Military Commissions

In the long years of the Bush administration’s “War on Terror” — perpetuated, lamentably, by President Obama — in which soldiers are terrorists, and terrorists are “warriors,” and both of these parties are “enemy combatants” or “alien unprivileged enemy belligerents,” those called upon to play a part in this dangerous aberration from international norms have [...]

Since May 2009, when President Obama first bowed to Republican pressure on national security issues, and abandoned a plan by White House Counsel Greg Craig to rehouse on the US mainland a couple of cleared prisoners at Guantánamo who were at risk of torture if repatriated, it has been apparent that no principles are sufficiently [...]

Every now and then, someone in the mainstream media cuts through the general — and shameful — indifference about Guantánamo, publishing a powerful story that should change hearts and minds. This is the case with a feature in the latest issue of GQ by Michael Paterniti about one of the more notorious cases of cruelty [...]

Those of us who have been studying Guantánamo closely were not surprised when, on March 7, President Obama announced that he was lifting a ban on trials by Military Commission at Guantánamo, which he imposed on his first day in office in January 2009, and also issued an executive order establishing a periodic review of [...]

Since Guantánamo opened on January 11, 2002, Carol Rosenberg of the Miami Herald has made it her beat. I may have built up a comprehenive knowledge of who is in Guantánamo by studying all the available documents and talking to ex-prisoners, gaining my greatest accolade from former prisoner Omar Deghayes, who has explained that I [...]

On February 10, it was reported that Ibrahim al-Qosi, a 50-year old Sudanese prisoner in Guantánamo who accepted a plea deal in his trial by Military Commission last July, had the 14-year sentence that was subsequently handed down by a military jury reduced to two years by Retired Vice Adm. Bruce MacDonald, the Convening Authority [...]

I recently cross-posted a fascinating article by my friend and colleague Jason Leopold, explaining how he had approached former Guantánamo prisoner David Hicks for an interview, after reading his autobiography, Guantánamo: My Journey, and how the encounter had challenged and affected him deeply. As a follow-up, I’m now cross-posting the full interview below, in which [...]

My friend and colleague Jason Leopold is a fascinating man, as anyone who has read his no-holds-barred confessional, News Junkie, can attest. In that book, Jason described the drug hell he inhabited, haunted by demons while striving to be a fabulously well-known and significant investigative reporter, how his life came crashing down after he achieved [...]

At Guantánamo on Tuesday, following hints last week, Noor Uthman Muhammed, a Sudanese prisoner in his 40s, and formerly a trainer at the Khaldan training camp in Afghanistan, accepted a plea deal in his trial by Military Commission. He is only the sixth prisoner convicted since the Commissions were dragged from the grave by Dick [...]

Last Friday, Ken Ota of the newspaper Revolution asked me to do a phone interview to discuss the recent announcement that President Obama was planning a new series of trials by Military Commission at Guantánamo, to explain the significance of this announcement, and to run through the largely shambolic history of the Commissions since their [...]