December 02, 2003

• And while we're up, here's a little on the Geneva Convention.
• The current issue of GQ has an excellent article by Benjamin Wallace on Guantanamo. It's not online (most of GQ isn't, subject of a future post) but here is an excerpt about the juveniles: "And to listen to the soldiers at Guantanamo talk about Camp Iguana, which houses the three juvenile detainees, you might think you had stumbled upon an orphanage run by the Children's Defense Fund. While the adult detainees are 'interrogated,' the young residents of Iguana are merely 'debriefed,' and given 'an opportunity to discuss what they went through." Unlike [Camp] Delta, Iguana has air-conditioning and National Geographic and Disney videos. 'We try to keep more of a homey, relaxed environment here,' said a guard who in civilian life is a middle-school teacher." I have absolutely no idea how I should react to these statements.
• What I could NEVER fathom is that we're still at Guantanamo at all.(!) Can you imagine what WE'D do if 45 acres of, say, Texas, were declared a war-base for Mexico? Or the old USSR wanted an offramp into Anchorage? I think we'd laugh. And then start shooting.
• Who is "we"? Did I miss something?
• In addition to McDonald's, there are now Pizza Hut, Subway and KFC. In Cuba. I know, I know, technically they're not. But...they are. They're even building a four-year college. How permanent is this camp anyway?
• One they start building the old folks home, it's time to worry. (actually I'm worried now, but that's not as funny)
• Wolof, I think he's referring to that time the USA took over the planet and forced Australians into slave labour as Twinkie-unwrappers.
• I josh because I <3.
• Events continue to unfold.
• Telegragh

  New evidence that the physical abuse of detainees in Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay was authorised at the top of the Bush administration will emerge in Washington this week, adding further to pressure on the White House. The Telegraph understands that four confidential Red Cross documents implicating senior Pentagon civilians in the Abu Ghraib scandal have been passed to an American television network, which is preparing to make them public shortly.

• British detainees tell their stories of Guantnamo Bay
• Hunger strike enters second month. Prison officials put the number of participants at 87 (ten of which are in "stable" condition and being fed through nose tubes). Lawyers put the number at 200+.
• Yes, Yes, Yes! My insanely quixotic quest has worked! It's worked!
• It's lonely, and pathetic, at the top, isn't it?
• Navigating an odyssey to Guantánamo Bay
• Scandal of force-fed prisoners Hunger strikers are tied down and fed through nasal tubes, admits Guantánamo Bay doctor
• Dear God.
• Hey, it was good enough for the UK ...
• That's just horrible. Goddamn.
• go team. .
• this makes me feel sick.
• Report: More than Half of Gitmo Detainees Not Accused of Hostile Acts
• The Bush legacy of legalized abuse and why the McCain ban won't work
• A U.N. inquiry says the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay at times amounts to torture and violates international law.
• Summary, plus links to articles ".....he had placed Tumani there three months before the teenager had even entered Afghanistan. The curious U.S. officer pulled the classified file of the accuser, saw that he had accused 60 men, and, suddenly skeptical, pulled the files of every detainee the accuser had placed at the one training camp. None of the men had been in Afghanistan at the time the accuser said he saw them at the camp. The tribunal declared Tumani an enemy combatant anyway."
• Invisible Men: The not-people we're not holding at Guantanamo Bay.
• Guantanamo actors held at airport
• Meanwhile, at Bagram...
• Great. That's gotta be pride-inducing doesn't it.
• USA!
• U.S. Cites Exception in Torture Ban
• Thanks H-dogg, that would have taken me a bit to find. At least we know how paper-thin the ShrubCo commitment to the ban on torture is. Oh they "support" it alright. Not.
• Released Guantanamo Documents
• Despair and Confusion at Guantanamo
• Few things seem to speak as loudly against a man as the possession of a Cassio watch.
• Then they came for the chicken farmers...
• Guantánamo detainees interviewed on This American Life
• dangit - scooped again! Curse you Red Baron! *shakes fist*
• I really wish they could podcast that show. I frigging hate RealAudio. But they run it twice here over the weekend, so I'll have make time to listen.
