Guantanamo Bay

WASHINGTON - Nearly six years ago, Bosnian authorities ordered the release of six men picked up on suspicion of plotting to attack the US Embassy in Sarajevo. An investigation found no evidence against the six Algerian natives. Instead of freedom, however, they got a trip to the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. They were branded enemy combatants by the Bush administration and have been held since. They have not been charged with a crime. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will consider whether the Algerians and about 300 other prisoners at Guantanamo can go to US...

In Europe, where more than 200,000 people thronged a Berlin rally in 2008 to hear Barack Obama speak, there's disappointment that he hasn't kept his promise to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, and perceptions that he's shunting blame for the financial crisis across the Atlantic. In Mogadishu, a former teacher wishes he had sent more economic assistance and fewer armed drones to fix Somalia's problems. And many in the Middle East wonder what became of Obama's vow, in a landmark 2009 speech at the University of Cairo, to forge a closer relationship with the Muslim world.

WASHINGTON - To mark 10 years of military detention at Guantanamo Bay, human rights groups are organizing events worldwide this week, including rallies, flash mobs, and concerts. The detainees themselves are marking the anniversary in quieter fashion, with peaceful demonstrations. Detainees were planning three days of protests beginning yesterday, according to a lawyer for a handful of the men. Some will refuse to return to their cells for the four-hour nightly lockdown and will attempt to sleep in the recreation areas.

Lawyers for a Palestinian who has been identified by the Pentagon as one of its "high value detainees" at Guantanamo urged the government Thursday to finally charge the man, saying he deserves a chance to address accusations against him after 10 years in custody. In a letter to the Convening Authority, a Pentagon legal official who presides over the tribunals known as military commissions at the U.S. base in Cuba, the lawyers for Abu Zubaydah say they have repeatedly sought a "legitimate evaluation" of his case.

A federal appeal court won't force the U.S. government to reconsider the enemy combatant designation of two former Guantanamo Bay detainees. The U.S Circuit Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on Friday upheld a decision throwing out the lawsuit of Nazul Gul and Adel Hamad. They were held for several years at the naval base at Guantanamo Bay before being released to Afghanistan and Sudan in 2007. The two say their designation as enemy combatants were never lifted, and it is now keeping them and more than 100 others from traveling freely, and also hurting their reputations.

WASHINGTON -- A federal judge yesterday questioned the government's treatment of a detainee at Guantanamo Bay who says he underwent forced feedings so painful that he gave up his hunger strike. US District Judge Gladys Kessler is considering whether to prohibit the forced-feeding practice in the case of Mohammed Bawazir, who has been imprisoned at the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, since spring 2002. The case marks the first time a court has heard arguments on a new law, the Detainee Treatment Act, which forbids the torture of prisoners in the war on terrorism.

WASHINGTON — Detainees at Bagram Air Field in Afghanistan cannot use US courts to challenge their imprisonment the way detainees in Guantanamo Bay have, a federal appeals court ruled unanimously yesterday in a victory for the Obama administration. Three judges said the fact that Afghanistan is a war zone and that the United States in effect has sovereignty over Guantanamo Bay swing the balance against the detainees. But unlike Guantanamo Bay, “it is undisputed that Bagram, indeed the entire nation of Afghanistan, remains a theater of war,’’ the judges said in...

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court refused yesterday to let a lawyer meet with his client at a US Navy prison in Cuba. The lawyer, Stephen Yagman, had said he wanted to make sure that Falen Gherebi, a Libyan captured in Afghanistan, was not abused at Guantanamo Bay. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor declined without comment to order a meeting. Yagman had said in a filing last week that he was concerned that Gherebi "may have been or may be subjected to improper treatment at the hands of his captors at Guantanamo Bay. " The filing did not make any specific allegations, but follows...

WASHINGTON -- In late 2002, US interrogators of suspected terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay sought approval to use harsher methods than are called for in standard military doctrine, and some of those techniques were used until military lawyers objected, officials said yesterday. Larry Di Rita, spokesman for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, refused to identify the techniques, which he described as "nondoctrinal," meaning that they were not in accordance with military doctrine, which was written to apply to interrogations of prisoners of war, not terrorists.

WASHINGTON — A white, unmarked Boeing 737 landed in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, before dawn on a CIA mission so secretive, many in the nation’s war on terrorism were kept in the dark. Four of the nation’s most highly valued terrorist prisoners were aboard. They arrived at Guantanamo on Sept. 24, 2003, years earlier than the United States has ever disclosed. Then, months later, they were just as quietly whisked away before the Supreme Court could give them access to lawyers.

