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he Taliban's new top operations officer in southern Afghanistan had been a prisoner at the Guantanamo Bay detention center, the latest example of a freed detainee who took a militant leadership role and a potential complication for the Obama administration's efforts to close the prison. U.S. authorities handed over the detainee to the Afghan government, which in turn released him, according to Pentagon and CIA officials. Abdullah Ghulam Rasoul, formerly Guantanamo prisoner No. 008, was among 13 Afghan prisoners released to the Afghan government in December 2007. Rasoul is now known as Mullah Abdullah Zakir, a nom de guerre that...

GENEVA -- A U.N. human rights expert applauded the Obama administration Tuesday for pledging to turn a page in U.S. history by closing the Guantanamo Bay prison, but said the full extent of abuse at the camp needs to be revealed. "Before a page can be turned, we have to know what's on it in order to move forward," said Martin Scheinin, who reports to the United Nations on human rights in the international war on terror. Scheinin asked to be allowed into the camp to conduct private interviews with the remaining detainees. The Finnish law professor previously visited Guantanamo...

Just in case anyone had any doubt, the Gitmo detainees held on charges relating to 9/11 want everyone to know that the US made no mistake in keeping them locked up for the last seven years. In fact, not only have they confessed to their involvement during CIA questioning, they have just issued a press release bragging about it:

Military Families United and 9/11 Families Respond To 9/11 Terrorists ConfessionWashington, DC, March 10, 2009 – Today, Military Families United joined with 9/11 Families for a Safe and Strong America to release the following statement in response to the “9/11 Shura Council” letter announcing their responsibility and pride for their horrific actions on September 11, 2001. The document titled “The Islamic Response to the Government’s Nine Accusations,” was authored by five current detainees at Guantánamo Bay charged with planning the Sept. 11th attacks. “The brazenness of this letter exemplifies the current threat that the terrorists at Guantanamo Bay present to...

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – Five men charged in the Sept. 11 attacks mock U.S. authorities and proclaim themselves "terrorists to the bone" in a war crimes court filing released Tuesday. The five Guantanamo prisoners use the six-page document to try to justify the killing of nearly 3,000 people, portraying the attack as a response to U.S. actions in Israel, Iraq and elsewhere that is supported by their Muslim faith. "We fight you over defending Muslims, their land, their holy sites, and their religion as a whole," they write in the document, which was submitted to the Guantanamo war crimes...

Anyone remember 9/11? Anyone remember the World Trade Center?Anyone remember the Pentagon? Anyone remember the innocent aboard those four planes?Someone will have to explain to my family and me what President Barack Obama meant when he said [on February 6, 2009 to 9/11 and U.S.S. Cole families] those at Guantanamo will receive, "Swift and certain justice," why five barbarians were not allowed to plead guilty last year, and why this latest admission of guilt is not reason enough to let them plead guilty immediately at a Military Commission. The New York Times reports: The five detainees at Guantánamo Bay charged...

The five detainees at Guantánamo Bay charged with planning the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks have filed a document with the military commission at the United States naval base there expressing pride at their accomplishment and accepting full responsibility for the killing of nearly 3,000 people....In their filing, the men describe the planning of the Sept. 11 attacks and the killing of Americans as a model of Islamic action, and say the American government’s accusations cause them no shame, according to the excerpts read by the government official.“To us,” the official continued reading, “they are not accusations. To us they...

January 21, 2009,Promising "a new era of openness in our country," President Obama signed executive orders Wednesday relating to ethics guidelines for staff members of his administration. "Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency," Obama said. As his presidency is developing, Obama is making it clear that transparency only involves information that he feels comfortable releasing. Three days later Newsweek reported the imminent release of a report showing that many of the worst terrorist offenders released from Gitmo prison have returned to terrorism. Despite the administration giving promises in the subsequent six weeks, that...

At 12:01 P.M. on January 20, 2009, minutes before Barack Obama was sworn in as president, the first post went up on the Obama White House website. It included a reiteration of a campaign promise Obama repeatedly made: "President Obama has committed to making his administration the most open and transparent in history." Two days later, Obama ordered the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay closed. And two days after that, on January 24, Newsweek's Michael Isikoff wrote about a Pentagon study that will provide an early test of this promise: "The report, which could be released within the next few...

Fadi Al Maqaleh is one of the many "unlawful enemy combatants" being detained by the U.S. military at Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan. He seeks to challenge his detention in a U.S. court, but recently last week the Obama administration argued that he cannot. Adopting one of the Bush administration's controversial terrorist detention policies, President Obama's Justice Department told a federal court that it had no power to hear the case. ... Judge Bates and the human rights lobby had good reason to expect a different approach. Last fall, while the Bush administration was defending its terrorist detention policies in court,...

