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An NPR investigation finds that the military court and prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, have cost taxpayers billions of dollars, with billions more expected. (Above) An American flag is seen through the war crimes courtroom at the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay on Oct. 17, 2012. Michelle Shepard/Bloomberg via Getty Images The U.S. military court and prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, have cost more than $6 billion to operate since opening nearly 18 years ago and still churn through more than $380 million a year despite housing only 40 prisoners today.Included in that amount are taxpayer-funded charter planes...

The sudden announcement of the charges Bergdahl faces, reinvigorated the sometimes fierce political debate that took place last year after the alleged deserter was secretly traded for five high-level Taliban prisoners from the military detention center at the Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, Marine base. Equally controversial was a legal watchdog group’s announcement that it had already filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) in order to have a federal judge force the Obama-appointed commanders to release records regarding the U.S. Army’s review of the disappearance of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl while he was assigned...

During a Q&A session following his speech on middle class economics to the City Club of Cleveland Wednesday afternoon, President Barack Obama revealed on thing he would do differently if he could start his presidency over knowing what he knows now. “I think I would have closed Guantánamo on the first day,” he told the crowd. The reason he didn’t, Obama said, is that at the time there was bipartisan agreement that the detention facility should be closed. Instead of making it happen right way, the president chose to sign an executive order that tasked a group with figuring out

U.S. Transfers 6 Guantánamo Detainees to Uruguay WASHINGTON– The United States transferred six detainees from the Guantánamo Bay prison to Uruguay this weekend, the Defense Department announced early Sunday. It was the largest single group of inmates to depart the wartime prison in Cuba since 2009, and the first detainees to be resettled in South America. The transfer included a Syrian man who has been on a prolonged hunger strike to protest his indefinite detention without trial, and who has brought a high-profile lawsuit to challenge the military’s procedures for force-feeding him. His release may moot most of that...

If Obama could exercise his authority as to bring home the son of Bob and Jani Bergdahl, why not use it to bring back some of America's lost honor and release a few good cleared men?So President Obama, like many presidents before him and no doubt many to follow, has employed a routine end-of-hostilities POW swap. For five Guantánamo prisoners, he has managed to bring Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl home. Bravo. But while Republicans do their level best to Benghazi-fy this rather uncontroversial news, the real story on Gitmo is elsewhere. Lost in the kerfuffle over the Bergdahl-Taliban swap is one...

The U.S. military is retracting a claim made to “60 Minutes” that Guantánamo guards suffer nearly twice as much Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder as combat troops. “There are no statistics that support the claim of twice the number of troops diagnosed with PTSD,” said Army Col. Greg Julian of the U. S. Southern Command in response to a query from the Miami Herald. Southcom has oversight of the 12-year-old detention center, including the consequences of duty there on the thousands of troops that have guarded the Guantánamo prisoners. At its height, the prison held about 660 men at the sprawling detention...

Obama promise to close Guantánamo prison unfulfilledBy Jeremy Herb - 01/11/12 08:32 PM ET The 10th anniversary of the Guantánamo Bay prison was marked with protests Wednesday, as closing the controversial detention facility remains a promise unfulfilled for President Obama. Obama campaigned on closing the facility in Cuba and, in one of his first actions as president, issued an executive order calling for it to be dismantled within one year. But as he enters the final year of his first term, human-rights groups are dismayed that the end of Guantánamo is nowhere in sight. While he remains committed to closing...

The Obama administration’s handpicked choice to run prosecutions at the Guantánamo war crimes court is pledging a new era of transparency from the remote base, complete with near simultaneous transmissions of the proceedings to victims and reporters on U.S. soil… Army Brig. Gen. Mark Martins denounced military commissions system, which Barack Obama scorned as a candidate and senator then reformed with Congress as president. Gen Martins, Army lawyer starts the job of Chief Prosecutor for Military Commissions on Oct. 3, according to a Pentagon spokesman. The the war court where he prosecutes will “feature new measures to ensure transparency, including...

WASHINGTON — President Obama’s legal advisers, confronting the prospect of new restrictions on the transfer of Guantánamo detainees, are debating whether to recommend that he issue a signing statement asserting that his executive powers would allow him to bypass the restrictions, according to several officials. If Mr. Obama were to issue such a statement, it could represent a more aggressive use of unilateral executive powers than what he exerted in his first two years in office. Mr. Obama could act on the measure by the end of the week. The issue has arisen as the Republican Party takes control

Guantánamo Uighurs hope to open restaurant in millionaires’ paradise James Bone in Hamilton Parish, Bermuda For seven long years in Guantánamo Bay prison camp in Cuba, the four Central Asian friends gazed longingly at the azure sea from their cells. They were never allowed through the razor wire to paddle in the water. Now, suddenly set free in Bermuda, the former terror suspects can watch the ocean at leisure from the pastel-pink clifftop holiday cottage where they are staying at US taxpayers’ expense. They have already taken a sunset swim and caught a fish at their first attempt at fishing....