• Calling them detainees is contemptible -- for in fact they are prisoners, held captive in violation of treaties the US has signed.
• MCT, This and RealAudio a podcast make! Best $12 spent in the service of aural excitement. Go. Download. Be free.
• Nice, thanks!
• "During an unpublicized March 8 talk at the University of Freiburg in Switzerland, Scalia dismissed the idea that the detainees have rights under the U.S. Constitution" je recuse!
• While I don't know if Tony "Fuck you, whaddaya gonna do aboudid?" Scalia has recused himself, this article was interesting. It's not within the Supreme Court's power to decide the constitutional challenges brought by Salim Ahmed Hamdan, the Guantanamo detainee whose case will be argued before the court tomorrow, say Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Jon Kyl, R-Ariz. In a brief they filed with the Supreme Court, they argue that Congress kicked Hamdan's current case out of court when it passed the Detainee Treatment Act last December. Problem is, they added their evidence to the Congressional record after the fact. That's not the problem - arguing that it holds up to the Supreme Court is the problem.
• Good article. Thanks, pete. Here's a working link for the chicken farmer's story.
• The Supreme Court takes the military tribunals out for a spin.
• The press corps begins the day with a different question: What the hell has gotten into Justice Antonin Scalia? Between his extracurricular pronouncements on the arguments in this case (and I urge you to listen to the whole speech yourself) and his extracurricular hand signals last weekend, nobody is quite sure what has come over the man. He is ever more the Bill O'Reilly of the High Court. Heh.
• From where I sit Scalia's behavior has been consistent: Pretty much always an arrogant prick.
• Gitmo inmates attack guards stopping a suicide "Detainees struck guards as they entered a communal living area to stop a prisoner who was trying to hang himself . . . Earlier in the day, three detainees in another part of the prison attempted suicide by swallowing prescription medicine they had been hoarding."
• Three inmates die at Guantanamo.
• Yes, but the U.S. military considers the suicides an act of asymmetric warfare waged against us. Huh?
• A top US official has described the suicides of three detainees at the US base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as a "good PR move to draw attention" The. Fuck??
• That must be some damn good LSD.
• Visiting the First Reich English transcript of a report from the investigative programme, MOT, of Finnish TV1
• Kids these days...
• The prisoners who are here are here because the army captured them. And because they are prisoners they are obviously bad men. Or they would not be prisoners. The army sent me here to guard these prisoners. No, I don't watch the news. I might learn something if I did. See, we are not allowed to think in this man's army. So don't confuse me with facts. /sarcasm
• 1984 came 22 years after the fact.
• Pentagon Blocking Guantanamo Legal Mail
• We have always been at war with Iraq. Freedom is peace!
• Er, strike that last bit.
• "Boo-freakin-hoo."
• This idea of suicide is a lie. My son wouldn't commit suicide. I want Yassar to be the last person to die in Guantanamo. While I cannot speak on the validity of "suicide or not," I find it interesting that "The US has not yet decided what will happen to the three dead men's bodies." Either they are afraid of the walking dead, or there *is* something more to this story.
• Zharani was 17 when he arrived at Guantanamo, making him one of the youngest prisoners. fucking hell. i mean really, what the fuck? he was 21 when he died, so he spent more than 20% of his life in guantanamo? versus maybe a year in afghanistan? what is going on with the u.s. that an almost-child is seen as such a threat?
• Pentagon Kicks Press Out of Guantanamo
• Sounds like it was Rumsfeld's doing - the administration's on the defensicve these days. I wonder why. /sarcasm
• Oh Toby Keith, where are your uniting, stirring songs of benevolent hegemony when we really need them?!?! (Y'know even though this technically isn't retrospect, perhaps I've been a little hard on the ToKeefster. A man's only a man, after all. Um, which may be the point in context of Gitmo. Crap! Must . . .stop . . being . . unintentionally . . relevant . . )
• Observer: U.S. Hid Truth on Guantanamo Suicides
• Winning hearts and minds: one step forward, twenty steps backward.
