US enemy combatants

Finally! 2569 days after the prison at Guantánamo opened — but just two days into the new Presidency — Barack Obama signed three executive orders and a Presidential memorandum that mark a decisive break with the “War on Terror” policies of the Bush administration. As he signed the orders, he reiterated a comment that he [...]

In brighter times, before a fog of fear descended on the United States, and the discourse of decent men and women was coarsened by an acceptance of the use of torture as a “no-brainer,” it would have been inconceivable that an American could have been held for seven years without charge or trial on the [...]

As the Washington Post reported yesterday, the US Justice Department has dropped the key allegation against British resident and Guantánamo prisoner Binyam Mohamed — that he was involved, with American citizen Jose Padilla, in a plot to detonate a “dirty bomb” in a US city. For over three years, Binyam’s lawyers at Reprieve, the London-based [...]

Wake up, America! On July 15, the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled by 5 votes to 4 in the case of Al-Marri v. Pucciarelli (PDF) that the President can arrest US citizens and legal residents inside the United States and imprison them indefinitely, without charge or trial, based solely on his assertion [...]

The news that US citizen Jose Padilla has received a prison sentence of 17 years and four months should provoke outrage in the United States, although it is unlikely that there will be much more than a whimper of dissent. The former gang member and convert to Islam –- whose arrest in May 2002 was [...]

As the Fourth Circuit appeals court considers the case of Ali al-Marri, Andy Worthington, author of The Guantánamo Files, investigates the story of the last “enemy combatant” held without trial in Guantánamo’s shadowy American counterpart, the naval brig in Charleston, South Carolina. Torture is defined in many ways. To the US administration, nothing that it [...]

News that Jose Padilla’s lawyers are seeking to hold former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and 59 other US officials responsible for “abusive and unconstitutional tactics used against Mr. Padilla while he was held in military custody as an enemy combatant from 2002 to 2006” has temporarily revived the story of the Chicago-born former gang member [...]

As it seems almost impossible to keep up with the many, hydra-like fronts of the US administration’s “War on Terror,” I was unaware of the story of Benamar Benatta until he wrote to me in response to an article I had written about the Algerian Guantánamo detainee Ahmed Belbacha. An Algerian air force lieutenant, Benatta [...]

In March, when Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), the most high-profile al-Qaeda terror suspect in US custody, “confessed” during his tribunal in Guantánamo that he was the architect of 9/11 and had also played a part in 30 other plots (both real and conceptual), there were mixed responses. No one tried to deny Mohammed’s main claim [...]

There used to be a belief –- no doubt Attorney General Alberto Gonzales would describe it as ‘quaint’ –- that people accused of a crime were presumed innocent until proven guilty. That was in the olden days, however, before the world-changing events of 9/11, after which, according to the powers that the President of the [...]