Algerians in Guantanamo

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, [...]

On Thursday, a group of US citizens in Massachusetts were thrilled to hear that, in the District Court in Washington D.C., Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. had granted the habeas corpus petition of Ravil Mingazov, the last Russian prisoner in Guantánamo, who was seized in Pakistan in March 2002. Few people in America have heard [...]

Note: This article is one of the last two articles published as part of “Guantánamo Habeas Week” (introduced here, and also see the articles here, here, here and here), which I extended to become “Guantánamo Habeas Fortnight.” This project also includes an interactive list of all 47 rulings to date (with links to my articles, [...]

The case of Ahmed Belbacha, an Algerian who sought asylum in the UK, and lived here for nearly three years, has long been a source of concern for human rights activists. Although he was cleared for release from Guantánamo in 2007, he is terrified of returning to Algeria, and with good reason. Although he left [...]

Please support my work! NOTE: This list has now been superseded by a dedicated page, “Guantánamo Habeas Results: The Definitive List,” which will be used to monitor the ongoing habeas rulings. As part of my series, “Guantánamo Habeas Week” (introduced here, and expanded, on April 23, to become “Guantánamo Habeas Fortnight”), it’s my pleasure to [...]

On Friday, perhaps as a sop to critics — myself included — who have been complaining about President Obama’s failure to close Guantánamo by his self-imposed deadline of January 22, 2010, the Justice Department announced in a press release that two Algerian prisoners had been released. Releasing prisoners to Algeria has always been a dubious [...]

On Friday, District Court Judge Gladys Kessler ordered the release from Guantánamo of Farhi Saeed bin Mohammed, a 48-year old Algerian, after granting his habeas corpus petition. Her ruling has not yet been unclassified, so the reasons for her decision are not yet clear, but it is significant that the ruling now brings to 31 [...]

As rumors swirl, suggesting that a number of the remaining 13 Uighur prisoners in Guantánamo (Muslims from China’s Xinjiang province) may soon be relocating to the tiny Pacific island state of Palau, a court case relating to nine of these men threatens to hurl a number of other prisoners in Guantánamo, who have also been [...]

On Monday March 30, in a committee room in the House of Commons, Diane Abbott MP chaired a meeting entitled, “Britain’s Guantánamo? The use of secret evidence and evidence based on torture in the UK courts,” to discuss the stories of some of the men held as “terror suspects” on the basis of secret evidence, [...]

The “War on Terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where the majority of the remaining 241 prisoners have been held for seven years without charge or trial, “complies with the humanitarian requirements of the Geneva Conventions,” according to a government official who spoke to the New York Times after reading an 85-page report prepared for [...]