• According to Guantanamo's rules, a six-person team of military police should have been patrolling constantly, and as usual the bright neon lights stayed on. A guard should have passed each detainee's cell every 30 seconds. 'From the landing, you can see right into every cell,' said Rasul. 'They don't have doors, just gates made from wide-spaced mesh. There's no privacy. If you hang up a towel because you want to go to the toilet, they make you take it down.' The high degree of surveillance has foiled dozens of previous attempts by prisoners to take their own lives. 'It happened in front of me several times. The soldiers would see what was happening and they were in the cell in seconds,' Rasul said. But somehow, in circumstances that the Pentagon has succeeded in keeping totally obscure, late on Friday, 9 June, three detainees, all weak and emaciated after months on hunger strike and being force-fed, managed to tease bedsheets through their cells' mesh walls, tie them into nooses and hang themselves. With the cells little taller than the height of a man, they stood no chance of breaking their necks: the only way they could die was slowly, by hypoxia. . . . According to newly declassified testimony by another prisoner shortly before the suicides, a guard recently told him: 'They have lost hope in life. They have no hope in their eyes. They are ghosts and they want to die. No food will keep them alive right now.' This prisoner, the former British resident Shaker Aamer, told his lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, that the three dead men and other hunger strikers were so ill whenever their feeds contained protein that it went 'right through them' causing severe diarrhoea. .
• Film Opening: The Road to Guantanamo
• Breaking news? Mr Bush pledged to send detainees back to their home countries, but added that the outcome must not result in freeing "people who can do us harm". At a press conference next week: After careful examination, we have found evidence to suggest that all detainees currently being held in Guantanamo pose imminent danger to the U.S., they can do us harm.
• I wish i could believe that. It was a non-commital soundbite unfortunately, IMMO. nicely h-dogged, though SMT.
• This place is far too like a concentration camp.
• For his birthday, I got TenaciousPettle a DVD of the 1943 Batman serials. There's a scene when they enter Little Tokyo, which is nearly deserted because, as the narrator explains, "A wise government rounded up the shifty-eyed Japs." I had the biggest laugh in a month over that, because the casual brutality of it seemed so over-the-top and anachronistic at the time. Hmm. It also bears mentioning that the one "shifty-eyed Jap" who honestly did mean America harm -- through the development of a WMD -- had of course eluded being captured by the "wise government." But suffice it to say that America was safe from every green grocer in that neighborhood.
• My mother, born ninety-odd years ago, to this day won't buy anything with Chinese or Japanese characters, she being a victim of Yellow Peril thinking that prevailed during her childhood and youth. (And this despite having several uncles who were overseas in various professional capacities prior to WWII(!). Whenever I've asked her about it, she says she's sure some of them are curses and maladictions, and she wishes no part of them. There is no reasoning with a Scot (and I daresay many others) once s/he takes hold of a wrong notion this strongly. /resigned
• Bees, my Grandma gets the same way sometimes. If something tastes bad, she says "They must've put Chinese flour in it." And any offer of vaguely Asian food elicits the reply, "You're not turning me into a Chinaman!" I thought it was just her, but maybe it IS a generational thing. (More fuel on the Is-Bees-my-long-lost-father fire!)
• I had a teacher once who related the experience of receiving a sales call from the Mitsubishi dealership in town. "I fought the Japanese in WWII, I'm not going to buy cars from them!" *checks watch* Odd indeed and yet which one of us is really the gray-haired ranting academic?! Ha ha! (um, well, technically he is, uh, but that doesn't mean I'm right. About much.)
