In the last three weeks, six Periodic Review Boards have taken place at Guantánamo, and I’ll be writing about them in a number of articles this week and next, beginning with two reviews that took place, on August 9 and 11, for two Malaysian “high-value detainees,” Mohd Farik bin Amin aka Zubair (ISN 10021), seized in Bangkok, Thailand in June 2003, and Mohammed Bashir bin Lap aka Lillie (ISN 10022). Bin Amin was seized in Bangkok in June 2003, followed in August 2003 by bin Lap and Hambali, another “high-value detainee” whose PRB took place on August 18 (which I’ll be writing about soon).

The PRBs, which include representatives of the Departments of State, Defense, Justice and Homeland Security, as well as the office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were set up in 2013 to review the cases of all the prisoners not already approved for release and not facing trials, and, since November 2013, have been reviewing the cases of 64 men, with, to date, recommendations that 33 should be released, while 19 should continue to be held. See my definitive Periodic Review Board list for details.

41 of these 64 men were recommended for ongoing imprisonment without charge or trial by a previous review process (2009’s Guantánamo Review Task Force), on the basis that they were allegedly “too dangerous to release,” although the authorities conceded that insufficient evidence existed to put them on trial, while the 23 others were recommended for trials, until the basis for prosecutions largely collapsed after judges in Washington, D.C. struck down some of the few convictions achieved in the much-criticized military commission trial system, on the basis that the war crimes in question had actually been invented by Congress and had no legitimacy. Read the rest of this entry »