On Wednesday, I reported how Retired Rear Admiral John D. Hutson, the former Judge Advocate General of the US Navy from 1997 to 2000, had delivered compelling testimony to a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on "legal issues regarding military commissions and the trial of detainees for violations...

In a major national security speech on May 21, President Obama demonstrated an unnerving ability to keep too many options on the table by proposing five possible courses of action for the prisoners at Guantánamo: release or transfer, trials in federal courts, trials in a revamped version of...

OK, so nearly 12 years after he was indicted for his alleged part in the African embassy bombings in August 1998, over six years since he was seized after a gunfight in Gujrat, Pakistan in July 2004, and four years after his transfer to Guantánamo -- after two years...

Today was supposed to be the day that the Justice Department -- after two delays -- released an unclassified version of the CIA Inspector General's 2004 Report into the interrogations of "high-value detainees" in the "War on Terror," which Democrat Congressional staffers described as the "holy grail," according to Greg...

Eleven years ago, the United Nations designated June 26 as the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture. Then-Secretary General Kofi Annan explained, "This is a day on which we pay our respects to those who have endured the unimaginable. This is an occasion for the world to...

In over three years of researching and reporting about the prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, I learned early on to expect, as one of Guantánamo's first commanders, Maj. Gen. Michael Dunlavey explained, that many of the men were "Mickey Mouse" prisoners, with no connection to terrorism whatsoever, and,...

At the end of a hectic week at Guantánamo, which saw the Obama administration overcome its previous inability to release prisoners (just two were released from January to May), it was announced that, following the release of four Uighurs to Bermuda, the return of Guantánamo's youngest...

While everyone was looking at a map, trying to work out exactly where Palau is, following the announcement on Tuesday that Guantánamo's 17 Uighur prisoners were to be resettled there, it now transpires that four of the men have been quietly flown to Bermuda instead.

This is rather a...

Let's face it, when it comes to Guantánamo, there's little to laugh about, unless you're an Islamophobic sadist -- in which case, there's still nothing for the rest of us to laugh about.

The Associated Press reports that, in a desperate effort to rid itself of the toxic human...

In his speech in Egypt on Thursday, in which he promised "A new beginning," Barack Obama did not specifically mention the death of a prisoner at Guantánamo on Monday -- and the extent to which the prison's existence has soured relations between the United States and the Muslim world...

On Friday, court-watchers received some deeply depressing news -- 33 pages of unconstitutional hogwash directed at the Supreme Court by President Obama's Justice Department (PDF), in which no stone of dubious legality was left unturned in the administration's desperate and unprincipled attempts to mimic its predecessors by preventing 17...

Today, unnoticed in the Western media (although I can't vouch for the Arabic world) is the second anniversary of the death at Guantánamo -- apparently by suicide -- of Abdul Rahman al-Amri, a Saudi prisoner, and a long-term hunger striker, who had admitted that he was a foot soldier for...

First off, the president has lost none of his oratorical powers. His national security speech today, in which he sought -- and, I think, largely found -- the correct balance with regard to the horrendous legacy of Guantánamo, was well crafted and delivered. He delicately put down the...

As the Obama administration prepares to relaunch Dick Cheney and David Addington's reviled Military Commissions (with claims that they will be used for less than 20 of the 240 prisoners still held), senior officials have been largely silent about the eventual fate of the rest of the prison's...

David Remes, an attorney for 16 Yemeni prisoners in Guantánamo, claimed today that the government's detention policy was "in tatters," after District Court Judge Gladys Kessler comprehensively demolished the Justice Department's case against a Yemeni prisoner held in Guantánamo without charge or trial for seven years (PDF).

Judge...

At a press conference to mark his first 100 days in office, President Obama declared, "We have rejected the false choice between our security and our ideals by closing the detention center at Guantánamo Bay and banning torture without exception." I have looked at the President's misleading statement about Guantánamo,...

Speaking at a press conference to mark his first 100 days in office, Barack Obama made two bold claims about the policies he has already implemented to tackle the Executive overreach of the Bush administration, with regard to detention and interrogation policies in the "War on Terror."

"We...

For five years and eight months, the Bush administration held Qatari national and legal U.S. resident Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri without charge or trial as an "enemy combatant" in the Naval Consolidated Brig in Charleston, South Carolina. Arrested by the FBI in December 2001, and subsequently charged with crimes including...

Since the publication last week of the Senate Armed Services Committee's report into detainee abuse in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantánamo (PDF), much has been made of a footnote containing a comment made by Maj. Paul Burney, a psychiatrist with the Army's 85th Medical Detachment's Combat Stress Control Team, who,...

For the defendants of the use of torture by U.S. forces -- still led by former Vice President Dick Cheney -- this has been a rocky few weeks, with the publication, in swift succession, of the leaked report by the International Committee of the Red Cross (PDF), based on...