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A federal judge has ordered the release of a Guantanamo Bay prisoner suffering from severe mental illness who has been spent much of his time at a psychiatric ward on the U.S. naval base since he arrived more than 11 years ago. U.S. officials say Idris, who is in his 50s, was captured with al-Qaeda fighters in 2001 by Pakistani forces while attempting to cross the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

U.S. military officials at the Guantánamo Bay prison announced Monday that they will stop releasing daily hunger strike updates because they say the number of protesters has steadily dropped to a core group of 19 defiant prisoners. For months, the U.S. military has issued reports each day listing the number of hunger strikers during one of the most sustained protests at the prison on the U.S. naval base in Cuba. The prison opened in January 2002 to hold “enemy combatants” in the early days of the war in Afghanistan. …

Two Algerian prisoners at the US military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay have been transferred back to their homeland. Nabil Said Hadjarab and Mutia Sadiq Ahmad Sayyab were handed to the government of Algeria under a deal announced last month as part of efforts to eventually close the "war on terror" military prison.

<p>Oh, pity poor 9/11 defendant Ramzi Binalshibh. The man implicated in the deaths of nearly 3,000 Americans and currently imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay angrily told a judge that during a pre-trial hearing that "there are big problems with the food that was provided — it is a form of psychological torture." Binalshibh's specific complaint? That the government was withholding "condiments such as olives and honey." Binalshibh is accused of having helped finance the 9/11 attackers as well as coordinating their flight training.</p>

Guantanamo has devastated our reputation as a champion of human rights, weakened our international partnerships and remains a powerful recruiting tool for terrorists. Military personnel at Guantanamo face challenging conditions but operate with professionalism and dedication. It is not our military that has failed; it is our policymakers.

A U.S. citizen and a foreign national were charged in federal court in Miami on Tuesday with providing financing and recruits to al Qaeda and other foreign terrorist organizations fighting in Syria and other places. Gufran Ahmed Kauser Mohammed, a 30-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen born in India, and Mohamed Hussein Said, a 25-year-old Kenyan, were arraigned on a 15-count indictment charging them with links to three U.S.-designated terrorist organizations that have operated in Iraq, Syria and Somalia. Both men, who were arrested in Saudi Arabia and turned over to U.S. custody last week, pleaded not guilty and were ordered held...

Big headlines last Friday, as President Obama planned, for his news conference announcement. He was naming "a high-level group of outside experts" to probe the nation's entire intelligence apparatus for abuses to boost transparency and reassure Americans worried about their civil freedoms in a new era of vast government surveillance technology. Obama said he himself was absolutely confident no abuses exist. But fears had been stoked by the Snowden leaks and revelations of the immense scope of NSA snooping on civilian society in the name of fighting terrorism. "It’s not enough for me, as President, to have confidence in these...

Sen. Rand Paul renews fight over indefinite detention of US citizens The Hill Nov. 25, 2012 Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is bringing a new — and more aggressive — approach to a longstanding debate over the Defense authorization bill, threatening to filibuster the bill to get a vote on his amendment limiting indefinite detention. Paul’s amendment takes a new tack to curb the military’s ability to indefinitely detain U.S. citizens suspected of terrorism by affirming they have the right to a speedy trial by jury under the Sixth Amendment. His push to change the indefinite detention laws for U.S. citizens...

Guards were preparing to serve the first in a series of special meals Wednesday to prisoners at Guantánamo Bay to mark the end of the Muslim holy period of Ramadan, which this year brought a lull in a long-running hunger strike. The military planned to serve lamb, bread, dates and honey as the last daylight fasting period of Ramadan ends, followed by three traditional holiday dinners on Thursday, said a spokesman for the prison, Navy Capt. Robert Durand. There will also be a special hour-long prayer for the holiday known as Eid al-Fitr in addition to the five daily prayers....

New report: Gitmo costs U.S. $2.7 million per prisoner William Holt 2 hours ago Barack Obama The United States government spends about $2.7 million per prisoner per year to operate the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba, the Washington Post reports. That estimate comes from a recent study by the Miami Herald’s Carol Rosenberg, who has covered Gitmo since 2002. According to Rosenberg, the U.S. will spend $454 million this year to maintain the facility and pay troop salaries, among other fees — a little under half a billion dollars. With only 166 prisoners, that works out to an annual...