The dilemma has taken on new urgency because the plan to close the prison depends on other countries’ accepting some of the remaining 241 detainees Diplomats say that with President Obama embarking on Tuesday on a European trip, the effort could falter unless this country signals it is willing to take some of the Guantánamo prisoners. At home, though, Mr. Obama faces the prospect of a storm of protest from some quarters if he admits detainees the Bush administration labeled terrorists and barred from this country. Already, word of the men’s possible release has brought denunciations and anxiety from military...

Even as the Obama administration has dropped the term ''enemy combatant'' in reshaping its war-on-terror policy, the Pentagon is inviting lawyers to apply for jobs defending its detention of 200-plus captives at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Over at Memorandum there is a link to a number of leftwing bloggers and journalists breathlessly awaiting the arrest of former Bush administration advisors and attorneys for their role in "violat(ing) international law by providing a legalistic framework to justify the use of torture of American prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba". TalkLeft names the targets: * Jay S. Bybee, United States Court of Appeal for the Ninth Circuit * Douglas Feith, Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute * William J Haynes, Chief Corporate Counsel, Chevron Headquarters * John Yoo, UC Berkeley School of Law * Alberto R. Gonzales * David Addington Trig...

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...

Deal will help Obama to close down terror jail Britain is preparing to receive foreign terror suspects from Guantánamo Bay so that Barack Obama can shut it down, The Times has learnt. Government sources say that Britain now supports moves to rehouse the detainees, despite previous refusals to help President Bush. A Downing Street official said that a process to deal with the detainees was being put in place and that decisions “would be for the Home Secretary to decide on a case-by-case basis”. The issue is the subject of intense negotiations within Whitehall. The Foreign Office appears much keener...

The men in Guantánamo represent fewer than 1% of the 27,000 prisoners being held by the US beyond the rule of law, says Clive Stafford Smith. In mid-2007 my mother sent me a George Bush Countdown Calendar. I have been tearing off the leaves, each with its quote from George W. That happy occasion, the final page, comes on January 20 2009. Happy for most in Guantánamo Bay, that is. The people remaining there find themselves in three groups - some 40 who will be taken to the US for a trial (somewhat fairer, at least, than the current military...

Sunday, November 16, CBS News's 60 Minutes broadcast the first interview with President-elect Barack Obama. The exchange touched on a wide range of topics, from Obama's distaste for college football's computerized selection of a national champion to his plans for changing course in economic and foreign policy. At one point, Obama was asked about the terrorist detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. He responded: I have said repeatedly that I intend to close Guantánamo, and I will follow through on that. I've said repeatedly that America doesn't torture and I'm going to make sure that we don't torture. Those are...

The detention center at Guantánamo hangs on the US like a ball and chain. Both presidential candidates and President Bush want it closed. But that won't be easy without broad consensus on how to deal with current and future detainees. On the tip of Cuba at a US naval base, the facility was set up in 2002 for the interrogation and detention of terrorist suspects after the 9/11 attacks. It now holds about 265 prisoners, including 14 of "high value." It may have helped prevent any other 9/11-style attacks, but Guantánamo has cost America considerable moral standing in the war...

BAGHDAD — A former Kuwaiti detainee at the United States prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, was one of the bombers in a string of deadly suicide attacks in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul last month, the American military said Wednesday. Meanwhile, the Iraqi foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, urged American and Iranian officials to return to talks about Iraqi security, but said he understood that it was a difficult moment for reconciliation between the countries. Cmdr. Scott Rye, a spokesman for the American military, identified one of the Mosul bombers as Abdullah Salim Ali al-Ajmi, a Kuwaiti man who...

Secret evidence. Denial of habeas corpus. Evidence obtained by waterboarding. Indefinite detention. The litany of complaints about the treatment of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay is long, disturbing and by now familiar. Nonetheless, a new wave of shock and criticism greeted the Pentagon's announcement on February 11 that it was charging six Guantánamo detainees, including alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, with war crimes--and seeking the death penalty for all of them. Now, as the murky, quasi-legal staging of the Bush Administration's military commissions unfolds, a key official has told The Nation that the trials have been rigged from the start....