New arrivals at Guantanamo

Carol Rosenberg at the Miami Herald broke the news on Saturday that 12 prisoners have been released from Guantánamo, bringing the total number of prisoners held to 198. The news followed hints in the Washington Post on Friday that six Yemenis and four Afghans were set to leave, but Rosenberg — and the East African [...]

The delivery of a new “terror suspect” to Guantánamo makes five new arrivals since March. Andy Worthington, author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison, looks at their stories, and asks what the administration –- under pressure in the Supreme Court, and with no functioning “war crimes” trials [...]

Demonstrating either that the administration’s left hand does not know what the right hand is doing –- which would be apt –- or, more probably, that they don’t give a damn what anyone thinks, the foolish rumors of Guantánamo’s imminent closure, which I mocked here this morning, were comprehensively swept away a few hours later [...]

It’s been another busy week at Guantánamo. On 4 June, the US administration attempted to hold the first of the reconvened Military Commissions since the farcical ‘trial’ of David Hicks in March, when the Australian Taliban volunteer –- persistently regarded by the administration as one of ‘the worst of the worst’, and one of only [...]