Guantanamo whistleblowers

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 the [...]

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 [...]