national security courts

Human Rights First has just released a new report updating its previous study of criminal terrorism cases prosecuted since the early 1990s. Once again, it concludes that the federal courts are fully capable of prosecuting complex and sensitive cases of international terrorism.
The organization’s previous report, issued last year, was written by two former federal prosecutors [...]

NPR’s report this morning that the Brookings Institution’s Benjamin Wittes has proposed what’s expected to be a highly influential plan for “preventive detention” — which could lock up “dangerous” terror suspects potentially forever without charge or trial — gives even more urgency to the question that Spencer raised here more than a month ago.
Will the [...]

As Spencer just noted, it’s yet another day of strange and tumultuous proceedings, the five detainees charged with planning the 9/11 attacks withdrew their initial attempt to plead guilty before the Guantanamo military commission. Although all five detainees this morning sent a letter to the judge indicating they wanted to plead guilty, later in [...]

In the NY Times Week in Review on Sunday, Jonathan Mahler opens his piece about “How to Define Terror” with the story of Salim Hamdan, former driver for Osama bin Laden, who was shipped back to Yemen last week after being acquitted of most of the charges brought against him by the US military commissions [...]

Whatever you think of the prosecution and conviction yesterday of the Holy Land Foundation following a 7-week trial, it does seem to prove that federal courts are capable of handling the prosecution of suspected terrorists.
Holy Land former chairman Ghassan Elashi and Shukri Abu-Baker, the group’s chief executive, were convicted of a combined 69 counts, including [...]

Closing Guantanamo and ending the military commissions is the easy part. It’s what to do with the people imprisoned there that’s already presenting a political problem for the president-elect and his new administration.

Monday’s news that President-elect Barack Obama and his advisers are planning to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay and prosecute some of the prisoners detained there in special national-security courts has prompted a retreat by the Obama team and swift responses by advocates on all sides.
On Tuesday, senior Obama foreign policy adviser Denis McDonough said [...]