Guantanamo whistleblowers

As a recent decision by a military judge makes clear, the wheels of justice revolve in slow motion at Guantánamo, as those responsible for the exercise of political and judicial processes — the executive, Congress and the Supreme Court — engage in prolonged tussles that last for years. Andy Worthington, author of The Guantánamo Files: [...]

On Thursday February 28, Stephen Abraham, the US military intelligence officer whose explosive statements last year about the manifest failures of the tribunal process at Guantánamo (available here and here) are widely credited with persuading the Supreme Court to look once more at the detainees’ rights (see here and here), spoke about his experiences at [...]

It really doesn’t get any worse than this. Candace Gorman, lawyer for Abdul Hamid al-Ghizzawi, a Libyan detainee at Guantánamo, reports that her client has been infected with AIDS. Mr. al-Ghizzawi explained to his lawyer in a letter that he was told about his infection by a doctor at Guantánamo, adding that he believes that [...]

Two years after being cleared for release from Guantánamo by a military review board, Adel Hassan Hamad, a Sudanese hospital administrator who worked for a Saudi charity, and Salim Muhood Adem, who worked with orphans for a Kuwaiti NGO, have been repatriated to the country of their birth, where, as lawyer Clive Stafford Smith explained, [...]

Last Wednesday’s Supreme Court showdown over Guantánamo was billed as “probably the most important habeas corpus case in modern history,” according to Law.com, and “the most important civil liberties case of the past 50 years,” according to the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR). This was no understatement. At stake was the validity of the administration’s [...]

As the Supreme Court prepares once more to consider whether the detainees at Guantánamo have habeas corpus rights –- a cornerstone of civilization and a principle established 800 years ago in England, giving prisoners the right to challenge the basis of their detention in court –- Andy Worthington looks at the key arguments in what [...]

Andy Worthington, author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison, explains why a new statement by Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham, the Guantánamo whistleblower, is more significant than Guantánamo’s leaked operating manual. The media –- both mainstream outlets and the blogosphere –- have spent the last week consumed by [...]

Speaking to journalists last week, Navy Capt. Theodore Fessel Jr., the chief representative at Guantánamo for the Pentagon’s Office of Administrative Review of Detained Enemy Combatants (OARDEC), which oversees the tribunals and review boards convened to assess the detainees’ status, hinted that the authorities had “begun seeking new or previously overlooked evidence that may warrant [...]

The saga of the Guantánamo whistleblowers, which sprang to life in June, but then, like so many news stories, was considered done and dusted by a media hungry for fresh meat, resurfaced unexpectedly last week when an Army Major filed an affidavit in the case of Adel Hamad, a Sudanese detainee who was kidnapped in [...]

Anyone dropping in on the US Senate from outer space would be confused to discover that, on Wednesday, an amendment to the Defense Authorization Bill, aimed at restoring habeas corpus rights to the detainees in Guantánamo –- rights which were granted by the Supreme Court in 2004, but which were taken away last fall in [...]