My Visit With One of the Forgotten Prisoners of Guantánamo

Last month, I took my first trip to the US military detention camp at Guantánamo Bay to visit Sufyian Barhoumi. As a military handler drove me and my colleagues from the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) down the winding road from the ferry landing to the camp, I marveled at the lush green hills and sparkling blue water around us. The serenely beautiful setting stands in stark contrast to the detention camp, which is jarringly ugly: Endless rolls of rusty barbed wire, layers of fencing enmeshed with opaque green cloth, cages with peeling paint, gravel pits where grass should be. A warehouse to store men we don’t know what to do with.

“I Want Americans to Know That Guantánamo Happened Not to Monsters, but to Men”

Lakhdar Boumediene and Mustafa Ait Idir were part of the “Algerian Six,” a group of men rounded up in Bosnia on the unproven claim they had plotted to bomb the American Embassy in Sarajevo. The two were beaten, shackled, blindfolded, and transferred in January 2002 to the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base—where they languished for seven years without charges under torturous conditions. Boumediene went on a 28-month hunger strike and was force-fed through a broken nose. The strike, he told me, “was the only thing I could control. Going hungry was hard, but it would have been harder to do nothing at all.”

U.S. To Transfer 4 Guantanamo Bay Detainees To Saudi Arabia

WASHINGTON, Jan 4 (Reuters) - The United States will transfer four detainees to Saudi Arabia from the Guantanamo Bay military prison in the next 24 hours, U.S. officials said on Wednesday, in President Barack Obama’s final push to shrink the inmate population there despite pressure from the president-elect to halt such releases.

It will be the first in Obama’s final flurry of transfers aimed at sending as many as 19 prisoners to at least four countries, including Italy, Oman and the United Arab Emirates, before Donald Trump is sworn in on Jan. 20.

Prisoner’s Letters Document Tragedy and Hope Inside Guantanamo

On April 16th, the Department of Defense issued a short press release announcing that Mohammed al-Hamiri, a Yemeni citizen held at Guantanamo Bay, had been transferred for release. Hamiri had been incarcerated at Guantanamo since 2002, when he was detained by American forces. First taken into custody at the age of 19, Hamiri spent more than a third of his life at the prison. During that time, he was never charged with any crime.

Obama’s Plan to Close Guantánamo Would Establish Indefinite Detention on U.S. Soil

SAYING THAT THE PRISON at Guantánamo Bay “undermines our standing in the world,” President Barack Obama today announced a detailed plan to close the facility, 14 years after it was first inaugurated by President George W. Bush. Among other measures, the plan calls for a number of Guantánamo prisoners to be transferred into permanent custody in the United States. This component of the government’s plan has alarmed many legal experts, who say that it would create a dangerous precedent for indefinite detention without trial in the United States.

Without Ending Immoral and Illegal Detention, Obama’s Gitmo Plan Is Just Empty Talk

President Barack Obama on Tuesday outlined his long-awaited plan to close the Guantánamo Bay military detention center in Cuba, but rights groups immediately condemned the proposal as a series of “talking points” rather than any real effort to end the indefinite detention of prisoners and restore justice.

“The infamy of Guantánamo has never been just its location, but rather its immoral and illegal regime of indefinite detention,” said the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), which represents a number of Guantánamo detainees. “Closing Guantánamo in any meaningful sense means putting an end to that practice.”

Mourad Benchellali, Former Gitmo Prisoner, Detained At Toronto Airport

TORONTO — A former Guantanamo Bay prisoner turned peace activist who was detained on arrival in Canada as an apparent national security threat will likely be allowed to return to France, his lawyer said Wednesday.

Mourad Benchellali, of Lyon, was being held as a maximum security prisoner after agents refused to allow him to withdraw his request to enter Canada and go home voluntarily.

Guantánamo Is Leaving Obama With Choices, Neither of Them Simple

As President Obama approaches his final year in power, a political impasse over the Guantánamo prison appears increasingly likely to force him to choose between two politically unsavory options: Invoke executive power to relocate the remaining detainees in defiance of a statute, or allow history to say he never fulfilled his promise to shutter the prison.

While the administration is slowly whittling down the population of those deemed a lower risk — including the transfer Friday of a prominent prisoner, Shaker Aamer, to Britain — its plan also calls for moving at least five dozen higher-level detainees to a prison on domestic soil. But statute bars that move, and the Republican-controlled Congress has shown little interest in revoking it. Mr. Obama vetoed a defense bill on Oct. 22 in part because it kept the restriction.

What Are the US's Real Plans for Guantánamo?

Just as the United States and Cuba open diplomatic relations, the Obama administration has simultaneously unveiled a plan to shut down Guantánamo. President Obama's plan to close Guantánamo does not entail shutting down the entire base or rejecting the policies of indefinite detention and military commissions. While marketed as "change," the United States' plan to shut down the Guantánamo prison - and even its new diplomatic rapprochement with Cuba - are a continuation of US hegemony in the region.

In July, the Obama administration announced its plan for closing the Guantánamo Bay detention facility. At the Aspen Security Forum, Lisa Monaco, assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, said that of the current 116 detainees, some will be transferred to a prison somewhere in the United States. The 52 who are eligible for transfer will be released to other countries. Those considered too difficult to prosecute but "too dangerous to release" will be subject to periodic review boards to determine whether they are fit for release.

