Obama Administration to Announce Gitmo Detainees’ Move to Illinois Tuesday

Jake Tapper at ABC News reports that the Obama administration will announce on Tuesday that at least some Guantanamo Bay detainees are headed to the federal prison in Thomson, Ill. Just how many of the inmates at Thomson will come from the Guantanamo Bay prison is unclear, though.

As I’ve More…

Supreme Court Shuts Door on Gitmo Torture Case

The Supreme Court dealt a harsh blow on Monday to victims of abuse by U.S. officials during the “war on terror.” The court announced it would not review a federal appeals court ruling that dismissed a lawsuit by four British citizens who claim they were wrongly arrested, detained More…

Feds Consider Bringing Another High-Level Gitmo Prisoner to Trial in NYC

Federal prosecutors are weighing sending Guantanamo prisoner Majid Khan to face a federal court trial in New York, The Associated Press reports, based on an anonymous source.

Khan is one of fewer than two dozen “high-value” detainees at the prison camp, believed to be a senior member of More…

Supreme Court Rejects Key Torture Case

The Supreme Court today issued a blow to victims of abuse by U.S. officials during the “war on terror.” The high court this morning refused to review a federal appeals court ruling that dismissed a lawsuit by four British citizens who claimed they were wrongly arrested More…

Pentagon Tentatively Drops Charges Against Gitmo Detainee Already Returned Home

It took the Pentagon almost four months since a federal court ruled the government lacked sufficient evidence against Fouad al Rabia, but late last week — a day after the 50-year-old airline executive was flown home on a Kuwaiti royal jet — the U.S. military commission More…

Draft Memo Reveals Plans to Move Gitmo Detainees to Thomson, Ill.

Conservative bloggers were abuzz over the weekend over a leaked memo that appeared to show President Obama has decided to send all Guantanamo Bay detainees to the Thomson Correctional Center in Northwest Illinois “as expeditiously as possible.”

In fact, it turned out that the memo was a draft More…

Blackwater’s Participation in CIA Raids Raises Critical Questions

The news on Friday that Blackwater Worldwide (now known as Xe Services) participated in clandestine CIA operations in Iraq and Afghanistan that included targeted killings, kidnapping and “extraordinary renditions” raised more questions than it answered.

After all, we already knew that the U.S. government has relied More…

ACORN Wins Rare Injunction Against Defunding Law

In a highly unusual move, a federal court in New York issued a preliminary injunction late Friday afternoon to stop the government from enforcing a new law Congress passed that defunded the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN. The court found that the law likely More…

Religious Anti-Torture Group Urges Holder to Produce OPR Report

At the beginning of this month, I noted that Attorney General Eric Holder, despite an explicit promise to Congress to produce by the end of last month the much-awaited ethics report from the Office of Professional Responsibility on the work of Office of Legal Counsel lawyers who drafted the so-called More…

Comprehensive Immigration Reform Bill to Be Introduced Dec. 15

Though there’s been lots of talk so far about comprehensive immigration reform from advocates, a handful of lawmakers, and even President Obama when he addresses Latino groups, no one has yet introduced a bill in Congress.

That’s expected to change on Tuesday, Dec. 15, when Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) is More…