Free Republic

The Department of Defense invites media to cover a pre-sentencing hearing in the case of United States v. Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, scheduled for April 15-19. The defendant entered a guilty plea in June of 2022. The proceedings will be conducted at the Expeditionary Legal Complex located in Naval Station Guantanamo Bay (NSGB) Cuba and will be transmitted to a closed-circuit television site at Ft. Meade, Md. For planning purposes, media desiring to travel to Naval Station Guantanamo Bay (NSGB) Cuba will depart from Joint Base Andrews, Md. on the date listed below with a round-trip flight cost of $800. Flights...

As a young military officer at the height of the war on terror, Lt. Ron DeSantis was often seen running on the beach of Guantánamo Bay and along its ridgeline, encircling Camp America. It was a chaotic time at the U.S. military detention facility in Cuba, and as an ambitious Navy lawyer, DeSantis was positioned to witness history up close. He arrived at Joint Task Force Guantanamo in the spring of 2006 as its leaders were grappling with multiple challenges and global scrutiny. Aggressive tactics were adopted to break a hunger strike. An armed clash erupted between detainees and a...

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) denied authorizing force-feeding – a practice that international groups have said amounts to torture – during his time at Guantanamo Bay, according to a new interview. In an interview airing Thursday on “Piers Morgan Uncensored,” DeSantis said the allegations that he authorized force-feeding at Guantanamo Bay were “absolutely” wrong, saying that he did not have the authority to do so. “I was a junior officer. I didn’t have authority to authorize anything,” he told Piers Morgan. “There may have been a commander that would have done feeding if someone was going to die, but that...

A Baltimore schoolboy-turned-terrorist was quietly freed from Guantanamo Bay on February 2 by Joe Biden and relocated to Belize at taxpayer expense. He is the first high-value detainee to be released from Guantanamo Bay and the first inmate resettled by the Biden administration.Majid Khan was the only American resident locked up in Guantanamo Bay. He ran errands for the 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM). He also plotted to blow up Pakistan’s then-President Pervez Musharraf, a key U.S. ally in 2002. He wore a suicide vest packed with explosives and waited at a mosque for Musharraf to arrive. When he...

U.S. military prosecutors are reportedly negotiating potential plea deals with 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other conspirators imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay. The plea deals may allow the five dependents to escape a potential death penalty, according to CBS. Mohammed is widely credited with being the architect of the 9/11 terror attacks. The other four defendants are Ramzi Binalshibh, Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, Walid bin Attash and Ammar al-Baluchi. Attorneys for the defendants reportedly say they would be willing to enter a guilty plea in exchange for taking the death penalty off the table, as well as for getting treatment...

NEW YORK (AP) — Hours before dawn on March 1, 2003, the U.S. scored its most thrilling victory yet against the plotters of the Sept. 11 attacks — the capture of a disheveled Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, hauled away by intelligence agents from a hideout in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. The global manhunt for al-Qaida’s No. 3 leader had taken 18 months. But America’s attempt to bring him to justice, in a legal sense, has taken much, much longer. Critics say it has become one of the war on terror’s greatest failures. As Sunday’s 21st anniversary of the terror attacks approaches, Mohammed and...

The Biden administration on Monday repatriated to Saudi Arabia for mental health care a prisoner who had been tortured so badly by U.S. interrogators that he was ruled ineligible for trial as the suspected would-be 20th hijacker in the Sept. 11 attacks. The prisoner, Mohammed al-Qahtani, in his 40s, is the second to be transferred from the wartime prison under the administration. *** His long-serving lawyer, Shayana Kadidal of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said the transfer was long overdue. “For 14 years I’ve sat across from Mohammed as he talks to nonexistent people in the room and makes eye...

"I feel quite strongly that Guantánamo doesn’t have a place in our world"Benedict Cumberbatch says he wants Guantánamo Bay closed after working on ‘The Mauritanian’ "I feel quite strongly that Guantánamo doesn’t have a place in our world" Benedict Cumberbatch has said he wants Guantánamo Bay closed following his work on recent film The Mauritanian. The film, which is being produced by SunnyMarch – an independent film and television company that Cumberbatch jointly owns – explores the experiences of Mohamedou Ould Slahi who was incarcerated at Guantánamo Bay for 14 years without charge. After the 9/11 attacks in 2001, the...

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Terrorists are being released from Guantanamo Bay in order to make room for parents protesting their children's education, sources at the State Department confirmed today. Dangerous terrorists from the Middle East, Europe, and Fresno are being released in droves as their cells are needed for this far greater threat. "See you later, Bob!" said one guard as he sent Bob the Bombin' Terrorist Guy out of the prison facility on a helicopter. "Good times playing cribbage and all that—I'll get you next time! Have a good one!" The guard then waited for the next load of detainees to arrive,...