U.S. Senate committee OKs Thomson prison funding By A U.S. Senate committee has approved funding to re-open the prison in Thomson as a federal facility. Sen. Dick Durbin is a member of the Appropriations Committee that approved $166 million Thursday to reactivate Thomson and two other prisons, buy 1,000 prison beds from private contractors and expand a program to reduce recidivism. The state opened the prison in northwestern Illinois in 2001 but never fully opened it because of budget problems. The federal government bought it for $165 million last fall. Durbin and Rep. Cheri Bustos (BOO’-stohs) — both Illinois Democrats...

"It is not clear whether the televisions are for the 166 terrorist detainees housed at the prison, but the Guantanamo Bay facility does have a “Detainee Library” that offers 2,415 DVDs for inmates to check out."

The Yemen-based branch of al-Qaida confirmed on Wednesday that the group's No. 2 figure, a former Guantanamo Bay prisoner, was killed in a U.S. drone strike.

A U.S. appeals court on Wednesday reinstated a military method for searching Guantanamo Bay detainees. The searches, initiated in the last few months, included frisking of the groin and anal areas before detainees are taken from their cells to meetings or to phone calls with their lawyers, and after they return. Lawyers for Guantanamo prisoners say some detainees found the new searches so disrespectful toward their religion that they choose to forgo talking to their lawyers to avoid them. In a one-sentence order, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit stayed a ruling by U.S. District...

How the United States Takes Care of German Prisoners (June, 1918)A VISITOR TO THE PRISON CAMP AT FORT McPHERSON, GEORGIA, DESCRIBES THE COMFORTABLE LIFE LED BY THE INMATES By Reuben A. Lewis WHAT sort of treatment will American soldiers receive when the fortunes of war leave them prisoners in German hands? The question is one that may come to have a very poignant interest as the great struggle goes on; and we shall have the right to ask it in a most emphatic manner. For, in championing the cause of humanity, we are fighting with clean hands. We already have...

Trays of halal meat for detainee meals are storedin a refrigeration unit at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay.BOB STRONG/REUTERS Remember when Christopher Hitchens and "Mancow" requested to be waterboarded so that they could experience how unpleasant the whole sensation is? Well, enter Actor and rapper Mos Def: Rapper Mos Def, now known as Yasiin Bey, has been filmed being force fed to highlight the treatment of inmates Guantanamo Bay. Made in conjunction with human rights group Reprieve, the video is directed by Bafta award-winning film-maker Asif Kapadia and is released to coincide with build-up to the Islamic holy...

World Crisis Alert: Guantanamo Bay detainees don't want to eat. Muslim rapper Yasiin "Mos Def" Bey is so worked up about their appetite plight that he videotaped himself being force-fed to build support for closing Gitmo. Cry me a river. This latest round of hunger strikes isn't an international human rights tragedy. It's another manipulative act of Jihad Theater. Have you forgotten? Calculated Gitmo fabulism goes back to 2005, when Newsweek fell for false rumors that U.S. soldiers "flushed" the Koran down a toilet at the military detention facility in Cuba. Gullible media reports of "desecration" provided a handy pretext...

In a video made with United Kingdom-based human rights group Reprieve, Yasiin Bey, the actor/rapper formerly known as Mos Def, volunteered to have himself force-fed in the same manner as a procedure reportedly used on hunger-striking Guantanamo detainees. The graphic video, which was posted by the Guardian Monday, was directed by Asif Kapadia and based on a leaked government document outlining the "Standard Operating Procedure" for the "medical management of detainees on hunger strike." [Editor's Note: Video is graphic in nature. Viewer discretion is advised.] [video] In the video, Bey is restrained while two volunteer doctors lodge a tube up...

The Pentagon has wonderful news for the inmates at Guantanamo who are refusing to eat: It will not infringe on their religious beliefs by force-feeding them during the daylight hours of the upcoming holy month. Their right to decline food will be scrupulously respected until nightfall. "We understand that observing the daytime fast and taking nothing by mouth or vein is an essential component of Muslim observance of Ramadan," a prison spokesman said. "And for those detainees on hunger strike we will ensure that our preservation of life through enteral feeding does not violate the tenets of their faith." Come...

Americans are supposed to have sympathy for the accused terrorist detainees now on hunger strike to protest supposedly cruel conditions at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. “I don’t want these individuals to die,” President Obama recently lamented, adding he intends to close Gitmo and transfer the detainees to U.S. prisons. But just a few years ago, detainees got so plump from overeating hummus and other dishes from the camp’s Islamically correct menu that commanders specially ordered treadmills to help them lose weight. Then they ordered them again — because they weren’t made by Muslims.