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SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - A military judge has refused a Pentagon request to reconsider his dismissal of charges against a Guantanamo Bay detainee accused of killing an American soldier in Afghanistan. The judge, Army Col. Peter Brownback, ruled Friday that the government's renewed legal argument has not resolved a lack of jurisdiction in the case of Omar Khadr, a Canadian who was 15 when he was arrested on an Afghan battlefield in 2002. Khadr is one of two detainees whose military trials fell apart because they were not identified as "unlawful" enemy combatants. A Pentagon spokesman, Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey...

Guantanamo Bay detainees may not challenge their detention in U.S. courts, a federal appeals court said Tuesday in a ruling upholding a key provision of a law at the center of President Bush's anti-terrorism plan. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled 2-1 that civilian courts no longer have the authority to consider whether the military is illegally holding foreigners. Barring detainees from the U.S. court system was a key provision in the Military Commissions Act, which Bush pushed through Congress last year to set up a system to prosecute terrorism suspects. The ruling is...

For Immediate Release Office of the Press Secretary February 14, 2007 Executive Order Trial of Alien Unlawful Enemy Combatants by Military Commission By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (Public Law 109‑366), the Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public Law 107-40), and section 948b(b) of title 10, United States Code, it is hereby ordered as follows: Section 1. Establishment of Military Commissions. There are hereby established military commissions to try alien unlawful enemy combatants for offenses triable by...

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon has drafted a manual for upcoming detainee trials that would allow suspected terrorists to be convicted on hearsay evidence and coerced testimony and imprisoned or put to death. According to a copy of the manual obtained by The Associated Press, a terror suspect's defense lawyer cannot reveal classified evidence in the person's defense until the government has a chance to review it. The manual, sent to Capitol Hill on Thursday and scheduled to be released later by the Pentagon, is intended to track a law passed last fall by Congress restoring President Bush's plans to have...

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on Tuesday blamed delays in trying terror detainees at Guantanamo Bay on legal challenges filed by their lawyers. Those trials may start by this summer, Gonzales told Associated Press reporters and editors. He said rules for the military commission are being sent up to Capitol Hill this week. "It's not for lack of trying," Gonzales said, when asked about the legal fate of detainees who have been held at the military facility, in some cases for five years. "We are challenged very step of the way." "We are trying as hard as we can to bring...

A draft Bush administration plan for special military courts seeks to expand the reach and authority of such "commissions" to include trials, for the first time, of people who are not members of al-Qaeda or the Taliban and are not directly involved in acts of international terrorism, according to officials familiar with the proposal. The plan, which would replace a military trial system ruled illegal by the Supreme Court in June, would also allow the secretary of defense to add crimes at will to those under the military court's jurisdiction. The two provisions would be likely to put more individuals...

A draft Bush administration plan for special military courts seeks to expand the reach and authority of such "commissions" to include trials, for the first time, of people who are not members of al-Qaeda or the Taliban and are not directly involved in acts of international terrorism, according to officials familiar with the proposal. The plan, which would replace a military trial system ruled illegal by the Supreme Court in June, would also allow the secretary of defense to add crimes at will to those under the military court's jurisdiction. The two provisions would be likely to put more individuals...

CONSERVATIVES in America are savouring the prospect of a battle over the future of military tribunals at the naval prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as legislation is drawn up to circumvent last week’s rejection of anti-terror tactics by the Supreme Court. Bill Frist, the Republican Senate leader, promised to introduce legislation authorising military commissions to try Al-Qaeda suspects after this week’s July 4 holiday. Conservatives are livid about the court ruling and regard the vote on the bill, likely to come this autumn, as an ideal opportunity to divide the Democrats and portray them as soft on terror in the...

WASHINGTON -- Congress is moving quickly to begin writing legislation to allow the creation of military tribunals, reacting to a Supreme Court decision this week that repudiated the Bush administration's use of such tribunals to try Guantanamo detainees without authorization from Congress. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican, said he would introduce legislation on the tribunals after the July Fourth recess, which extends through next week. Minority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, has said he wants to work with the White House on crafting a bill. And Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, introduced...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A leading international jurist on Friday criticised U.S. plans to try foreign terrorism suspects before military courts, saying there was no guarantee the accused would get fair trials. Richard Goldstone, a South African judge who was chief prosecutor for the U.N. war crimes tribunal, said the plan announced by President George W. Bush earlier this month amounted to "second- or third-class" justice. "I think it would be bad for the United States to deprecate its own court system, its own insistence over decades and centuries on fair and due process," Goldstone said on CNN's "Larry King Live." ...