The FBI, complying with President Biden’s recent executive order, made public late Saturday night a previously classified April 4, 2016 “review and analysis” report about Operation Encore, the bureau’s highly sensitive investigation of possible Saudi complicity in the 9/11 terrorist attack.The 16-page report is nevertheless heavily redacted in ways that will likely disappoint members of the 9/11 Families who have pushed to learn more about Encore since its existence was first disclosed in December 2016 in documents released to Florida Bulldog amid Freedom of Information Act litigation.For example, the names of many persons who were interviewed by FBI agents during...

Four top members of the Taliban's new interim government are former Guantanamo Bay prisoners who were freed by the Obama administration in a prisoner exchange for Army deserter Bowe Bergdahl. They were members of the hardline 'Guantanamo Five' who were traded to free Bergdahl from the Taliban-aligned Haqqani network in 2014. The Taliban on Tuesday announced the appointment of Acting Director of Intelligence Abdul Haq Wasiq, Acting Minister of Borders and Tribal Affairs Norullah Noori, Deputy Defense Minister Mohammad Fazl, and Acting Minister of Information and Culture Khairullah Khairkhah. The four men, who also took part in direct negotiations with...

Four out of five Guantanamo detainees whom former President Barack Obama released in exchange for former U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl in 2014 now hold senior positions in the interim government created by the Taliban in Afghanistan. According to the Afghan television network TOLOnews, the Taliban-formed government gave leadership positions to Khairullah Khairkhwa, Norullah Noori, Abdul Haq Wasiq, and Mohammad Fazl; all of whom were released in a 2014 deal between the Obama administration and the Taliban to free Bergdahl, whom the Taliban had held as a prisoner since 2009. On Tuesday, the Taliban announced that Khairkhwa would serve as...

The Taliban has appointed former Guantanamo Bay detainee mullah Abdul Qayyum Zakir as acting defense minister, Reuters reported on Tuesday, citing Al Jazeera. According to Guantanamo Bay transfer documents, Zakir (who also goes by Abdullah Gulam Rasoul, Abdullah Rasoul and Ghullam Rasoul) was captured in Afghanistan on November 28, 2001, and he arrived at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on January 11, 2002. Zakir was imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay from 2002 to 2007. According to a January 2012 report by the House Armed Services Committee (HASC), Zakir was transferred to a prison in Afghanistan in December 2007 after a review board determined...

WASHINGTON, D.C.—White House press secretary Jen Psaki announced Monday that the Biden administration is committing to wage a war on COVID that will be as fast, efficient, and effective as the war on terror. “Today, the Biden administration is pleased to declare an all-out war against COVID," Psaki said. “If the war on terror has taught us anything, it’s that if we set aside our political differences and spend a few dozen trillion dollars, there’s no end to what we can achieve in just 20 short years." The plan is entitled “Two Decades To Stop The Spread,” and the crux...

The people of Cuba are demonstrating extraordinary bravery by rising up for freedom and democracy against their brutal communist dictatorship. President Biden is reacting with a disgraceful display of foreign policy clumsiness. There’s no better demonstration to the world that freedom and democracy beat the so-called socialist paradise of Cuba than hundreds of thousands of people voluntarily picking up and leaving. The incoming immigrants would enrich America. Cuban-Americans whose families arrived in earlier waves of migration have been distinguished contributors to American life. They include Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, members of Congress Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Mario Diaz-Balart, and Maria...

The administration hopes to transfer a handful of the remaining terrorism suspects to foreign countries, the people familiar with the discussions said, and then persuade Congress to permit the transfer of the rest — including 9/11 suspects — to detention on the U.S. mainland. Biden hopes to close the facility by the end of his first term, the people familiar with the discussions said.

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden has quietly begun efforts to close the U.S. detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, using an under-the-radar approach to minimize political blowback and to try to make at least some progress in resolving a long-standing legal and human rights morass before the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. After initial plans for a more aggressive push to close the facility — including rebuffed attempts to recruit a special envoy to oversee the strategy — the White House changed course, sources said. The administration has opted to wait before it reaches out...

The approved release of three detainees locked up in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba for nearly two decades has raised expectations that President Joe Biden might try to close the notorious US military prison. A high-level review board on May 17 signed off on the release of the oldest of the 40 so-called detainees still at Guantanamo, 73-year-old Pakistani businessman Saifullah Paracha, as well as two others. Despite being arrested and secretly rendered to the US military prison on the Caribbean island between 2001 and 2003, the three were never charged -- like most of the others still there. Tarred by accusations...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Biden administration has launched a formal review of the future of the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, reviving the Obama-era goal of closing the controversial facility, a White House official said on Friday.

One factor in a bunch of Americans opting for Donald Trump in 2016 was his promise not to start a new war in the Middle East — but the D.C. establishment secretly kept troops in Syria, and lied about it to the president.Defense One, a subsidiary of The Atlantic, came out with a story last week about a man named Jim Jeffrey. If you haven’t heard of him, don’t feel bad, but he’s pretty important in Washington, D.C. Under his fancy title, he’s been appointed to oversee the U.S. fight against ISIS and what are supposed to be the limited...