Tag: Guantánamo

March 28, 2022

GOP Senators Use Jackson Hearing to Agitate Their Base Before Election Campaigns

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is inching toward confirmation as a Supreme Court Justice after sailing with strength and grace through days of racist and disrespectful attacks by GOP senators. Conservative Democrat Joe Manchin has now signaled that he will vote to confirm Jackson, showing that the often fractured Democratic senators are uniting to support her confirmation…. Read more »

October 10, 2021

Biden Tells Supreme Court That Publicly Documented Torture Is a State Secret

When Abu Zubaydah was apprehended in Pakistan in 2002, the George W. Bush administration falsely characterized him as chief of operations for al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden’s number three man. For the next four years, the CIA sent Zubaydah to its “black sites” in Thailand and Poland where he was viciously tortured. In 2006, Zubaydah… Read more »

September 19, 2016

Fifteen Years After 9/11, Perpetual “War on Terror” Continues Unabated

Fifteen years ago, 19 men committed suicide and took more than 3,000 people with them. The 9/11 attacks constituted crimes against humanity and should have been treated as such, with investigations and prosecutions of those who helped plan and finance the horrific crimes. If they had been armed attacks by another country, George W. Bush… Read more »

August 28, 2016

Abu Zubaydah: Torture’s ‘Poster Child’

Last week, Abu Zubaydah, who has been imprisoned at Guantanamo for 14 years without being charged with a crime, appeared for the first time before the U.S. military Periodic Review Board, which determines whether Guantanamo detainees will continue to be held as “enemy combatants.” Zubaydah argued he should be released because he has “no desire… Read more »

May 16, 2016

Michael Ratner’s Death Is a Loss for Freedom, Peace and Justice

Legendary human rights lawyer Michael Ratner died Wednesday. His pathbreaking legal and political work on behalf of the poor and oppressed around the world is unmatched. His death is an incalculable loss for the cause of freedom, peace and justice. The last time I saw Michael was shortly before he was diagnosed with cancer. We… Read more »

November 15, 2015

Close Guantanamo and Return It to Cuba

President Barack Obama has yet to fulfill the promise he made in his January 22, 2009 executive order to shutter Guantanamo “no later than one year from the date of this order.” Any individuals remaining there at the time of closure, Obama wrote, “shall be returned to their home country, released, transferred to a third… Read more »

July 5, 2013

Five “High-Value” Guantanamo Detainees Improperly Presumed Guilty

It is a bedrock principle of our system of justice that everyone who is charged with a crime is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty. That includes “high-value detainees” awaiting trial in Guantánamo’s military commissions. Yet pre-trial hearings held June 17-21 in the cases of five men charged with planning the 9/11 attacks revealed… Read more »

May 25, 2013

Guantanamo, Drone Strikes and the Non-War Terror War: Obama Speaks

As one of the 1,200-plus signatories to the full-page ad that appeared in The New York Times, calling for the closure of Guantanamo, I was disappointed in President Barack Obama’s speech Thursday on counterterrorism, drones and Guantanamo. Torture and Indefinite Detention at Guantanamo In a carefully crafted – at times defensive, discourse, Obama said, “In… Read more »