• In a classic Baader-Meinhof moment, this brings to mind a passage from Tempest-Tost by Robertson Davies, which I happened to be re-reading ony last night: "Solly wondered what to talk about. He must keep his mother away from international politics. This had been her study - no, not her study, her preoccupation and her particular source of neurosis - for as long as he could remember. Before her marriage, as an alert college girl determined to show that women could benefit from higher education every bit as much as men, Mrs. Bridgetower had been greatly alarmed, in a highly intelligent and realistic manner, of course, by the Yellow Peril. The years of the War had been devoted, patriotically, to the Prussian Menace, but she had returned to her earlier love immediately afterward. The rise of totalitarianism had kept her busy during the 'thirties, but when the Second World War began, and Japan entered it, she brought dread of the Yellow Peril to a particularly fine flowering. Since the subjugation of Japan she had developed several terrors and menaces in Latin America and South Africa, and had, of course, given the Red Menace a great deal of attention; but, by determinedly regarding Russia as an Asiatic power she was able to make the Red Menace seem no more than a magnification of the old Yellow Peril. She was growing old and set in her ways, and old perils and dreads were dearer to her than latter-day innovations."
• Bingo.
• An odd thing is none of her siblings underwent this conditioning or whatever the cause is.
• Supreme Court ruling on Military Tribunals expected.
• REJECTED!
• More at SCOTUSblog.
• *amazed*
• Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented. Chief Justice John G. Roberts did not participate
• No surprises there, really.
• Greenwald: The significance of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld
• "Today's rebuke to the president still feels hollow to me because I just don't believe the Bush administration cares what the Supreme Court thinks about the constraints on executive war powers. As a legal matter, Bush lawyers always claimed they'd won the last round of enemy combatant cases, even when the rest of us heard O'Connor's admonition, in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, about a state of war not being a "blank check" for the president. As a practical matter, even if it's true that U.S. forces and interrogators must now abide by the Geneva definition of torture, when is the petition for relief of a tortured detainee going to present itself before this court? And even if Guantanamo is closed, which I gather may soon happen, what is to stop Bush from falling back on secret prisons and extraordinary renditions—which we will never know about?"
• The Bush administration said Tuesday that all detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and in all other U.S. military custody around the world are entitled to protections under the Geneva Conventions. Swell. These guys are all heart.
• Does mean the IRC can finally get in and take a look?
• New maximum-security jail to open at Guantanamo Bay
• Nothing about Castro?
• Camp 6, a state-of-the-art maximum-security jail built by a Halliburton subsidiary, will be able to hold 200 prisoners. You ah . . one 'them . . . ter'riss? Huh boy?! Hyuk hyuk hyuk! . . *spits chaw*
• Chimpy admits what everybody already knew about secret CIA prison, feigns usual righteous indignation.
• From the BBC version of the same story: Mr Bush spelled out how the questioning of detainee Abu Zubaydah had led to the capture of Ramzi Binalshibh, which in turn led to the detention of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Too right he spelled it out. It's not like he'd be able to pronounce the names.
• Ha! Nice one, mothy!
• I've been wondering for a couple of weeks whether Shrub is going to have someone take a fall. I think Rumsfeld may be toast and I wouldn't be surprised if there are others out there.
• What George Bush Didn't Say About Guantanamo
• I think Rumsfeld may be toast He is, but they won't fire him. Cause then who would there be? Cheney? HA! Hahahahahahhahahahahaha
• It's not like he'd be able to pronounce the names. It's not like most americans would know the fucking difference.
• A life-size replica of a Guantanamo Bay detainee has been placed in Disneyland by "guerrilla artist" Banksy.
• Terrorist or Victim of Bush's Terror War?
• smt, ye can always Banksy on him!
• Thank You For A Job Well Done
• Report: Gitmo detainees denied witnesses
• Four Good Reasons Why Guantanamo Should Be Closed
• Guantanamo Unclassified (YouTube link).
• After five years of torture, Bisher is slowly slipping into madness
• Peace activists target Guantanamo The 12 activists include an ex-detainee and relatives of another prisoner. The protest marks the fifth anniversary of the first "war on terror" detentions.
• A Voice from Gitmo's Darkness I hope it won't offend the filter sensibilities, but I may FPP this because.
