9/11 Gitmo Suspects To Be Tried in NY, AG Holder Interview P1
http://current.com/items/91456052_9-11-git...
What Happens If the Terrorists Get Set Free? Jim Lehrer To Attorney General Holder pt.29/11 Gitmo Suspects To Be Tried in NY, AG Holder Interview P1... more
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who has said he masterminded the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, is being transferred from the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to New York to face trial.
A Justice Department official confirmed to TPMDC that Mohammed and four other detainees being held at Gitmo will stand trial in a civilian federal court.
Attorney General Eric Holder will make the announcement today, the official told TPMDC.
The news comes as Obama is traveling to Asia and as officials tell reporters that White House counsel Greg Craig is leaving.
From the Associated Press:
Mohammed and the four others -- Waleed bin Attash, Ramzi Binalshibh, Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi and Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali -- are accused of orchestrating the attacks that killed 2,973 people on Sept. 11, 2001.
Mohammed admitted to interrogators that he was the mastermind of the attacks -- he allegedly proposed the concept to Osama bin Laden as early as 1996, obtained funding for the attacks from bin Laden, oversaw the operation and trained the hijackers in Afghanistan and Pakistan http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/11/khalid-sheikh-mohammed-to-be-moved-from-gitmo-to-new-york.phpKhalid Sheikh Mohammed, who has said he masterminded the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist... more
Joe sez, "The McDonald's franchise at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba is looking for an assistant manager. The ideal candidate will have previous restaurant management experience, a valid U.S. passport and a willingness to relocate to Cuba. Apparently, no special security clearance is required. Perks include great weather, potential tax free status for year-round residents, and half of the successful candidate's stateside rent paid by the company. The Gitmo McDonald's has been in operation since 1986, and serves the base's 6000 inhabitants, including military personnel, their families, Jamaican and Filipino guest workers. and 215 detainees, who can make take-out orders for Big Macs, fries and other items."
In Massachusetts, the town of Amherst has passed a measure that would welcome up to two Guantanamo Bay prisoners if they’re cleared for release into the United States. It was the first such action by a US municipality.LINK: http://www.democracynow.org/2009/11/6/headlines#15
In Massachusetts, the town... more
With support from the three largest BitTorrent sites and many other well known file-sharing partners, the VODO project offers a novel distribution platform for indie filmmakers. Today VODO presents its second release, the world premiere of In Guantanamo, a critical film about the U.S. detainment facility in Cuba.
Human Rights Watch says military commissions legislation that President Barack Obama signed into law this week does not remedy the commissions' inherent flaws.Human Rights Watch says military commissions legislation that President Barack Obama... more
Rosanne Cash appeared on the Colbert Report to go toe-to-toe with Stephen Colbert on the use of music to torture at Guantanamo, and Rosanne made it clear: using music as torture is wrong and there’s no gray area. The upshot? Colbert signed our campaign letter agreeing with General Colin Powell that Guantanamo “should be closed this afternoon.” Since this is Colbert we’re talking about, he claims he signed it to “make it harder for Obama.” But we’ll take it.
You can join Stephen Colbert and add your name to the over 30,000 letters sent to Congress in just over a week of our campaign. Support President Obama's promise to Close Guantanamo.
FROM THE NEWS BLOG:
This week a group of musicians launched Close Gitmo Now, a movement with an eponymous objective. Why is a group of artists as diverse as Rage Against the Machine, REM, Billy Bragg, Roseanne Cash, Pearl Jam, Jackson Browne and Steve Earle getting involved in the debate over Guantanamo? Because of the use of popular music by military interrogators.
From the Guardian (UK):
"Several references to music as an interrogation tool appeared in a US senate report last year. Records were used to "stress" Mohamedou Ould Slahi during questioning in 2003, including repeated plays of a song by hard-rockers Drowning Pool. Other tracks that were reportedly played at high volume near prisoners include David Gray's Babylon, Metallica's Enter Sandman, Don McLean's American Pie, Queen's We Will Rock You, songs by REM, Pearl Jam, Nine Inch Nails, Bruce Springsteen, and even theme tunes from Sesame Street, Barney the Dinosaur and the Meow Mix commercials."
