9/11

Fouad al Rabiah, a Kuwaiti Airways engineer accused of being an aide to Osama bin Laden who recently won his habeas corpus case in federal court, is a step closer to going home. McClatchy newspapers reports that the 50-year-old father of four was moved to the part of the Guantanamo detention center reserved for detainees [...]

A bipartisan group of more than 120 judges, prosecutors, diplomats, former members of Congress and high-level military and government officials yesterday released a proposed plan for closing the Guantanamo Bay prison camp and trying all suspected terrorists in civilian federal court.
“Some have opposed the closing of Guantanamo because they believe there is no viable alternative [...]

The U.S. government has agreed to pay a total of $1.26 million dollars to five men who claim they were illegally detained and mistreated after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, as part of a settlement agreement reached between the Justice Department and the Center for Constitutional Rights.

Depending on who you ask, the sentencing yesterday of Ali Saleh Kahlah Al-Marri to eight years in prison is either evidence that the civilian federal judicial system can successfully handle terror cases, or evidence that it’s a dismal failure.
Yesterday, Jonathan Hafetz, the American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who represented Al-Marri in his challenge to military [...]

President Obama confirmed Wednesday that he plans to keep the controversial military commissions alive.

This seems almost too weird to be true, but Wired reports that on Oct. 1, federal agents seized the computers, manuscripts and pickaxes of an anarchist social worker in Queens, N.Y., claiming he violating anti-rioting laws on Twitter.

The Obama administration is making plans to send about 25 detainees from the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay to federal prisons, to be tried in civilian federal courts, according to Newsweek.
As TWI reported last week, the biggest ongoing controversy is over where to try the five suspected 9/11 co-conspirators. The administration has said it prefers [...]

The possibility prompts fervent opposition from Republicans, who say the 9/11 terrorists should never be allowed anywhere on U.S. soil, let alone in a civilian U.S. court.

In late September, the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, or TRAC, a widely respected data research and analysis organization affiliated with Syracuse University, issued a report based on its analysis of extensive federal government records regarding terrorism cases. It concluded that eight years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, “federal agencies can’t seem to agree on [...]

To follow up on my earlier post about Rep. Louis Slaughter (D-N.Y.) and her speech on her colleagues’ move to amend the Freedom of Information Act to prevent the release of photographs depicting abuse of detainees in U.S. custody, it’s worth looking at the conference report on the bill. The bill is called the “Protected [...]