Free Republic

Four of the nation's most highly valued terrorist prisoners were secretly moved to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2003, years earlier than has been disclosed, then were whisked back into overseas prisons before the Supreme Court could give them access to lawyers, The Associated Press has learned. The transfer allowed the U.S. to interrogate the detainees in CIA "black sites" for two more years without allowing them to speak with attorneys or human rights observers or challenge their detention in U.S. courts. Had they remained at the Guantanamo Bay prison for just three more months, they would have been afforded those...

SNIPPET: "A former Guantanamo detainee named Usama Abu Kabir led a terror cell in Jordan that was broken up in 2009, according to a new report by the US State Department. On Thursday, the State Department released its Country Reports on Terrorism for 2009. "In April [2009]," the report notes, "four men were arrested and charged with plotting attacks in Israel in retaliation for the Israeli incursion into Gaza." Kabir was one of the four. A fifth member of the cell was arrested in May 2009. Kabir’s arrest was previously reported in the Israeli and Jordanian press. But the State...

A white, unmarked Boeing 737 landed in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, before dawn on a CIA mission so secretive, many in the nation's war on terrorism were kept in the dark. Four of the nation's most highly valued terrorist prisoners were aboard. *snip* Then, months later, they were just as quietly whisked away before the Supreme Court could give them access to lawyers. *snip* It also shows how insistent the Bush administration was that terrorists must be held outside the U.S. court system.

Four of the nation's most highly valued terrorist prisoners were secretly moved to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2003, years earlier than has been disclosed, then whisked back into overseas prisons before the Supreme Court could give them access to lawyers, The Associated Press has learned. The transfer allowed the U.S. to interrogate the detainees in CIA "black sites" for two more years without allowing them to speak with attorneys or human rights observers or challenge their detention in U.S. courts. Had they remained at the Guantanamo Bay prison for just three more months, they would have been afforded those rights....

Naji had fought his repatriation to Algeria, saying he feared he would be mistreated or killed there. The case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, but Naji lost his plea earlier this month, clearing the way for him and five other Algerian Guantanamo inmates to be repatriated.

NOTE The following text is a quote: IMMEDIATE RELEASE No. 653-10 July 22, 2010 Detainee Transfer Announced The Department of Defense announced today the transfer of two detainees from the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay to the Governments of Spain and Latvia. As directed by the President’s January 22, 2009 executive order, the interagency Guantanamo Review Task Force conducted a comprehensive review of these cases. As a result of that review, which examined a number of factors, including security issues, the detainees were approved for transfer by unanimous consent among all the agencies involved in the task force. In accordance...

SNIPPET: "The Department of Defense announced the transfer of two Guantanamo detainees today. Abdul Aziz Naji, a native of Algeria, was repatriated to his home country. Abd-al-Nisr Mohammed Khantumani, a Syrian, was resettled in Cape Verde, an island republic approximately 300 miles off the west coast of Africa." SNIPPET: "US military officials at Gitmo alleged that Abdul Aziz Naji (whose internment serial number at Gitmo was 744) was a member of Laskar-e-Taiba (LET), a Pakistani-based terrorist organization closely linked to al Qaeda. A senior intelligence official contacted by the Long War Journal explained that not only was Naji a member...

WASHINGTON - A federal appellate court has upheld the convictions and sentence of a Navy lawyer who, in January 2005, mailed the names of Guantanamo Bay detainees to a lawyer at the Center for Constitution Rights in a Valentine’s Day card. In U.S. v. Diaz, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces on Thursday unanimously affirmed Lt. Commander Matthew Diaz’s convictions for conduct unbecoming an officer and for removing and communicating classified information. Diaz was sentenced to six months’ confinement and dismissal from the Navy. From July 6, 2004, to January 15, 2005, Diaz was assigned to Joint...

The Supreme Court has cleared the way for the United States to return to Algeria two Guantanamo Bay prisoners who asked to remain at the prison camp because of fear they might be tortured at home. Justices on Saturday declined to hear the appeal of Aziz Abdul Naji, held at Guantanamo since 2002 after being captured in Pakistan. That ruling follows the high court's decision late Friday that allowed the U.S. government to proceed in sending another Algerian detainee home. The detainees had argued they would be harmed by the Algerian government or unaffiliated armed Islamic militants if they were...

President Obama has not fulfilled his pledge to close the detainee prison at Guantanamo Bay, but he has brought Skype, Playstation3 and "life skills" classes to the detainees at the island facility.

SNIPPET: "Germany agreed to accept two Guantanamo detainees last week. In justifying the decision, German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere explained: “The United States has asked us to take three people who were cleared for release. We decided to take in two who we were almost certain would pose no threat to society. With the third we weren't sure.”" SNIPPET: "But in this case the press has reported the identity of the two detainees in question. The German newspaper Bild has named them: Ayman al Shurafa, a 34-year-old citizen of Saudi Arabia, and Mahmud Salim al Ali, a 35-year-old Syrian....