While the Meow Mix cats have yet to get involved, a wide range of other musicians have. Plenty of artists are plenty pissed about their music being a torture device. Ask Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello:
“Guantanamo is known around the world as one of the places where human beings have been tortured – from water boarding, to stripping, hooding and forcing detainees into humiliating sexual acts - playing music for 72 hours in a row at volumes just below that to shatter the eardrums. Guantanamo may be Dick Cheney’s idea of America, but it’s not mine. The fact that music I helped create was used in crimes against humanity sickens me – we need to end torture and close Guantanamo now."
Vanguard's Adrian Baschuk took a trip down to Gitmo last year and even spent the night. What going on at the most controversial jail in the world? (posted below)FROM THE NEWS BLOG:
This week a group of musicians launched Close Gitmo Now, a... more
An American document that allegedly describes the torture of a former Guantanamo Bay inmate should be made public, a British court ruled Friday, dismissing Britain's argument that it was suppressing the information to preserve its intelligence-sharing relationship with the United States and to uphold national safety.
The document contains a seven-paragraph summary of the treatment that Binyam Mohamed received in 2002 after being detained as a suspected terrorist. Mohamed, 31, a British resident, alleges that he was subjected to torture, including beatings and sexual mutilation, by interrogators in Pakistan and elsewhere with the full knowledge of American and British intelligence agents. The high court ruled that the secret synopsis, which had been blacked out in previous court filings, had no intelligence value and could be released.
Rather, the judges wrote, "the public interest in making the paragraphs public is overwhelming," because the summary could shed light on illegal activities carried out by the U.S. and British governments.
The controversial case has been closely watched by government officials and human-rights lawyers. News organizations on both sides of the Atlantic, including the Los Angeles Times, have sued for disclosure of the secret summary, arguing the public has a right to know what kind of actions the British and American governments engaged in.
In spite of the ruling, however, the information was not immediately published Friday in order to give the government time to lodge an appeal.
David Miliband, Britain's foreign secretary, expressed "deep disappointment" with the decision and said that the inviolable principle of intelligence-sharing -- mutual secrecy -- was under threat.
"The consequence of the court's judgment today, if left unchallenged, will be a restriction on what is shared with us," Miliband said. "The fundamental question at issue in this judgment is not the mistreatment allegations made by Binyam Mohamed. It is solely about the principle underpinning intelligence sharing."
In Washington, U.S. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly criticized the ruling, saying it was detrimental to British and American intelligence cooperation.
"We both have a stake in ensuring that this kind of intelligence sharing continues to the fullest extent possible," Kelly told reporters.
The high court judges disagreed.
"It cannot be suggested that information as to how officials of the U.S. government admitted treating [Mohamed] during his interrogation is information that can in any democratic society governed by the rule of law be characterized as 'secret' or as 'intelligence,' " the court said, adding that "the risk to national security . . . is not a serious one."
Mohamed, who was born in Ethiopia but became a legal British resident, was arrested by Pakistani authorities in 2002 for traveling on a false passport.
His lawyers say he was taken by the CIA to Morocco and Afghanistan under "extraordinary rendition" procedures and subjected to interrogations that included beatings, sleep deprivation and cuts on his penis with a scalpel. He wound up at the detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he was to be tried on charges of plotting with Al Qaeda to set off a "dirty bomb" in the U.S.
Mohamed maintains that his confessions to the supposed plot were extracted under torture. Last October, the Pentagon dropped all charges against him, and in February, he returned to Britain, the first Guantanamo inmate to be set free by the Obama administration.
His lawyers called Friday's high court decision a "great victory for press freedom and open democracy."
