Military Commissions

On national security issues, there are now two Americas. In the first, which existed from January to May 2009, the rule of law flickered briefly back to life after eight years of the Bush administration. In this first America, President Obama swept into office issuing executive orders promising to close Guantánamo and to uphold the [...]

On Sunday, a military jury at Guantánamo handed down a 40-year sentence to Omar Khadr, the Canadian citizen who was just 15 years old when he was seized after a firefight in Afghanistan. The decision brought to an end a week of hearings that began when Khadr, now 24, accepted a plea deal giving him [...]

Note: A detailed response to the 40-year sentence handed down by Omar Khadr’s military jury on Sunday will be published soon. Although largely symbolic, as Khadr’s plea deal involves an eight-year sentence instead, it nevertheless provided a suitably grim epitaph to a week of events in which the staggering injustices of the Bush administration’s “War [...]

Please support my work! Everything about the last week’s events at Guantánamo has been deeply disturbing. On Monday, in defiance of international obligations requiring the rehabilitation of child prisoners, the US government — under President Obama — fulfilled the deepest wishes of the Bush administration, and persuaded Omar Khadr, the Canadian citizen who was just [...]

This has been a very poor week for American justice. On Monday, the Obama administration secured a plea deal in the trial by Military Commission of Canadian citizen Omar Khadr, who was 15 years old when he was seized by US forces in July 2002. As a result, the United States has become the first [...]

On Thursday, at Guantánamo, Omar Khadr, the Canadian citizen who accepted a plea deal on Monday in his trial by Military Commission, and is now facing sentencing hearings so that a military jury can deliver a sentence in his case, made a statement that, as the Globe and Mail described it, was “the first time [...]

On Monday, after former child prisoner Omar Khadr accepted a plea deal at Guantánamo, nodding his assent to a vast list of crimes (PDF), including membership of al-Qaeda and the “illegal” killing of a US Special Forces soldier, I responded to an urgent request for an interview and spoke to my old friend Scott Horton [...]

Yesterday morning, wearing a dark suit, a white shirt and a dark tie, Omar Khadr, the Canadian citizen who was just 15 years old when he was seized after a firefight in Afghanistan in July 2002, ended an eight-year struggle — first by the Bush administration, and then by the Obama administration — to convict [...]

Exactly two years ago, when I began writing a weekly column for the Future of Freedom Foundation on Guantánamo, torture and other crimes and abuses committed as part of the Bush administration’s “War on Terror,” I focused on the story of Omar Khadr, the Canadian citizen who was just 15 years old when he was [...]

As publicity for the newly-published memoir, Guantánamo: My Journey by the Australian David Hicks, who was held at Guantánamo from January 2002 until April 2007, when he was repatriated after accepting a plea deal at his trial by Military Commission, Hicks’ publishers have released three excerpts from the book to the media. All three excerpts [...]