The Secrecy of Torture: What Happens When Survivors' Memories Are "Declassified"?

Among the numerous bizarre facets of the Guantánamo Bay prison saga is the classification of people's memories as state secrets. For years, Guantánamo prisoners who were held in CIA secret prisons known as "black sites" could not publicly discuss their experiences and memories of their captivity. The US government argues that, in doing so, the prisoners would reveal classified information about the CIA's torture program, such as the names of interrogators, the locations of facilities and the torture techniques that were used.

Tom Cotton Wants To Punish Countries That Take Guantanamo Prisoners -- Including U.S. Allies

WASHINGTON -- Days after touring the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark). introduced legislation that would likely ensure the prison remains open for future lawmakers to visit as well.

Cotton, apparently unbowed by the outcry over his recent open letter to Iranian leaders, introduced a bill on Wednesday that would cut U.S. funding to countries that receive former Guantanamo detainees who are later suspected of terrorism. He toured the prison March 13 with three other senators.

Obama Regrets Not Closing Guantanamo Prison 'On The First Day'

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama said Wednesday that if he could go back and do his presidency over again, he would have immediately shut down the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

"I think I would have closed Guantanamo on the first day," Obama said to applause at an event in Cleveland, Ohio.

Despite Uptick in Prisoner Release, Injustices Persist at Guantanamo

In the wake of the US Senate's scathing report on the CIA rendition, detention and interrogation (RDI) program, the military commission system is grappling with influence by outside government agencies, calling the entire process into question.

At the end of February, just as the most recent military commission pretrial hearing in the 9/11 case began, US Army military judge Col. James L. Pohl quickly called for recess after defendants claimed they recognized a courtroom translator as a former CIA employee from the secret prisons in which they were detained.

Guantánamo torturer led brutal Chicago regime of shackling and confession

A Chicago detective who led one of the most shocking acts of torture ever conducted at Guantánamo Bay was responsible for implementing a disturbingly similar, years-long regime of brutality to elicit murder confessions from minority Americans.

In a dark foreshadowing of the United States’ post-9/11 descent into torture, a Guardian investigation can reveal that Richard Zuley, a detective on Chicago’s north side from 1977 to 2007, repeatedly engaged in methods of interrogation resulting in at least one wrongful conviction and subsequent cases more recently thrown into doubt following allegations of abuse.

Guantánamo Diary exposes brutality of US rendition and torture

The groundbreaking memoir of a current Guantánamo inmate that lays bare the harrowing details of the US rendition and torture programme from the perspective of one of its victims is to be published next week after a six-year battle for the manuscript to be declassified.

Guantánamo Diary, the first book written by a still imprisoned detainee, is being published in 20 countries and has been serialised by the Guardian amid renewed calls by civil liberty campaigners for its author’s release.

Judge Denies DOJ's 'Deeply Troubling' Request To Close Gitmo Force-Feeding Hearing

WASHINGTON -- A federal judge in Washington, D.C., on Thursday denied the federal government's request to seal the courtroom for a hearing on the force-feeding of a detainee on hunger strike at the U.S. military detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler ruled Thursday that the public should be allowed to witness arguments in the case, specifically pointing out that Justice Department attorneys waited "less than two weeks prior to the start of the long-scheduled hearing" to make their request.

FBI Infiltration Of Gitmo Defense Team Tosses 9/11 Trial Into Disarray

FORT MEADE, Md. -- An FBI investigation into the legal team representing Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed further delayed the military trial of him and his co-defendants in Guantanamo Bay on Thursday.

The full nature and scope of the FBI's investigation is not clear. A security contractor working for the defense team, however, did reportedly talk to FBI agents about Mohammed's manifesto, which was published by The Huffington Post in collaboration with Britain's Channel 4 News. The contractor signed an agreement with the FBI after two agents visited his home nearly two weeks ago, which one defense attorney described as an attempt to "introduce a Trojan Horse behind the wall of attorney-client privilege."

Guantanamo Bay Prisoner Files Historic Lawsuit Against Obama Over Force-Feeding

Emad Abdullah Hassan, a Yemeni inmate at Guantanamo Bay, introduced a historic lawsuit on Tuesday against the U.S. military prison's force-feeding of detainees on hunger strikes.

The case marks the first legal challenge requiring a federal judge to oversee an inmate's testimony on Guantanamo prison conditions.

Hassan, who has reportedly engaged in a continuous hunger strike since 2007, was turned over to the U.S. by Pakistani security forces for suspected affiliation with armed groups, but was cleared for release in 2009.

First Guantanamo Commander Calls It ‘A Prison That Should Never Have Been Opened’

A top military commander who established the Guantánamo Bay prison is now asking lawmakers to close the now notorious facility once and for all. In an editorial in the Detroit Free Press Thursday, Major General Michael Lehnert bluntly called Guantánamo “a prison that should never have been opened.”

The general recounted how he and his task force were told shortly after the September 11 attacks that the prisoners at Guantánamo were “the worst of the worst.” However, he quickly realized that this was not the case.

The General Who Opened Gitmo Says It Should Be Shut Down

MIAMI, Dec 12 (Reuters) - The U.S. general who opened the Guantanamo detention camp said Thursday it was a mistake and should be shut down because "it validates every negative perception of the United States."

"In retrospect, the entire detention and interrogation strategy was wrong," Marine Major General Michael Lehnert wrote in a column published in the Detroit Free Press.