The Washington Independent

Posts Tagged detainees

Court Rules Government Can Continue to Hide Detainee Torture Testimony

By | 10.16.09 | 2:43 pm

A federal court today ruled that the government can continue to suppress transcripts of former CIA prisoners now being held at Guantanamo Bay talking about abuse and torture they suffered in CIA custody. The ruling came in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the American Civil More…

More on the Congressional Move to Amend FOIA, Hide Torture Photos

By | 10.15.09 | 1:56 pm

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 More…

New Bagram Rules Seem a Lot Like Old GTMO Rules

By | 09.14.09 | 1:53 pm

The Obama administration is putting a new plan in place at Afghanistan’s Bagram air field detention facility to bring indefinite detentions there — a practice viewed as a replication of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility’s more noxious functions — to an end. What does it include? Assigning U.S. military More…

U.S. to Allow Afghan Detainees to Challenge Detentions

By | 09.12.09 | 9:05 pm

Big news from The Washington Post:

Hundreds of prisoners held by the U.S. military in Afghanistan will for the first time have the right to challenge their indefinite detention and call witnesses in their defense under a new review system being put in place this week, according to administration officials.

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Report Suggests Physicians Experimented on Detainees in U.S. Custody

By | 09.03.09 | 12:50 pm

A report by Physicians for Human Rights released on Monday claims that U.S. physicians and psychologists betrayed ethical standards by collecting data on detainees’ reactions to abusive interrogations to as to improve their effectiveness. This would appear to constitute experimentation on human prisoners, which is a professional ethics More…

But If We Let Them Go, They’ll Tell People How They Were Tortured

By | 08.24.09 | 9:36 pm

A four-plus page section of the 2004 CIA inspector general report on torture is called “Endgame,” and, ominously, all but two paragraphs, far separated from each other, are redacted. Here’s what the first one says:

The number of detainees in CIA custody is relatively small by comparison with those

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Hoekstra Fear-Mongers GTMO in Michigan

By | 08.21.09 | 11:12 am

As Daphne has written this week, the residents of Standish, Mich., are starting to turn against a proposal to send terrorism detainees from Guantanamo Bay to their town’s prison, a proposal floated by the legislature and seconded by Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) to alleviate Standish’s economic woes.  David Munson, More…

Uighurs Working at Bermuda Golf Course

By | 08.05.09 | 4:48 pm

This is nice.

Four Muslims from China once confined to small prison cells as suspected terrorists at Guantánamo are now sprucing up the wide-open spaces of an oceanside golf course for the PGA Grand Slam of Golf.

The Uighurs who moved to the British island territory in June have joined

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Lead Military Lawyer Confirms Afghan Witnesses Said They Were Paid By U.S.

By | 08.04.09 | 12:07 pm

Following up on my story posted this morning about the government’s botched case against an Afghan teenager held at Guantanamo Bay, I spoke today to Maj. Gen. David Frakt, the lead military defense lawyer on the case who’s represented Jawad both before the U.S. military commission at Guantanamo Bay More…

No ‘Finalized’ Pentagon Guantanamo ‘Recidivism’ Report

By | 08.03.09 | 12:12 pm

I was out on Friday and offline this weekend, but don’t miss Adam Serwer at Tapped birddogging a CBS report on a Pentagon survey ostensibly showing an 18 percent “recidivism” rate for released Guantanamo detainees. According to Serwer, CBS didn’t report that the survey isn’t actually finished, which seems More…