"The judges have made clear what we have said all along -- it is irrational to pretend that evidence of torture should be classified as a threat to national security," said attorney Clive Stafford Smith.An American document that allegedly describes the torture of a former Guantanamo Bay... more
Something is wrong in America and in a government of, by and for the people, we're the only ones who can make it right. I don't know about you but I'm sick of all the wingnuts on TV declaring that healthcare reform is going to kill my grandma, that climate change is a myth, that our president, who's only been in office 9 months, is a socialist and responsible for the last 30 years of Republican misadventures. If you're as sick and tired as I am of the politics in America today, check out this video. There's something we can do, but we're all going to have to stand up and take to the streets and make our voices heard.Something is wrong in America and in a government of, by and for the people, we're the... more
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said Tuesday that it will be difficult to meet the administration's Jan. 22, 2010, deadline to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay.U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said Tuesday that it will be difficult to meet the... more
Last week, the Obama administration finally admitted that it might not be possible to close Guantánamo by the President’s self-imposed deadline of January 22, 2010, when defense secretary Robert Gates told ABC News’ “This Week” that it was “going to be tough” to meet the deadline. The announcement followed what appeared to be strategic leaks by administration insiders, which were designed to blame White House Counsel Greg Craig for the government’s woes.
Why it has taken so long to clear 75 prisoners for release?
It was Craig who had pushed for the deadline, but although the Washington Post, in a joint article with ProPublica, reported several critical comments from current officials, claiming that Craig’s drive to set a deadline flew in the face of conflicting advice — in particular, a claim by “a senior government lawyer” that “the entire civil service counseled him not to set a deadline” — others were more supportive.
The Post closed its article with a comment from an administration official who was “more effusive,” and who stated, “Greg Craig is a hero. He took responsibility for this policy from the beginning, and he has guts and character. If we can’t get it done by the deadline, then at least we’ll have done as much as we can as smoothly as we could have.” In addition, in his interview with ABC News, Secretary Gates also declared his support for the initiative...
Moreover, the lion’s share of the blame for delays in the closure of Guantánamo actually lies with lawmakers and with other officials in the Obama administration. After the President issued executive orders on his second day in office, which included the Guantánamo deadline, the administration then dithered, failing to support Guantánamo’s most celebrated innocents, the Uighurs, whose release into the United States was ordered by District Court Judge Ricardo Urbina last October, by backing the Court of Appeals in its decision to overturn that ruling in February this year.
This cowardice then allowed paranoid and opportunistic right-wingers to seize the initiative, reviving the Bush administration’s deceitful claims that Guantánamo is “full of terrorists” (as particularly promoted by former Vice President Dick Cheney), and encouraging both Democrats and Republicans in the Senate and the House of Representatives to pass legislation preventing the transfer of prisoners to the United States and withholding funding for the prison’s closure.
much more at link...Last week, the Obama administration finally admitted that it might not be possible to... more
In four years of researching and writing about Guantánamo, I have become used to uncovering shocking information, but for sheer cynicism, I am struggling to think of anything that compares to the revelations contained in the unclassified ruling in the habeas corpus petition of Fouad al-Rabiah, a Kuwaiti prisoner whose release was ordered last week by Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly (PDF) http://www.pillsburylaw.com/siteFiles/News/1259B22146574C540A8871C2C3131CA2.pdf.
In the ruling, to put it bluntly, it was revealed that the U.S. government tortured an innocent man to extract false confessions and then threatened him until he obligingly repeated those lies as though they were the truth.
Follow link for the rest of the story By Andy Worthington at The Huffington Post.In four years of researching and writing about Guantánamo, I have become used to... more
About a dozen retired generals and admirals, trying to add momentum to President Barack Obama’s effort to close the Guantanamo Bay military prison, are accusing former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz of scaremongering about the dangers of closing it.
“It’s up to all of us to say these arguments advanced by Cheney and his acolytes are nonsense and that really what they’re doing is undermining our national security by delaying the date at which Guantanamo is closed,” retired Brig. Gen. James Cullen, a former chief judge of the Army’s Court of Criminal Appeals, told POLITICO Tuesday.
Follow link for the rest of the story By JOSH GERSTEIN at Politico.About a dozen retired generals and admirals, trying to add momentum to President... more
MIAMI (Reuters) - An Obama administration task force has so far cleared 75 of the remaining 223 Guantanamo prisoners for release as part of its effort to close the detention camp, a military spokesman said on Monday.
The review team is examining each prisoner's case to decide who will be held for trial and who can be sent home or resettled in other nations.
