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GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) – Federal prosecutors in New York, Washington and Virginia are vying to try the accused plotters of the September 11 attacks if their cases are moved into U.S. civilian courts, the chief prosecutor for the Guantanamo war crimes court said. The Obama administration said last week it would decide by November 16 whether to try Guantanamo prisoners in a revised version of the much-maligned military tribunals or in regular civilian courts. Case files for self-described 9-11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four alleged al Qaeda co-conspirators are already under review by U.S. attorneys...

A good friend writes:Eric Holder is a senior partner with Covington & Burling, a prestigious Washington, D.C. law firm, which represents 17 Yemenis currently held at Gitmo. From the C & B website: The firm represents 17 Yemeni nationals and one Pakistani citizen held at Guantánamo Bay. The Supreme Court will soon review the D.C. Circuit’s ruling that ordered the dismissal of a number of habeas petitions filed by Guantánamo detainees; some of our clients are petitioners in the Supreme Court case. We expect to play a substantial role in the briefing. We also plan to petition the Supreme Court...

My Op-ed in The Australian By Leah Farrall, Australia I have an op-ed piece out in today’s edition of The Australian called “Detentions come back to bite” It’s about Guantanamo blowback now having very real strategic consequences: the formation of a new strategy to kidnap civilians in Afghanistan in order to secure the release of prisoners taken by America. Sally Neighbour has a front page piece derived from my op-ed here “Afghan foreigner kidnap order by al Qaeda leader Mustafa Hamid”. I haven’t seen the broadsheet yet, so I’m not sure if the photos I provided of Hamid are on...

War On Terror: Charges against the mastermind behind the bombing of the USS Cole are dismissed. He will be retried, but not by a military commission that would have given him the death penalty he deserves.Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell announced on Thursday that Susan Crawford, the convening authority for military tribunals at Guantanamo, has made the decision to withdraw charges against Abd al-Rahim Hussain Mohammed al-Nashiri. This is the Saudi man believed to be the architect of the bombing of the guided missile destroyer USS Cole, killing 17 American sailors, as it sat in the Yemeni port of Aden. The...

NEW YORK - The Obama administration plans to issue new guidelines meant to provide prisoners at a U.S. detention center in Afghanistan greater latitude in challenging their detention, The New York Times reported in its Sunday edition. Citing Pentagon officials and advocates for detainees at the U.S.-run prison at Bagram Air Base, the newspaper said each of the approximately 600 detainees would be assigned a U.S. military official who would have the authority to look for evidence, including witnesses and classified material, for any detainee challenging his detention. The challenges would be heard by a military-appointed review board, the Times...

WASHINGTON – The Pentagon has begun putting into place a new program under which hundreds of prisoners being held by the military in Afghanistan will be given the right to challenge their detentions, a defense official said Sunday. Prisoners at Bagram military base are all to be given a U.S. military official to serve as their personal representative and a chance to go before new so-called Detainee Review Boards, to have their cases considered, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to be able to discuss a program that has not been formally announced

Military will let Afghan detainees challenge their detentionPresident Obama is readying plans that will allow hundreds of prisoners in Afghanistan to begin challenging their detention, possibly as soon as this week, according to reports. The new system will assign a military official to each of about 600 prisoners, most of whom are being held at Bagram Air Base. The official could then gather exculpatory evidence and call witnesses before a board that has the power to decide whether the detainees should be held by U.S. or Afghan officials or be released, according to reports by The New York Times and...

SNIP Al Qaeda thug Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks and former No. 2 henchman of Osama bin Laden, looks oddly like his monstrous mentor after six years of captivity. SNIP But, KSM, as he's known in intelligence circles, doesn't look any worse for wear in photographs taken in July during a visit by the International Committee of the Red Cross to Guantanamo Bay. A healthy-looking Mohammed has grown a long bin Laden-like beard, while sporting a red-checkered turban. The last the world saw of him six years ago, he was disheveled, paunchy, in a stretched T-shirt...

The first photographs of the self-proclaimed 9/11 mastermind at Guantanamo Bay have cropped up on the Internet, and experts say the images of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed are being used by terrorist groups to inspire attacks against the United States. The photographs, taken in July by the Red Cross at the Guantanamo detention centre in Cuba, show Mohammed in a white robe, a red-patterned headdress and a long salt-and-pepper beard. They are the first known images of Mohammed since shot taken upon his capture in Pakistan in March 2003 showing him in a white T-shirt, with disheveled hair and a moustache....

Apparently one of the three Swedish men who were caught in Pakistan last week, is according to information received by SvT Rapport, Mehdi Ghezali, who for several years was kept imprisoned on the Guantanamo base. According to Pakistani authorities the Swedes were apprehended together with seven Turks and and one Russian, and are suspected of collaboration with al-Qaida. According to informants the prisoners have been transferred to Islamabad. The 30 year old Mehdi Ghezali was caught near the Tora Bora mountains in Afghanistan in December 2001, and was shortly thereafter handed over to the US military. He was released from...