In the 16 years since the federal death penalty was restored in 1994 — 16 years throughout which the United States has been ravaged by jihadist terror — the Justice Department has approved capital charges for exactly three defendants: Moussaoui and two of the 1998 U.S. embassy bombers. In each case, civilian juries rejected the death penalty. If Holder is saying there’s a better chance these savages will be executed if they are tried in the civilian system (and that is precisely what he’s implying), there is nothing to support that claim.

WASHINGTON, July 7, 2010 – A Sudanese man pleaded guilty in a military commission today to conspiracy and providing material support to al-Qaida in the five years leading up to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks against the United States. Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al Qosi, 50, pleaded guilty at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to two charges for his support to al-Qaida and for conspiring to commit terrorism from August 1996 until his capture in December 2001. The conviction marks the first case prosecuted under the Obama administration and the Military Commissions Act of 2009, which the president signed in October....

More so than in any other administration, Friday nights have become a game in themselves for people to see what kind of embarrassing and politically damaging information the White House wants to hide in the virtual news blackout of Saturdays. Usually it involves policy and personnel changes that would tend to anger their base — and this week may be the granddaddy of Friday Night news dumps. The New York Times reports that sources within the administration have all but thrown in the towel on closing the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, and now want to shift the blame to...

WASHINGTON — Stymied by political opposition and focused on competing priorities, the Obama administration has sidelined efforts to close the Guantánamo prison, making it unlikely that President Obama will fulfill his promise to close it before his term ends in 2013. When the White House acknowledged last year that it would miss Mr. Obama’s initial January 2010 deadline for shutting the prison, it also declared that the detainees would eventually be moved to one in Illinois. But impediments to that plan have mounted in Congress, and the administration is doing little to overcome them. “There is a lot of inertia”...

The U.S. government plans to buy a state prison in rural Illinois even if Congress blocks President Obama's plan to use it for terror suspects, officials say. Assistant U.S. Attorney General Randy Welch told members of Congress from Illinois in a letter this week that the administration has a "commitment" to purchase the unused Thomson Prison, the Chicago Tribune reported Monday. He said the entire building will become an ordinary federal facility if it cannot be used to hold detainees now at Guantanamo Bay. Under the administration's plan, only a small part of the facility would be used for Guantanamo...

Twenty percent of ex-Guantanamo prisoners who graduated from Saudi Arabia's rehabilitation programme resumed contacts with Islamist militants, a senior Saudi counter-terror official said on Saturday. Twenty-five of the 120 former detainees at the US "war-on-terror" prison returned to radical Islamist activities after graduation from Riyadh's lauded rehab centre, Abdulrahman al-Hadlaq, who has the post of director of ideological security at the interior ministry, told reporters. "It's about a 9.5-percent relapse" for all 300 Saudi men, including militants arrested by Saudi authorities, who have passed through the "Care Centre," Hadlaq said. "But it's more than 20 (percent) among Guantanamo guys." Of...

I am addressing this post to my fellow citizens of MI-01, fellow activists across the country, and especially to Congressional Democrats and candidates currently serving in Congress. The word is out; Mike Allen at Politico.com had the story yesterday. This administration is going to push the Senate to pass a cap-and-trade bill this summer. Then, with the same arrogance we have seen before from this administration, they are planning on passing a final bill during the lame-duck session of Congress that follows November’s elections—elections where the people will have spoken and expressed their will regarding the type of government they...

""Welcome Aboard," the sign says. The cost of the marquee, along with a smaller sign positioned near the airfield: $188,000. Among other odd legacies from war-on-terror spending since 2001 for the troops at Guantanamo Bay: an abandoned volleyball court for $249,000, an unused go-kart track for $296,000 and $3.5 million for 27 playgrounds that are often vacant. The Pentagon also spent $683,000 to renovate a cafe that sells ice cream and Starbucks coffee, and $773,000 to remodel a cinder-block building to house a KFC/Taco Bell restaurant. The spending is part of at least $500 million that has transformed what was...

Note: Photo included. PHOTO CAPTION: "Former Guantanamo Bay detainee Othman Ahmed al Ghamdi, in a tape released by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula." SNIPPET: "A videotape released by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) earlier this week says that a former Guantanamo detainee is now a commander within the terrorist organization. The former detainee, Othman Ahmed al Ghamdi, has risen to the rank of operational commander within AQAP as other senior terrorists within the organization have been killed in recent strikes. The tape, which is titled “America and the Final Trap,” confirms that three AQAP leaders were killed...