• If I die, please remember that there was a human being named Jumah at Guantanamo whose beliefs, dignity and humanity were abused. I hope it won't offend the filter sensibilities, but I may FPP this because Oh, how I admire thou... but beware, the Ides of January!!
• US admin official urges boycott of lawfirms representing detainees
• The US defence department has sent Congress the draft of a new manual for trying detainees at Guantanamo Bay. The new rules would allow terror suspects to be imprisoned on the basis of hearsay or coerced testimony - if a judge ruled the evidence credible.
• You know, I heard that SMT has a bomb. No, is the bomb! IS THE BOMB! I guess those gubment guys ain't hep to colloquialisms. *makes cake with hidden saw*
• Did I hear someone say that nunia is hiding yellow cake? Hell, as long as they allow conjugal visits... slap some frosting on that puppy!
• You have to do it with the total dramatic pause and malicious-soundingness when you say, "nunia is hiding yellow cake . . . from Africa"
• Duly noted! *quickly scribbles notes in my "how to comment with the pete flair" notebook* *clears throat* Um, did I hear someone say that nunia is uh, hiding yellow cake... ...from Niger!! *hangs head in shame and awaits nunia's brute retaliatory attack*
• 'No evidence' of Guantanamo abuse ...The inquiry began in October after a Marine sergeant claimed "striking detainees was a common practice". "The evidence did not support any of the allegations of mistreatment or harassment," a statement from Southern Command said according to the Associated Press news agency. Col Bassett carried out 20 interviews with suspects and witnesses, but not with detainees, the Southern Command said, according to AP. Hmmmmmmm
• Assigned to defend a Guantánamo detainee, jag lawyer Charles Swift joined up with legal scholar Neal Katyal and sued the president and secretary of defense over the new military-tribunal system. With their 2006 Supreme Court victory overridden by the Republican Congress, and Swift's navy career at an end, they are fighting on.
• Thanks for the link above, homunculus. Another fine, and sobering, read...
• Pentagon to bar news coverage of hearings for terror suspects from CIA prisons
• Guantanamo detainee calls home
• The YouTube Defense: Human rights go viral.
• The US Defence Secretary, Robert Gates, has said that Congress should look for ways to close the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba
• The US Supreme Court has said it will not rule on whether detainees held at Guantanamo have the right to challenge their detention in US federal courts.
• Report: Conditions at Guantanamo Worsen
• MeFi thread on medical "ethics" at Guantanamo Clinicians regularly visited the interrogation cell to assess and treat the prisoner. Medics and a female "medical representative" checked vital signs several times per day; they assessed for dehydration and suggested enemas for constipation or intravenous fluids for dehydration. The prisoner’s hands and feet became swollen as he was restrained in a chair. These extremities were inspected and wrapped by medics and a physician. One entry describes a physician checking "for abrasions from sitting in the metal chair for long periods of time. The doctor said everything was good."...
• No fairytales allowed
• nothing I learned in Guantánamo would be classified in a sane world I have believed nary a word in any of the supposed "confessions" that have recently come out of the "tribunals". I assume it is muck for the masses to consume and forget about. Good read.
• 82 Inmates Cleared but Still Held at Guantanamo
• Romney: ‘We Ought To Double Guantanamo’
• I have a bad feeling about this...
• Gitmo Attorneys Sue NSA and DOJ
• Lt. Cmdr. Diaz Receives 6 Month Sentence For Revealing Gitmo Names
• A Saudi Arabian prisoner has died in an apparent suicide More good news... *sigh*
• Guantanamo judge dismisses terror case
• We should change the rules so Gonzales can fire that fucking traitor.
• The US Supreme Court has agreed to hear an appeal by Guantanamo Bay detainees that they be allowed to challenge their confinement in federal courts. The move reverses the court's decision in April, when it refused to rule on whether the men had a right to take their cases to federal courts. This latest move is a blow to the US government, which wants the cases to be dealt with by military tribunals alone.