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba - As the United States restarts its effort to prosecute - and ultimately execute - five detainees accused of conspiring in the Sept. 11 attacks, it has fallen to Brigadier General Mark S. Martins both to prove them guilty and to show the world that the tribunal system is now legitimate. "We're going to have a fair trial," Martins, the chief prosecutor in the military commissions system, said in an interview this week. "There are a lot of people who come to this with preconceptions about unfairness, and I would just ask people to withhold judgment.

Five men accused of orchestrating the Sept. 11 attacks, including the self-proclaimed mastermind, are headed back to a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay on Saturday, more than three years after President Barack Obama put the case on hold in a failed effort to move the proceedings to a civilian court and close the prison at the U.S. base in Cuba. This time the defendants may put up a fight. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who told military authorities that he was responsible for the planning of the terror assault "from A to Z," previously mocked the tribunal and said he would...

Here is a look at the military commission system that will be used to prosecute five Guantanamo Bay prisoners charged in the Sept. 11 attacks: –- WHAT IT IS: A military commission is a form of military tribunal convened to try people accused of unlawful conduct associated with war. They were commonly used for the first time during the 19th century Mexican-American War and have been modified over time by Congress and U.S. Supreme Court...

WASHINGTON - The office of director of national intelligence said Monday that far fewer detainees released from Guantanamo Bay rejoined terrorist activities than previously reported. In a new report, the intelligence office says just under 16 percent of detainees released - 95 out of 600 - were confirmed to reoffend. Some 12 percent more - about 72 detainees - are suspected of having rejoined terrorist groups and are being watched. It was the first time that James R. Clapper, the director of national intelligence, has provided that level of detail, Pentagon spokesman Todd...

Some prisoners at Guantanamo Bay will soon have a new, larger soccer field to help keep them occupied during their indefinite detention. The U.S. military has nearly completed a new recreation yard in Camp 6, the camp where more than 80 percent of the 171 prisoners are held. Besides a soccer field, it will have a walking trail and exercise equipment. Screened fences block the view of the nearby Caribbean Sea. A spokeswoman says the improvements cost nearly $750,000. Navy Cmdr.

U.S. military prosecutors have submitted charges, including murder and espionage, against a Lebanese Hezbollah commander allegedly responsible for killing five U.S. soldiers in Iraq, a Pentagon official said Friday. The case against Ali Musa Daqduq is complicated by the fact that he is in Iraqi government custody, and it is unclear whether Baghdad authorities will permit his transfer to a U.S. military tribunal. Prosecutors submitted charges against Daqduq last month, but they have yet to be approved by Brig.

WASHINGTON - A US appeals court reversed a ruling yesterday that would have transferred 17 Guantanamo Bay detainees, none of whom are labeled enemy combatants, to the United States. The ruling casts further uncertainty on the fate of the Turkic-speaking Muslims from western China. Because there is no evidence that they plotted or fought against the United States, the government has no authority to hold them at Guantanamo Bay, but deciding what to do with the men has been a diplomatic problem for years.

WASHINGTON - Dozens of Guantanamo Bay detainee cases have been referred to federal prosecutors for possible criminal trials in the nation’s capital, Virginia, and New York City, officials told the Associated Press yesterday. The Justice Department’s strategy of holding trials in East Coast cities could be a sharp departure from a Pentagon plan to hold all Guantanamo-related civilian and military trials in the Midwest. The politically volatile decisions about where and how to try Guantanamo Bay detainees ultimately will rest with President Obama as he tries to meet his...

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says he will not approve the release of any Taliban from the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, military prison as part of Afghan peace talks unless he's sure they won't return to the battlefield. Panetta is telling the Senate Armed Services Committee that no decisions have been made on such a release. The Obama administration is considering the release of five top Taliban leaders from Guantanamo as a starting point for peace negotiations between the U.S.-backed Afghan government and the Taliban movement in an effort to end the war. The five would be...

The U.N. human rights chief says the U.S. government must close the Guantanamo Bay prison as President Barack Obama promised a year ago. Navi Pillay, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, says "the facility continues to exist and individuals remain arbitrarily detained — indefinitely — in clear breach of international law. " Obama pledged to shutter the U.S. Naval Base prison in Cuba in his annual address to Congress last year....