U.S. charges 6 for roles in 9/11 attacks

February 8, 2008
U.S. charges 6 for roles in 9/11 attacks

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon has charged six detainees at Guantanamo Bay with murder and war crimes in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks. Officials said Monday they'll seek the death penalty in what would be the first capital trials under the terrorism-era military tribunal system.

Hartmann said the six include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the suspected mastermind of the attacks in which hijackers flew planes into buildings in New York and Washington. Another hijacked plane crashed in the fields of western Pennsylvania.

The other five men being charged are: Mohammed al-Qahtani, the man officials have labeled the 20th hijacker; Ramzi Binalshibh, said to have been the main intermediary between the hijackers and leaders of al-Qaida; Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, known as Ammar al-Baluchi, a nephew of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who has been identified as Mohammed's lieutenant for the operation; al-Baluchi's assistant, Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi; and Waleed bin Attash, a detainee known as Khallad, who investigators say selected and trained some of the 19 hijackers.

Guantanamo judge refused to reinstate the charges against a Canadian POW

July 6, 2007
Guantanamo judge refused to reinstate the charges against a Canadian POW

MIAMI (Reuters) - A U.S. military judge for the Guantanamo war crimes tribunals has refused to reinstate the charges against a Canadian prisoner accused of killing a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan.

The ruling in the case of Canadian captive Omar Khadr was released late on Friday, hours after the U.S. Supreme Court said it would hear a challenge of the law that established the war crimes tribunals and stripped Guantanamo prisoners of their right to court review of their indefinite confinement.

Supreme Court flips, will hear detainee claims

June 25, 2007
Supreme Court flips, will hear detainee claims

The U.S. Supreme Court reversed course Friday and agreed to hear claims of Guantanamo detainees that they have a right to challenge their detentions in American federal courts.

he decision, announced in a brief order released Friday, sets the stage for a legal fight that appears likely to shape debates in the Bush administration about how to close a detention center that has become a lightning rod for international criticism. More than 370 men are being held at the naval station on a scrubby corner of Cuba.

The unusual order, which required votes from five of the nine justices, rescinded an April order in which the justices declined to review a federal appeals court decision that ruled against the detainees.

The court offered no explanation for the change. But the order meant that the justices will hear the full appeal in their next term, perhaps by December. The court rarely grants such motions for reconsideration.Some experts on Supreme Court procedure said they knew of no similar reversal by the court in decades.

Bar Criticizes Proposed POW Rules

April 30, 2007
Bar Criticizes Proposed POW Rules

In a court filing this month, the department said that the lawyers' use of mail to communicate with their clients had "enabled detainees' counsel to cause unrest on the base by informing detainees about terrorist attacks."

The mail system was "misused" to inform detainees about military operations in Iraq, activities of terrorist leaders, efforts to fight terrorism, a Hezbollah attack on Israel and abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison, the department said in the filing.

In his letter to Mr. Gonzales, the bar association's president, Barry M. Kamins, said, "This is an astonishing and disingenuous assertion."

"Blaming counsel for the hunger strikes and other unrest is a continuation of a disreputable and unwarranted smear campaign against counsel," the letter said.

Many POWs at Guantánamo Rebuff Lawyers

May 5, 2007
Many POWs at Guantánamo Rebuff Lawyers

Some of the lawyers accuse Guantánamo officials of feeding the detainees' suspicions of the lawyers, a charge Pentagon officials deny.

Lawyers said many of the relationships appeared to have deteriorated as the detainees' legal cause has suffered setbacks in Congress and the courts, and as Justice Department officials have begun efforts to limit lawyers' access to detainees, raising new concerns among the detainees about their lawyers' effectiveness.

"Every lawyer is afraid, every time they go down there, that their clients won't see them," said Mark P. Denbeaux, a professor at Seton Hall University School of Law who represents two Guantánamo detainees. "And it's getting worse, because it's pretty hard to say we're offering them anything."