• How a Military Officer's Sworn Declaration Sheds New Light on Guantanamo's Flawed Detention System
• In late 2001, nineteen-year-old Murat Kurnaz was taken off a bus in Peshawar, Pakistan transported to an American base in Afghanistan and then to the U.S. prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. He endured five years of beatings, torture and interrogation, before he was flown back home to Germany and released . . . because he was innocent. The last thing the government wants is for someone like him to speak out and tell his story. But that's just what he's done.
• Horrifying. Needs to be required reading. Thanks for the link h-dogg.
• Sami Al-Haj and Bilal Hussein: Their Names Mostly Unknown in U.S., Jailed Journalists Have Spent Combined Six Years in U.S. Military Prisons Without Charge
• Al-Jazeera man 'close to death' at Guantanamo Bay
• How fucking depressing. Thanks for my daily dose of reality, h-dogg. Sami has suffered the feeding tube being forced down into his lungs by mistake several times...
• Naming Names at Gitmo
• Ex-Prosecutor Alleges Pentagon Plays Politics: Pressure for 'Sexy' Guantanamo Hearings
• Guantanamo military lawyer breaks ranks to condemn 'unconscionable' detention
• Sensitive Guantánamo Bay Manual Leaked Through Wiki Site
• Archbishop Desmond Tutu has accused the United States and Britain of pursuing policies like those of South Africa's apartheid-era government by detaining terrorism suspects without trial.
• Anti-Cheney Forces Inside Bush Administration Have ‘Lost The Intensity’ To Close Gitmo
• OK -- couple of dumb questions. After four, five years in custody, isn't it likely that a) the U.S. already has whatever information it's going to get out of those guys and b) whatever information those guys have is out of date and useless by now? Sooo... If the detainees are of no use anymore, why not just put them in a regular judicial scheme, and let the chips fall where they may? Even if they manage to beat the system and get out, and even if they're more rabid by reason of their treatment, they're never going to be placed in any position of authority because they're 'damaged goods', right? I suppose they could become motivational speakers for the cause or something, but then again, they already are rallying points, no? Idunno. Just askin'.
• And to be completely cynical, wouldn't it just be so much more politically expedient to put the detainees in the regular judicial system, and if they ever get close to coming out, have an agent drop by and do the ol' Visine-in-the-coffee trick or something? "Oh, lookee dat -- terrorist had a stroke. Too bad, so sad." Not that I'd support such a course of action, but I would assume that there are much easier, well-practiced ways of getting rid of people other than locking them up in a maximum security prison attracting tons of unwanted international and domestic attention.
• Guantanamo: A Look Back at Six Years of Imprisonment, Torture and Suicide
• Canada: Guantanamo listed as torture, abuse concern in Foreign Affairs manual
• U.S. says no one too young for Guantanamo court
• Slip-Up Undermines White House Case Against Child Soldier
• "In other torture news..." Sweet Mothra, it doesn't even sound shocking anymore.
• .
• Bush lays a Guantanamo trap for the next president
• Why Now? The timing of the Guantanamo trials is not an accident.
• Rigged Trials at Gitmo
• The Hippocratic Oath Dies in Gitmo ...Al-Ghizzawi arrived at Guantánamo HIV-free in June 2002...
• Khadr lawyers allege Cheney linked to video release
• The Afghan hero who died in Guantanamo
• A sickening truth at Guantánamo: A gravely ill detainee I represent, never charged with a crime, has been neglected by military doctors. Will he be the next to die inside the notorious prison?
• An innocent man loses 5 years of his life at Guantanamo Bay
• US releases al-Jazeera cameraman
• Identification of ex-Guantanamo suicide bomber unleashes Pentagon propaganda
• U.S. Planning Big New Prison in Afghanistan
• A new report [pdf] by the Justice Department Inspector General details many of the harsh and intentionally humiliating techniques that the U.S. military used against Mohammed Al-Qahtani, a Saudi detainee at the Guantanamo Bay military prison who many US officials believe was meant to be the 20th hijacker on September 11, 2001. Egads, there's all kinds of stuff in here. Here's a tidbit I just gleamed, ...Algazzar had seen another unnamed detainee return from an interrogation with blood on his face and head... when the other detainee did not cooperate with a female interrogator, she called four guards into the room to restrain him, removed her blouse, embraced him from behind, put her hands on his genitals, and wiped menstrual blood on him.
