process would be a thing of the past.…  Seguir leyendo »

The prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is again in the news. The two Americans released this month by Iran have reported that when they complained about conditions in their Tehran prison, the jailers would "immediately remind us of comparable conditions at Guantanamo Bay." Such is the power of symbols.

Symbols are important, and we ignore them at our peril. But even in these hyperpartisan times, when symbols are baseball bats used by thugs in the public square to beat reason senseless, I like to pretend that the truth is worth pursuing. And one part of that truth is that conditions at Guantanamo are vastly superior to those at any maximum-security prison on the U.S.…  Seguir leyendo »

Barack Obama's first executive order when he was made president called for the closure of Guantánamo Bay as quickly as possible. He didn't follow through immediately when he had the chance – when he was still riding high on his election victory and the world was in love with him. Instead, he tried to work with the Republicans to create a bipartisan solution, an effort which failed dismally.

Now, with the killing of Osama bin Laden, President Obama again has a window in which to close this prison. Indeed, it could even be a shrewd political move, a demonstration to a world which is questioning the legality of Bin Laden's killing that the president has a handle on what is right.…  Seguir leyendo »

George Orwell is usually a footsure guide across political battlegrounds. In late 1943, when the tide had turned in the Allies’ favor, he wrote about postwar trials. Oddly, he advocated Hitler and Mussolini slipping away. His verdict for them would not be death unless the Germans and Italians themselves carried out summary executions (as they eventually did in Mussolini’s case).

He wanted “no martyrizing, no St. Helena business.” Above all, he disdained the idea of a “solemn hypocritical ‘trial of war criminals,’ with all the slow cruel pageantry of the law, which after a lapse of time has so strange a way of focusing a romantic light on the accused and turning a scoundrel into a hero.”…  Seguir leyendo »

The system of military commissions that will try Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four other alleged 9/11 plotters contains a dirty little secret. Hardly anybody talks about it, but it's a key reason for concern as the apparatus becomes established.

It is this: The commissions can operate inside the United States, and they have jurisdiction over a broad range of crimes. Nothing in the Military Commissions Act limits the military trials to Guantanamo detainees, or to people captured and held abroad, or even to terrorism suspects. Nothing prevents the commissions from trying noncitizens, arrested inside the country, whom the president unilaterally designates as "unprivileged enemy belligerents."…  Seguir leyendo »

It’s official. Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, will be tried by a military commission at Guantanamo Bay.

He will not be tried in Manhattan in the shadow of the World Trade Center. He will not be tried before the vast majority of the victims’ families. Nor will he be tried in any federal court. Instead, he will be tried offshore in a military commission process established in 2009 and yet to be tested. It is likely that he will be convicted of conspiring to plan and commit the attacks of 9/11 and that, he, along with his four co-defendants, the other 9/11 detainees at Guantanamo, will be given life sentences, if not the death penalty.…  Seguir leyendo »

CIA Director Leon Panetta told Congress this month that if captured, Osama bin Laden would be sent to Guantanamo. This was no surprise to those who follow news of the controversial detention facility. It was, however, a concern - not because Guantanamo is still open for business but because, by maintaining the status quo, pressing questions about the future of U.S. and international counterterrorism strategies continue to be ignored. There is no answer to "what's next" for terrorist detention efforts.

For all of the media attention on Guantanamo Bay, debates about the future of this facility and its detainees have not changed significantly in more than five years.…  Seguir leyendo »

The latest military commission trial at Guantánamo Bay opened the door for the defendant's release in a few years. But the continued use of indefinite detention and lax rules on hearsay evidence still plague the system. These puts enormous pressure on defendants to plea-bargain to avoid the dangers of going to trial in a process that is tipped against them.

On Tuesday 15 February, Sudanese national Noor Uthman Muhammed pled guilty to conspiracy and providing material support for terrorism for the role he played at the Khalden training camp in Afghanistan from 1996 to 2000. The charge carried a possible life term, but under the terms of the plea agreement, secret until last week, he will be released after 34 months.…  Seguir leyendo »

The Obama administration, ProPublica's Dafna Linzer first reported, is about to issue an executive order that gives shape, contour and future life to indefinite detention for Guantánamo detainees. The order will provide for the continual detention of several dozen detainees – who will have access lawyers in order to periodically contest their detention.

On one level, we shouldn't be surprised. In what has become a signature method of the Obama administration, the bad news was trotted out as an idea well ahead of time. In May of 2009, President Obama let it be known that indefinite detention was among the options that the administration would likely embrace in its efforts to close Guantánamo.…  Seguir leyendo »

There were fatal flaws in the recent suggestion that Congress should designate Guantanamo Bay part of an existing federal district court or as a separate federal district court so that those accused of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks can be tried there ["Try them in federal court -- at Gitmo," Washington Forum, July 16].

Eugene R. Sullivan, a former chief judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, and Louis J. Freeh, a former U.S. District Court judge and director of the FBI, argued that creating, by statute, a civilian district court trial at Guantanamo would provide a fair, independent and universally respected forum, in contrast to "untested and widely questioned" military commissions; deny to Khalid Sheik Mohammed and others a military forum that enhances their image as "warriors"; and avoid the "prohibitive" security costs of a trial elsewhere in the United States.…  Seguir leyendo »