Salim Hamdan

As a recent decision by a military judge makes clear, the wheels of justice revolve in slow motion at Guantánamo, as those responsible for the exercise of political and judicial processes — the executive, Congress and the Supreme Court — engage in prolonged tussles that last for years. Andy Worthington, author of The Guantánamo Files: […]

Anyone who has kept half an eye on the proceedings at the Military Commissions in Guantánamo — the unique system of trials for “terror suspects” that was conceived in the wake of the 9/11 attacks by Vice President Dick Cheney and his close advisers — will be aware that their progress has been faltering at […]

From the moment that the Toronto Star unleashed a gruesome, and previously unpublished photo of the chest wounds sustained by 15-year old Omar Khadr, after a firefight in Afghanistan in July 2002, it was clear that the resumption of Khadr’s pre-trial hearing at Guantánamo last week would once more raise murky issues of torture and […]

This has been another terrible week for Guantánamo’s Military Commissions, established by Dick Cheney and his close advisors in November 2001 to try, convict and execute those responsible for 9/11 through a novel process so far removed from the US court system and the military’s own judicial procedures that the tainted fruit of torture would […]

As pre-trial hearings take place in the US prison complex at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, Andy Worthington, author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison, looks at the stories of the three defendants whose cases are being heard this week and next –- two alleged “child soldiers,” and a […]

On Monday, just three weeks away from Guantánamo’s sixth anniversary, military judge Captain Keith Allred dealt what appeared to be a severe blow to the legitimacy of the Military Commissions –- the unprecedented trial system established to try Guantánamo detainees for war crimes –- by ruling that he would undertake a review to determine whether […]

The Military Commissions –- the Stalinesque show trials dreamt up in November 2001 by Dick Cheney and his cabal of close advisors, including David Addington –- have been dogged by controversy ever since. Killed off by the Supreme Court in June 2006, brought back to life through the ghoulish Military Commissions Act a few months […]

On Friday, in a second legal development dealing with Guantánamo (see here for the first), the administration attempted to revive its beleaguered –- and much reviled –- system of Military Commissions. Just as the tribunals at Guantánamo –- the Combatant Status Review Tribunals –- have been condemned for providing a pale and unjust imitation of […]

In the Miami Herald, veteran Gitmo-watcher Carol Rosenberg is the first to report on the appointment of a successor to Navy Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, the Judge Advocate’s General (JAG) lawyer, who fought a long, principled, and career-destroying battle to defend his client, Salim Hamdan, a 36-year old Yemeni who had been one of Osama […]

On Friday, in two separate decisions, judges in the United States delivered stinging rebukes to the administration regarding its policies of holding around 300 prisoners in Guantánamo without charge or trial, and its plans to try around 80 other prisoners before Military Commissions, the widely-reviled trial system for terror suspects, which permit the use of […]