SNIPPET: "How Did the Posting of the Photos Actually Play Out? 1. At some point in July 2009, International Red Cross delegates photographed Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his nephew, Ammar al-Baluchi. These photos were taken as part of a service that the ICRC has provided to at least the 107 detainees at Guantanamo who opted in. The service includes provide their families with photographed evidence that the detainee is alive and not being mistreated. 2. Specifically, each detainee selects their two favorite poses and print copies of those photographs along with a note from the ICRC are transmitted by the...

This week on "Take AIM," Accuracy in Media's Thursday morning show on BlogTalkRadio, Congressman Mike Rogers (R-MI) discusses health care reform. Commander Kirk Lippold, senior military fellow with Military Families United, discusses the Obama administration's release of Guantanamo Bay detainees, as well as his experiences as commanding officer of the USS Cole when it was attacked. AIM chairman Don Irvine and media analyst Roger Aronoff host. Listen live on Thursday, September 10, at 11:00 am Eastern here: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Accuracy-In-Media/2009/09/10/Take-AIM For more information about our guests, see www.mikerogers.house.gov and www.militaryfamiliesunited.org. Take AIM airs every Thursday at 11:00 am Eastern on BlogTalkRadio. Can't...

Two parts of the Obama administration are giving conflicting reports on the dangers posed by terrorist detainees to Congress and the U.S. courts, executive branch sources tell HUMAN EVENTS. In effect, the Obama administration is keeping two sets of books on the terrorist prisoners. According to rules established earlier this year, the Obama administration is required to send Congress notification of its intent to move or release any inmates at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba facility at least fifteen days before the action is accomplished. These notifications, called “risk assessments,” were supposed to give members of Congress sufficient information for them...

Link only, per FR copyright and excerpt rules

Republican Senator John McCain has denounced the use of torture on terrorism suspects during the administration of former president George W. Bush. "I think the interrogations were in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the convention against torture that we ratified under President Reagan," said McCain. In an interview with CBS News on Sunday, the Arizona senator said that the enhanced interrogation techniques also helped al Qaeda recruit additional members. "I think these interrogations, once publicized, helped al Qaeda recruit. I got that from an al Qaeda operative in a prison camp in Iraq,” said McCain, who added that he...

Note: The following text is a quote: United States Transfers Two Guantanamo Bay Detainees to the Government of Portugal The Department of Justice today announced that two Syrian nationals have been transferred from the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay to the control of the government of Portugal. As directed by the President’s Jan. 22, 2009 Executive Order, the interagency Guantanamo Review Task Force conducted a comprehensive review of these cases. As a result of that review, the detainees were approved for transfer from Guantanamo Bay. On Aug. 6, 2009, in accordance with Congressionally-mandated reporting requirements, the Administration informed Congress of...

WASHINGTON - U.S. Senator John McCain, a torture survivor from his days as a captive during the Vietnam War, says his private comments about harsh interrogation methods were misrepresented by the Bush Administration in a recently released legal document intended to justify a six-day-long course of sleep deprivation for one CIA detainee in November of 2007. The newly declassified memo by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel mentions a secret briefing McCain and other members of Congress received sometime before October 17, 2006. The memo says the lawmakers were told about six CIA interrogation techniques, including prolonged sleep deprivation....

Says Abuse of Detainees Helped al Qaeda Recruit Terrorists, But Opposes Investigation into "Enhanced" Interrogations. BY MICHELLE LEVI Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) said he thinks it is a "serious mistake" for the administration to focus on the past when investigating the interrogation techniques of the CIA under President Bush on "Face the Nation" Sunday. "For us now to go back, I think, would be a serious mistake. "I believe that the president was right when he said we ought to go forward and not back. I worry about the morale and effectiveness of the CIA. I worry about this thing...

A former Guantánamo guard who had flown to the UK to address a support group for inmates of the camp is to be deported back to the US this morning after being denied entry on arrival at Heathrow airport yesterday. Terry Holdbrooks, who has been an outspoken critic of the US government over the treatment of prisoners at Guantánamo, said that immigration officials told him he was being refused entry because he was unemployed and living in rented accommodation in the US, raising suspicions he would not leave the UK. The former soldier, who converted to Islam after discussions with...

President Barack Obama said, "Nobody has ever escaped from one of our federal, supermax prisons, which hold hundreds of convicted terrorists," during his May 21, 2009 speech at the National Archives. In this morning's Washington Post, they report a 2006 Department of Justice memo states that convicted al Qaeda prisoners in Supermax at Florence, Colorado "coordinated the beginning of a hunger strike" and developed "a sophisticated method to resist compulsory feeding" by communicated via "tapping on the pipes." (Has no one at the Bureau of Prisons ever heard of the Hanoi Hilton and how John McCain et al communicated by...