Abu Zubaydah

On August 11, Ibrahim al-Qosi, a 51-year old former cook and driver for Osama bin Laden, was given a 14-year sentence by a military jury, after pleading guilty to one count of conspiracy, and one count of providing material support to terrorism at an earlier hearing on July 7, as I reported here. The sentence [...]

The mainstream media in the United States (and in the UK) has ignored the release last week of documents in Poland confirming that planes chartered by the CIA flew to the site of a secret CIA prison in north eastern Poland in 2002 and 2003. The documents, released by the Polish Border Guard Office, confirm [...]

On Friday, the Polish Border Guard Office released a number of documents to the Warsaw-based Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, which, for the first time, provide details of the number of prisoners transferred by the CIA to a secret prison in Poland between December 5, 2002 and September 22, 2003, and, in one case, the [...]

Last week, in the first part of this two-part series, I began looking at how the Conservative-dominated D.C. Circuit Court has responded to the rulings in the District Court regarding the habeas petitions of the prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay, where, to date, 38 out of 53 cases have been won by the prisoners. In [...]

In the history of the “War on Terror,” few stories are as disturbing as that of Abu Zubaydah. Seized in Pakistan in March 2002, Zubaydah was initially regarded as a “high-value detainee” of such significance that the Bush administration conceived its torture program specifically for use on him, but the case against him has steadily [...]

For the last two years, the prisoners held in the “War on Terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba have been challenging the basis of their detention through habeas corpus petitions filed with the District Court in Washington D.C., where they have met with a notable degree of success. Of the 51 cases decided, 37 have [...]

Last Thursday, Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), the Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, released the previously undisclosed testimony of Jay S. Bybee, delivered to the Committee on May 26 as part of its investigations into advice given by Justice Department lawyers to the Bush administration regarding the use of torture in the “War on Terror.” [...]

To complement my recent article, “Abu Zubaydah and the Case Against Torture Architect James Mitchell,” analyzing the complaint filed with the Texas State Board of Examiners of Psychologists regarding ethical violations by Dr. James Elmer Mitchell, one of the architects of the Bush administration’s torture program, I’m reproducing below the full complaint, primarily, as I [...]

Attempts to call to accountability any of the architects of the Bush administration’s torture program have so far been depressingly unsuccessful. First, any hopes that President Obama would lead the way were dashed when, even before taking office, the President-Elect declared “a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards.” Then, [...]

To complement my recent article, “UN Human Rights Council Discusses Secret Detention Report,” in which I explained how, two weeks ago, the UN Human Rights Council had — after some delays — finally discussed the findings of the “Joint Study on Global Practices in Relation to Secret Detention in the Context of Counter-Terrorism,” a detailed, [...]