Andy Worthington

As the Washington Post reported yesterday, the US Justice Department has dropped the key allegation against British resident and Guantánamo prisoner Binyam Mohamed – that he was involved, with American citizen Jose Padilla, in a plot to detonate a "dirty bomb" in a US city. For over three years, Binyam’s lawyers at Reprieve, the London-based … Continue reading “Justice Dept. Drops ‘Dirty Bomb Plot’ Allegation Against Binyam Mohamed”

In the last three weeks, two events have occurred that have dealt what should have been a knockout blow to the Military Commissions at Guantánamo, the system of trials for “terror suspects” – outside of the US court system and the US military’s own judicial system – that was created by Vice President Dick Cheney … Continue reading “New Evidence of Systemic Bias in Guantánamo Trials”

In an extraordinary and unprecedented ruling in a US District Court, Judge Ricardo Urbina has ruled that 17 wrongly imprisoned Chinese Muslims at Guantánamo must be allowed entry to the United States. It is, as the media has been reporting, the first time that a US court has directly ordered the release of a prisoner … Continue reading “From Guantánamo to the United States”

As the U.S. courts put pressure on the government to justify the long detention of prisoners at Guantánamo without charge or trial (following the Supreme Court’s ruling, in June, that they have constitutional habeas corpus rights, and that the government must justify their imprisonment), two of Guantánamo’s oldest prisoners have been quietly repatriated: 51-year-old Sudanese … Continue reading “Two 50-Year-Olds Released From Guantánamo”

Andy Worthington, author of The Guantánamo Files, looks at recent disturbing developments in the Military Commission trial system at Guantánamo, and traces a chain of command that runs from the Commissions’ supposedly impartial "Convening Authority" all the way to the Office of the Vice President. A Prosecutor Resigns On September 24, Col. Lawrence Morris, the … Continue reading “The Dark Heart of the Guantánamo Trials”

It could all have been so different. Between September 2002 and April 2003, the five defendants in the forthcoming 9/11 trial at Guantánamo – Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Mustafa al-Hawsawi, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali (aka Ammar al-Baluchi), and Walid bin Attash – were seized and transferred to secret CIA prisons, where they were … Continue reading “Is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Running the 9/11 Trials?”

Imagine being seized in Afghanistan or Pakistan, where you were, perhaps, a completely innocent man sold for a bounty, or a Muslim soldier fighting other Muslims in a civil war whose roots lay in the resistance to the Soviet occupation of the 1980s, which was partly funded by the United States. Then imagine that, both … Continue reading “Government Says Six Years Not Long Enough to Prepare Evidence”

Today, Omar Khadr, the sole Canadian citizen in Guantánamo, marks his 22nd birthday in isolation. Seized in Afghanistan when he was just 15 years old, Omar has now spent nearly a third of his life in US custody, in conditions that ought to be shameful to the US administration responsible for holding him, and to … Continue reading “Seized at 15, Omar Khadr Turns 22 in Guantánamo”

The military commissions at Guantánamo – the trial system for "War on Terror" prisoners that was established in the wake of the 9/11 attacks – are of enormous significance, as they are the only point at which the Bush administration’s post-9/11 detention policies (focused, for the most part, on a disturbing legal limbo between the … Continue reading “Another Insignificant Afghan Charged”

One month ago, when the jury in the first U.S. war crimes trial since the Second World War found Salim Hamdan guilty of providing material support for terrorism, but not guilty of conspiracy, the U.S. administration regarded it as a victory, even though numerous commentators – myself included – remained profoundly critical of the entire … Continue reading “Controversy Still Plagues Military Commissions”