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Far fewer prisoners will be tried in the Guantanamo war crimes tribunals than the Obama administration originally planned after a recent court ruling cast doubt on the viability of some charges, the chief prosecutor for the tribunals told Reuters. U.S. President Barack Obama's Guantanamo Review Task Force had said 36 detainees could be prosecuted, but the tribunal's chief prosecutor put the figure at 20 at most. The drastic scaling back of the prosecutions comes after a U.S. appeals court threw out the conviction of Osama bin Laden's former driver, Salim Hamdan, who was found guilty in 2008 of providing material...

An outspoken nationalist mayor said the Japanese military's forced prostitution of Asian women before and during World War II was necessary to "maintain discipline" in the ranks and provide rest for soldiers who risked their lives in battle. The comments made Monday are already raising ire in neighboring countries that bore the brunt of Japan's wartime aggression and have long complained that Japan has failed to fully atone for wartime atrocities.

The Reset Button We all know that – within the next decade or so – we’re going to have some sort of “Reset” within our society. Most of us hope it will be peaceful but we’re mindful that history indicatest it will be anything but peaceful. Our next hope is that whatever violence occurs will be contained in local, relatively minor conflicts, preferably someplace else. In either case and regardless of which side “wins”, the “Reset” will be catastrophic in its own right. At this point we believe that the conflict – whether violent or not – will be between...

MIAMI (Reuters) - Guantanamo war crimes prosecutions of five prisoners charged with plotting the September 11 hijacked planes attacks will be delayed by two months because of lost files caused by Pentagon computer problems, U.S. military officials said on Wednesday. A weeklong pretrial hearing had been set to begin on Monday in the death penalty case against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the accused mastermind of the attacks, and four alleged co-conspirators. The judge overseeing the case postponed the hearing until June 17 at the request of defense lawyers who said three to four weeks' worth of their confidential work files had...

Last Thursday, President Obama signed a memorandum pledging “up to $10 Million in Commodities and Services from any Agency of the United States Government to the Syrian Opposition Coalition (SOC) and the Syrian Opposition’s Supreme Military Council (SMC).” That money is in addition to the “3,000 tons of weapons…” the Obama Administration was reported, by the UK Telegraph, to have given the Free Syrian Army last year – a group that has outwardly praised Al-Qaeda and is openly allied with Al-Qaeda affiliate organizations in the region – even fighting alongside them in many battles. However, those things may pale in...

In a small house on a hill overlooking Lake Kivu, a young Congolese soldier recounts the crimes he and his comrades committed in Minova a few months ago. "Twenty-five of us gathered together and said we should rape 10 women each, and we did it," he said. "I've raped 53 women. And children of five or six years old. "I didn't rape because I am angry, but because it gave us a lot of pleasure," says 22-year-old Mateso (not his real name). "When we arrived here we met a lot of women. We could do whatever we wanted." ... On...

BELGRADE -- Today marks the 14th anniversary since the start of the NATO bombing campaign against Serbia, i.e. the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SRJ.A heating plant in New Belgrade is seen after being hit by NATO missiles (Tanjug, file) The bombing lasted 79 days and resulted in at least 2,500 deaths and more than 12,500 injuries. The attacks on Serbia started on March 24, 1999, and the last one took place near Kosovska Kamenica on June 10 at 13:15 CET. The death toll among the military and police forces reached 1,008, including 659 soldiers and 349 policemen. Around 6,000...

One of the things that was apparent as I researched the book on Lexington, Virginia and the Civil War, was the mistreatment of Lexington's citizens (Union and Confederate) by Union general David Hunter's army. As my memory was refreshed, I also recalled how a number of Civil War bloggers have downplayed this aspect of the war, even questioning the veracity of some of the claims of Southern civilians; while others took a "so what?" attitude and, in some cases, actually became cheerleaders in justifying such treatment for the "slave-holding rebels." They often sound more like advocates of revenge than they...

- FrontPage Magazine - http://frontpagemag.com - Radical Anti-Israel Advocate Appointed to Genocide Prevention BoardPosted By Arnold Ahlert On April 26, 2012 @ 12:48 am In FrontPage | 10 Comments Last August, president Obama created an Atrocities Prevention Board. “Preventing mass atrocities and genocide is a core national security interest and a core moral responsibility of the United States of America,” stated a presidential directive. He appointed Samantha Power, Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights, as chair. Ms. Power won a Pulitzer Prize for her book, “A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide.” That’s the good news. The...

A British minister on Thursday harshly condemned Israel for its plans to expand construction in East Jerusalem and for conferring university status on a college in the West Bank city of Ariel, employing damning language rarely used by government officials. While international outcries following Israeli announcements of construction beyond the Green Line are a common occurrence, UK Minister for the Middle East Alistair Burt took the unusual step of mentioning the Geneva Conventions, likely implying that settlement expansion is considered a war crime under international law. snip The minister further said that the United Kingdom appreciates the Palestinian leadership’s “measured...

Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip "violated the laws of war" by firing rockets at populated areas in Israel during an eight-day flare up last month, Human Rights Watch said on Monday. Citing Israeli army figures, HRW said that approximately "1,500 rockets were fired at Israel between November 14 and 21," of which "at least 800 struck Israel, including 60 that hit populated areas." These attacks "killed three Israeli civilians, wounded at least 38, several seriously, and destroyed civilian property," HRW said, noting that there were also rockets fired from Gaza "that fell short of their intended targets in Israel...

Despite the carefully constructed myth surrounding Muslim Brotherhood groups in America advanced by a hostile and pro-jihadist media, the truth about these killers is out there. One of the chief al-Badr (Jamai Death squad in 1971) executioners. It has been clearly proved that he himself shot to death 7 teachers of Dhaka university in the killing zones at Mirpur. A certain Mofizzuddin, who drove the vehicle that carried those hapless victims to Mirpur, has clearly identified Ashrafuzzaman as the "chief killer" of the intellectuals. (here) ICNA's NY president, Ashrafuzzaman Khan, is charged in the abductions and deaths of 18 people...

WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court on Friday overturned the terrorism conviction of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a former driver and bodyguard for Osama bin Laden whose case has been one of the most tangled to emerge from the war crimes trials of detainees held by the military at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The court found that Mr. Hamdan’s conviction by a military commission for providing material support for terrorism could not stand because, under the international law of war in effect at the time of his actions, there was no such defined war crime. . .

Beaten to a pile of broken bones, caged, starved and tortured, Eric Lomax was convinced he would never see Britain ever again. He had already experienced the lottery of death among the chain gangs on the Burma-Siam Railway. Now things were even worse. Accused of being a spy, he had been left to the mercies of the Japanese army’s secret police. Among their specialities was what is today known as ‘waterboarding’, when a prisoner undergoes near-drowning. It was surely only a matter of time before he would be put out of his misery.

(TheBlaze/AP) — About three dozen American anti-war activists are headed toward Pakistan’s militant-riddled tribal belt to protest U.S. drone strikes, but a faction of the Taliban has warned that suicide bombers will prevent their demonstration. The anti-war activists– many of whom are from the far left women’s organization Code Pink– are reportedly joined by thousands of Pakistanis in their march, and their motorcade is being led by ex-cricket star turned politician Imran Khan. Militants have dismissed Khan as a mere tool of the West despite his condemnation of the drone strikes, which have killed many Islamist insurgent leaders. Odds are,...

Armed militants have attacked a prison in the Iraqi city of Tikrit, killing at least 12 guards and freeing about 90 inmates, officials have told the BBC. They say a suicide bomber detonated a car bomb at the gates of Tasfirat prison and clashes between militants and security guards followed. Some of the escaped inmates were reportedly al-Qaeda members. The prison was later retaken from the gunmen by security forces, reports say. A curfew is now in place in the area.

BERLIN – Germany has launched a war crimes investigation against an 87-year-old Philadelphia man it accuses of serving as an SS guard at the Auschwitz death camp, The Associated Press has learned, following years of failed U.S. Justice Department efforts to have the man stripped of his American citizenship and deported. Johann "Hans" Breyer, a retired toolmaker, admits he was a guard at Auschwitz during World War II, but told the AP he was stationed outside the facility and had nothing to do with the wholesale slaughter of some 1.5 million Jews and others behind the gates. The special German...

On Wednesday September 12, 2012 blogger Speak With Authority discovered that five days before 9-11, the US State Department sent out a memo announcing no credible security threats against the United States on the anniversary of 9-11. The Overseas Security Advisory Council, who posted the memo, is part of the Bureau of Diplomatic Security under the U.S. Department of State. The OSAC memo said: Terrorism and Important Dates Global 9/6/2012 OSAC currently has no credible information to suggest that al-Qa’ida or any other terrorist group is plotting any kind of attack overseas to coincide with the upcoming anniversary of September...

September 13, 2012 Stunner: ‘The Security People Just All Ran Away’ David Steinberg From The Independent’s breaking story, which focuses on the U.S. failure to heed a 48-hour warning of threats to the embassy: According to security sources the consulate had been given a “health check” in preparation for any violence connected to the 9/11 anniversary. In the event, the perimeter was breached within 15 minutes of an angry crowd starting to attack it at around 10pm on Tuesday night. There was, according to witnesses, little defence put up by the 30 or more local guards meant to protect the...

This report just broke from an Arabic site called “Lebanon News.” The Arabic Lebanon News (Tayyar.org) is the number one Lebanese online news site (ranked number eight of all sites in the nation) and has significant coverage throughout the Arab world. What follows is the rough Google Translation of the site’s report on the Ambassador’s gruesome murder: Sources AFP that “the U.S. ambassador to Libya was raped sexually before killing by gunmen who stormed the embassy building in Benghazi last night to protest against the film is offensive to the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh),” The sources said that “Ambassador was killed...