Bush Insisted Only He Should Decide Who Should Stand Trial Before Military Court Secret Legal Document Gave Bush Wartime Powers, Including Holding Secret Tribunals NEW YORK, Nov. 18 /PRNewswire/ -- After he signed an order allowing the use of military tribunals in terrorist cases, President George W. Bush insisted he alone should decide who goes before such a military court, his aides tell Newsweek. The tribunal document gives the government the power to try, sentence -- and even execute -- suspected foreign terrorists in secrecy, under special rules that would deny them constitutional rights and allow no chance to appeal. ...

Since the case is now before the Supreme Court, it’s going to continue making news. What does it mean for the future? Hamdan is represented by LCDR Charles Swift, defense counsel for the military tribunals. In short, he is a special kind of f-tard, as you’ll see by reading the interview. David Remes whines that “friends of the military…fear that if the President is free to deny the protections of the Geneva Conventions to our enemies, our enemies will consider themselves free to deny those protections to our soldiers. They fear that the federal appeals court’s ruling “immediately and directly...

WASHINGTON, July 15 - In a significant victory for the Bush administration's antiterrorism policy, a federal appeals court ruled today that military commissions could resume war crimes trials of detainees at the American naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. A three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled unanimously for the administration and against Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a former driver for Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, who is facing terrorism charges. The panel emphatically overturned a decision on Nov. 8 by a federal district judge in Washington, James Robertson, who had ruled...

BREAKING NEWS [Shannen Coffin] In Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, decided today, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower court ruling that invalidated a military tribunal against a detainee at GTMO, who just happened to have been Osama's personal driver. In short, court held that commissions were authorized by Congress's post-9/11 authorization of the use of force, that the Geneva Convention was not enforceable in federal court, and even if it was, it didn't provide "prisoner of war" protection to an unlawful combatant like Hamdan.

One Guantanamo prisoner told a military panel that American troops beat him so badly he wets his pants now. Another detainee claimed U.S. troops stripped prisoners in Afghanistan and intimidated them with dogs so they would admit to militant activity. Tales of alleged abuse and forced confessions are among some 1,000 pages of tribunal transcripts the U.S. government released to The Associated Press under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit — the second batch of documents the AP has received in 10 days. The testimonies offer a glimpse into the secretive world of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where about 520 men...

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- They fed them well. The Pakistani tribesmen slaughtered a sheep in honor of their guests, Arabs and Chinese Muslims famished from fleeing U.S. bombing in the Afghan mountains. But their hosts had ulterior motives: to sell them to the Americans, said the men who are now prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Bounties ranged from $3,000 to $25,000, the detainees testified during military tribunals, according to transcripts the U.S. government gave The Associated Press to comply with a Freedom of Information lawsuit. A former CIA intelligence officer who helped lead the search for Osama bin Laden told...

WASHINGTON, May 29 - In the last few months, the small commercial air service to the naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, has been carrying people the military authorities had hoped would never be allowed there: American lawyers. And they have been arriving in increasing numbers, providing more than a third of about 530 remaining detainees with representation in federal court. Despite considerable obstacles and expenses, other lawyers are lining up to challenge the government's detention of people the military has called enemy combatants and possible terrorists.

THE WASHINGTON TIMES Detainees at Guantanamo Bay are providing the U.S. military with its best information on America's No. 1 enemy, Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terror group, says a new Pentagon report. More than three years after many of the al Qaeda and Taliban fighters were captured in Afghanistan, the 550 prisoners continue to divulge new information on recently nabbed bin Laden operatives and on remotely detonated bombs killing U.S. troops in Iraq. "The Joint Task Force, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, remains the single best repository of al Qaeda information in the Department of Defense," said the recently compiled report....

As Camp Delta's legality is challenged, a chilling portrait of its detainees is offered by the U.S. Three years after it began, the prison experiment known as Camp Delta at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has reached a crossroads in its incarceration of those captured in the war brought on by Sept. 11. Military officials have completed tribunal hearings for all 558 detainees and have compiled their most comprehensive report detailing what they have learned about potential future terrorist attacks. But the Bush administration now is battling efforts by lawyers for some of the prisoners to have...

A human rights group has criticized proposed Pentagon guidelines for handling military detainees, saying the new rules might allow the military to deny some detainees their rights under the Geneva Conventions. The proposed guidelines are aimed at preventing the abuse of U.S. military detainees that occurred at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. But Human Rights Watch said the proposal could lead to abuses that amount to war crimes under international law. Instead of correcting current violations of the Geneva Conventions, these guidelines would shred the conventions further," he said in a written statement released the same day. Specifically, the guidelines...