military commission

A military commission judge has ruled that the types of abusive techniques U.S. interrogators used on a suspected 9-11 conspirator are irrelevant to determining his competence to stand trial, the Miami Herald reports.
Ramzi bin al Shibh is one of five men charged by the U.S. military commission with having participated in planning the Sept. 11 [...]

The last time I wrote about the case of Guantanamo detainee Mohammed Jawad, the government had just conceded that its primary evidence — his “confessions” — were the product of torture and inadmissible in court. But the government still wasn’t letting Jawad go. Last night I received a copy of the transcript of last Wednesday’s [...]

As we’re talking about detainees, don’t miss Marc Ambinder’s curtain-raiser of the Obama administration’s detainee task force that I wrote about last week. He’s got a good account of a hypothetical scenario the task force is entertaining.

Why would the Obama administration, after having suspended the Bush military commissions that President Obama called an “enormous failure,” now be pushing to finalize the conviction and life sentence of a detainee who boycotted his trial due to procedures that he — and much of the world — insisted were unfair?
As I noted in my [...]

Recent reports quoting anonymous officials within the Obama administration suggest the president is considering reviving the same military commissions that he called “an enormous failure” as a candidate.

As Spencer noted earlier, detainee advocates like the ACLU are hailing President Obama’s decision to seek a 120-day stay of the military commissions proceedings to decide what to do about the trials. However, the lawyer for Mohammed Jawad, an Afghani 17-year-old arrested five years ago for allegedly throwing a hand grenade at a U.S. military [...]