Kuwaitis in Guantanamo

Yesterday was the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, established by the United Nations General Assembly in December 1997, to mark the ratification of the UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment on June 26, 1987. As UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan explained on June 26, 1998 (when […]

For the prisoners in Guantánamo, countless obstacles have been raised to prevent them from ever being freed. When the Supreme Court granted the prisoners habeas corpus rights in June 2004, for example, the Bush administration responded by convening, instead, military tribunals whose main purpose was to justify their ongoing detention on the basis of classified […]

Please support my work! NOTE: This list has now been superseded by a dedicated page, “Guantánamo Habeas Results: The Definitive List,” which will be used to monitor the ongoing habeas rulings. As part of my series, “Guantánamo Habeas Week” (introduced here, and expanded, on April 23, to become “Guantánamo Habeas Fortnight”), it’s my pleasure to […]

One of the heroes of the Military Commissions at Guantánamo is Lt. Col. Barry Wingard, who has served for 26 years in the US military, works as a public defender in Pittsburgh, and is also a Judge Advocate General (JAG) in the Air Force. A veteran of the conflicts in Bosnia and Iraq, he was […]

With a stunning lack of sensitivity, Barack Obama’s Guantánamo Task Force chose the anniversary of the President’s failed promise to close the prison to announce its conclusions regarding the eventual fate of the 196 prisoners who are still held, stating, with no trace of irony, that “nearly 50” of the men “should be held indefinitely […]

The long ordeal of Fouad al-Rabiah, an innocent man and a 50-year old father of four, who had been in US custody for almost exactly eight years, finally came to an end on Wednesday, when he was flown back to his homeland of Kuwait from Guantánamo, where he had spent the majority of those lost […]

At Guantánamo, as was recently revealed in the ruling of a District Court judge in the habeas corpus petition of one of the remaining 222 prisoners, the authorities’ view about the prisoners, back in 2003 or 2004, was that “there is no innocent person here.” The man who spoke these words was an unidentified senior […]

So it’s good news — of a sort — from Guantánamo, as two more prisoners were released on Thursday. The first is Khalid al-Mutairi, a Kuwaiti whose habeas corpus petition was granted by District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly two months ago, after she ruled decisively that “there is nothing in the record beyond speculation” that […]

Last week, the Obama administration finally admitted that it might not be possible to close Guantánamo by the President’s self-imposed deadline of January 22, 2010, when defense secretary Robert Gates told ABC News’ “This Week” that it was “going to be tough” to meet the deadline. The announcement followed what appeared to be strategic leaks […]

In four years of researching and writing about Guantánamo, I have become used to uncovering shocking information, but for sheer cynicism, I am struggling to think of anything that compares to the revelations contained in the unclassified ruling in the habeas corpus petition of Fouad al-Rabiah, a Kuwaiti prisoner whose release was ordered last week […]