Terror Trials in U.S. Are A Worry Classified Data Just One Hurdle By Jerry Markon Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, March 6, 2009; Page A04 When suspected al-Qaeda sleeper agent Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri was indicted on criminal charges last week, the Obama administration said it was sending a message that the U.S. courts can deal with terror suspects. But Marri says he was subjected to painful stress positions, extreme sensory deprivation and violent threats and was denied access to lawyers when he was held in a military brig in South Carolina. Those claims are likely to become part of...

Another meeting was held between deputy Foreign Minister Marta Fekszi Horvath and US Ambassador to Hungary April H. Foley on Hungary's possible reception of former Guantanamo prisoners, Jan Krc, press attache of the US Embassy in Budapest, told MTI on Tuesday. Marta Fekszi Horvath told MTI earlier in the day that currently 27 inmates were waiting for reception in Guantanamo, and the maximum Hungary would receive is one or two. Hungary wants to wait and see the results of the negotiations of the European Union's justice and refugee commissioners and the Czech foreign minister in Washington on March 16, on...

Congressman Proposes Bill: No Gitmo Detainee May Set Foot on U.S. Soil Tuesday, March 03, 2009 By Michael W. Chapman, Managing Editor (CNSNews.com) – Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.) has introduced a bill that would prevent any of the detainees in the soon-to-be-closed Guantanamo Bay prison from being allowed into the United States. Back on Jan. 22, President Barack Obama issued an executive order mandating the closure of the prison, known as Gitmo, within 12 months. Gitmo holds nearly 250 enemy combatants from the war on terrorism. With the question in mind of where those prisoners will go, Rep. Shadegg introduced...

A former CIA officer tells Fox News its ridiculous that the Bush administration didn't execute numerous prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, regardless of whether they have had a trial, when it had the chance.

Binyam Mohammed, who planned terrorist attacks on U.S. cities, has been set free... This is a national-security disaster. Up until now, President Obama has voted “present” on enemy combatants. Rather than resolve the dilemma between the law-enforcement approach (which he supported as a candidate) and the law-of-war paradigm, he has said he is studying what to do about the remaining 245 Gitmo detainees. Now, it appears his plan is incalculably worse than either alternative: He is going to let many of them go. Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder now concede that Gitmo is a Grade A detention facility. And...

Only a month into his new administration, and Obama already has two new pen pals, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad and Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, aka Carlos the Jackal. That doesn't include Hamas, with whom Obama's seemingly telepathic connection requires no written communication at all. A thankful Carlos the Jackal sent Obama a note letting him know that jailed terrorists all over the world support Obama's decision to close Gitmo, signed "yours in revolution." Do you hear that whooshing sound? That is America's position of integrity and strength in the world in free-fall.

QURAN & TORTURE - QURANIC TORTURE - ISLAMIC TORTURE   Ideology - Saddam Hussein - Bin Laden - Islamic republic of Iran - Al Qaeda - Taliban - Saudi Arabia - "Palestinians" - Hezbollah - Islamic barabarians on Ilan Halimi  IDEOLOGY   Torture in the Quran and early IslamBy James ArlandsonJanuary 08, 2006 Three main purposes of torture are to punish criminals, to extract information, and to exact revenge. It is at least one of these three purposes that Muhammad, the founder of Islam, had in mind when he tortured two criminals: a treasurer who would not disclose where...

Last Tuesday, a Parisian appeals court overturned the convictions of five former Guantanamo inmates who had been found guilty on terrorist conspiracy charges in 2007. The development should give pause to wonder not only about the wisdom of plans to transfer Guantanamo inmates to European countries (see my earlier New Majority piece here), but more fundamentally about the very idea of treating the "disposition" of Guantanamo inmates as an issue for civilian courts, whether in the US or abroad. The five French Gitmo detainees were repatriated to France in 2004 and 2005. They were tried and convicted on charges of...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder ruled out the use of "waterboarding" as an interrogation technique for terrorism suspects on Monday, calling it a form of torture that the Obama administration could never condone. Holder's declaration underscored President Barack Obama's break with the former Bush administration's anti-terrorist policies, which were condemned by human-rights groups, civil liberties advocates and U.S. allies abroad. "Waterboarding is torture ... My Justice Department will not justify it, will not rationalize it and will not condone it," Holder, who his heading a review of the treatment of terrorism suspects, said in a speech to...

Holder's previous job, after all, was as a senior partner with Covington and Burling - a white-shoe DC law firm that devotes considerable pro bono time to defending the Gitmo detainees. The job paid $2 million a year, and he expects to collect a like amount this year as part of his separation package. As a senior partner, he undoubtedly had significant input on what kind of charity cases his firm picked up. He surely knew that dozens of lawyers from from his firm were among the 500-plus civilian lawyers representing the 244 or so remaining detainees (on top of...