• Three Former Gitmo Prisoners to Address US Audience in Historic Event
• Jailed for Protesting Gitmo: 34 Convicted for Demonstrations Outside Supreme Court
• ah yes, that pesky unlawful free speech.
• US accused of holding terror suspects on prison ships
• The insanity inside Guantánamo: A new report reveals that many prisoners -- even some long ago cleared to leave -- are spiraling into hallucinations, despair and suicide.
• Supreme Court to Bush: You're not above the law. The court's latest rebuke of Guantanamo Bay won't close the prison down. But it's a step toward curbing Bush's unilateral tactics.
• Guantanamo: Beyond the Law. An eight-month McClatchy investigation of the detention system created after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks has found that the U.S. imprisoned innocent men, subjected them to abuse, stripped them of their legal rights and allowed Islamic militants to turn the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba into a school for jihad.
• Gitmo Detainee’s Lawyer ‘Not Allowed To Tell Him’ He’s No Longer An ‘Enemy Combatant’
• Judge Orders Five Detainees Freed From Guantánamo A Bush-appointed federal judge, Richard J. Leon, made the ruling, and urged the government not to appeal. Has the tide finally begun to turn?
• Has the tide finally begun to turn? Sure, there's a whole new group of asses to kiss...
• Gates orders development of plans to close Guantanamo
• Barack Obama will issue an executive order within days of entering the White House to close the Guantanamo detention centre, senior advisers have confirmed.
• I hope Australia is ready for this.
• Breaking news is that BAM just issued an executive order that Guantanamo close within one year.
• Closing all overseas CIA detention centres for terror suspects, and banning "harsh interrogation methods" too. This bodes well.
• Of course there are 9/11 folks crying that there is no justice and the terrerierists will win. Never mind that the vast majority had nothing to do with 9/11, and those that did will be brought to the States to face trial.
• Military Lawyer: Gitmo Conditions Have Worsened Since Inauguration
• Shit, man, this was not supposed to happen. But I guess a quick and happy ending to the Gitmo situation is too much to hope for.
• WTH? No, really not supposed to happen. Fuck.
• Binyam Mohamed torture evidence 'hidden from Obama': Letter to president about Binyam Mohamed was blanked out, say campaigners as they prepare for Guantánamo prisoner's release to UK
• Obama denies terror suspects right to trial: Human rights groups shocked by refusal to reverse Bush policy in Afghanistan
• Binyam Mohamed is back in the UK: "I have to say, more in sadness than in anger, that many have been complicit in my own horrors over the past seven years. For myself, the very worst moment came when I realised in Morocco that the people who were torturing me were receiving questions and materials from British intelligence."
• Miss Universe on Guantanamo!!!: ...it was a loooot of fun! ...I didn't want to leave, it was such a relaxing place, so calm and beautiful.
• George W. Bush 'knew Guantánamo prisoners were innocent'
• A Kinder, Gentler Gitmo: Obama hasn't departed from the Bush administration tactics on national security, he's just changed tone.
• Spy Vs...Lawyer? How human rights advocates investigating torture ended up snooping on the CIA—and in hot water with the feds.
• Ex-Guantanamo detainee now campaigning in Afghanistan
• My Guantánamo Nightmare Notes From a Guantánamo Survivor
• Chronicle of a death foretold: Guantanamo Bay prisoner Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif died without having ever been charged with a crime.
• Youngest prisoner leaves Guantanamo: Captured as a 15-year-old fighting in Afghanistan, Omar Khadr is sent to finish his sentence in his native Canada.
• Ahmed Errachidi: 'We shared one thing in Guantánamo Bay – pain'. The chef turned author on the five years he spent in Guantánamo Bay – and why his nickname is the General