Kuwaitis in Guantanamo

For a crucial update to this article, please see “A Truly Shocking Guantánamo Story: Judge Confirms That An Innocent Man Was Tortured To Make False Confessions.” Yesterday, US District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly struck another decisive blow to the credibility of the Bush administration’s detention policies at Guantánamo (and the continuation of those same policies […]

A month ago, rulings made by District Court judges in the habeas corpus appeals of prisoners held at Guantánamo seemed, for the most part, to confirm that the courts were uniquely placed to deliver justice to the prisoners after their long years of imprisonment, largely without charge or trial. Even more crucially, the judges’ rulings […]

In the first part of this three-part series examining the Guantánamo prisoners’ attempts to secure their release via the US courts, Andy Worthington, author of The Guantánamo Files, looked at how, after the Supreme Court’s ruling, in June 2008, that the prisoners had constitutionally guaranteed habeas corpus rights, the Bush administration lost 23 of the […]

In the first part of this three-part series examining the Guantánamo prisoners’ attempts to secure their release via the US courts, Andy Worthington, author of The Guantánamo Files, examined the Bush administration’s record in the seven months after the Supreme Court’s ruling, in June 2008, that the prisoners had constitutionally guaranteed habeas corpus rights, and […]

By sheer coincidence, I had just been alerted to the publication of a number of documents relating to the ongoing habeas corpus cases of the Guantánamo prisoners last Thursday, and was reading, with mounting disbelief, the government’s supposed case against Khalid al-Mutairi (PDF), one of the last four Kuwaiti prisoners, when I received an email […]

According to the latest reports, Barack Obama is already discussing how to close Guantánamo, but in the run-up to the Presidential elections, the Bush administration demonstrated its unwillingness to acknowledge a bitter reality — that its system of trials for “terror suspects” are a failed and thoroughly discredited project — by filing charges against two […]

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 […]

Rather horribly, it seems, a former Guantánamo prisoner, Abdullah al-Ajmi, a Kuwaiti who was repatriated in November 2005 and who later married and had a child, blew himself up as a suicide bomber in Mosul, Iraq, last month. According to the US military, al-Ajmi was one of three suicide bombers responsible for killing seven members […]

This article, following on from yesterday’s article Guantánamo and the Supreme Court: the most important habeas corpus case in modern history, which analyzed the legal history of the detainees’ demands for habeas corpus rights, looks at the stories of the lead Petitioners in the cases that will be considered by the Supreme Court today. It’s […]