Omar Khadr

If President Obama is serious about ever closing Guantánamo, and bringing justice to any of the 239 men still held there, the chaotic events on Monday, in the first hearing of the Military Commission trial system since the President’s four-month freeze on proceedings expired, should persuade him that all that awaits him, if he proceeds [...]

In a development that will only fuel suspicions that the Obama administration is indeed planning to revive the Bush administration’s much-criticized system of trials by Military Commission at Guantánamo (as flagged up by defense secretary Robert Gates in testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee last week), I have just learned that the Commissions’ Chief Prosecutor, [...]

The British human rights group Cageprisoners has just published a fascinating interview with Binyam Mohamed, the British resident, subjected to “extraordinary rendition” and torture, who was freed from Guantánamo on February 23. I have covered Binyam’s story in great depth over the last few years (see the list of articles at the end of this [...]

Two separate universes were in evidence on Tuesday. In the world of Barack Obama, the sense of change, the optimism and the intelligence were palpable, as two million Americans from every part of the United States — and numerous visitors from around the world — flocked to Washington D.C. to watch his inauguration as the [...]

On Monday, as Barack Obama prepared for his inauguration, and even though George W. Bush had already made his last speech to the nation, hearings resumed at Guantánamo in the cases of a number of prisoners facing trial by Military Commission, the novel and much-criticized system of trials for terror suspects that was conceived by [...]

With less than two weeks until the Bush administration leaves office, Andy Worthington, author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison, reports on developments — or the lack of them — during the last month in the Military Commissions, the much-criticized trial system for “terror suspects” that was [...]

According to the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (on the involvement of children in armed conflict), to which the United States has been a signatory since January 23, 2003, juvenile prisoners — those under the age of 18 when their alleged crimes took place — “require special protection.” [...]

On Sunday, the Pentagon admitted that 12 juveniles — those under the age of 18 at the time their alleged crimes took place — have been held at Guantánamo Bay (as opposed to the figure of eight that was submitted to the UN in May). But a RAW STORY count, drawn from the Pentagon’s own [...]

As Barack Obama and his transition team begin looking at ways to fulfill the President-Elect’s pledge to close Guantánamo, Andy Worthington, author of The Guantánamo Files, recalls that Barack Obama also promised to “reject the Military Commissions Act” (the legislation that revived the system of “terror trials” conjured up in the Office of Vice President [...]

Hardly a day goes by without some extraordinary news from the Military Commissions, the system of “terror trials” conceived in the Office of the Vice President in November 2001, and their days now seem to be as numbered as those of the Bush administration itself.
Following the outspoken resignation of former prosecutor Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld [...]