President Barack Obama had set a January 22 deadline to shut the detention camp although Defense Secretary Robert Gates told ABC News in an interview broadcast on Sunday that "it's going to be tough" to meet the deadline.MIAMI (Reuters) - An Obama administration task force has so far cleared 75 of the... more
While everyone is watching Obama in New York addressing his very first UN General Assembly and charming the Security Council into nonproliferation, his administration has announced that they will not seek new powers to detain potential terrorists indefinitely.
From the Washington Post:
"The Obama administration has decided not to seek legislation to establish a new system of preventive detention to hold terrorism suspects and will instead rely on a 2001 congressional resolution authorizing military force against al-Qaeda and the Taliban to continue to detain people indefinitely and without charge, according to administration officials."
So to be clear, we’ve still got the system that brought us Guantanamo. What the Obama Administration is avoiding is any future Guantanamos.
This comes as a terror probe has been kicking along in the headlines – today with an indictment for one of the individuals for: “conspiring…to use one or more weapons of mass destruction, including bombs or other explosives.” (Wow.)
So what is the future of the so-called “War on Terror” (which as a phrase has even come to extinction within the Obama Adminsitration)? Will America’s standpoint on terrorism shift to a question of crime and punishment, away from the rhetoric of war (and the legal arguments that came with it)?While everyone is watching Obama in New York addressing his very first UN General... more
"On Wednesday, Jarret Brachman, a former West Point terrorism expert who monitors jihadist Web sites, published images on his blog that appear to be the first photographs of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-described planner of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp in Cuba."From the NYTimes Lede Blog:
"On Wednesday, Jarret Brachman, a former West Point... more
In one federal courtroom last month, a defense lawyer argued that the U.S. military had coerced a false confession out of a 50-year-old Kuwaiti who has been at Guantanamo for seven years.
In another, a Maryland attorney proposed that his Pakistani client, being held as an alleged al Qaeda facilitator, be allowed to post bail and stay with family — in Brooklyn.
Congress returns Tuesday from its summer recess but there was no break for the judges at the U.S. District Court midway between The Capitol and The White House who have been busy plowing through more than 200 lawsuits brought by Guantanamo detainees.
And, if the first 36 cases suggest a trend, the court is hardly persuaded that the Pentagon has the "worst of the worst'' penned up at the base in southeast Cuba.
Fifteen months after the U.S. Supreme Court rebuked the Bush administration by ruling that Guantanamo captives can sue for their freedom, civilian judges have ordered the release of 29 detainees and sided with the Defense Department only seven times.In one federal courtroom last month, a defense lawyer argued that the U.S. military... more
In a strong pushback against claims made by former Vice President Dick Cheney, Sen. John McCain insisted on Sunday that the use of torture on terrorism suspects violated international law, didn't work, and actually helped al Qaeda recruit additional members.
"I think the interrogations were in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the convention against torture that we ratified under President Reagan," said the Arizona Republican. "I think these interrogations, once publicized, helped al Qaeda recruit. I got that from an al Qaeda operative in a prison camp in Iraq... I think that the ability of us to work with our allies was harmed. And I believe that information, according go the FBI and others, could have been gained through other members."
The senator, appearing on CBS' Face the Nation, offered his assessment just hours after Cheney defended the use of torture during an interview with Fox News Sunday. Host Bob Schieffer pushed McCain to explain how it was that an al Qaeda member had told him that the use of torture helped them recruit.
Relaying a conversation that he and Sen. Lindsey Graham, (R-S.C.) had with a jailed "high-ranking member of al Qaeda," McCain replied that pictures of detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib had allowed the terrorist organization "to recruit thousands of young men."
And yet, despite acknowledging that the use of torture was counter-productive and in violation of international law -- laws that have been ratified by the United States -- McCain still insisted that the Obama Justice Department was wrong to launch an investigation into the matter.
"I believe the president was right when he said we ought to go forward and not back," he said. "I worry about the morale and effectiveness of the CIA. I worry about this thing getting out of control and us harming our ability to carry out the struggle we are in with radical Islamic extremism."
"For us now to go back," McCain added. "I think would be a serious mistake."In a strong pushback against claims made by former Vice President Dick Cheney, Sen.... more
