Talk about getting a second bite of the apple. I’ve written before about the problem with the Department of Justice jumping in to defend a lawsuit charging that John Yoo was responsible for torture and abuse of “enemy combatant” Jose Padilla. Given that Yoo is the subject of More…
One of many consequences of President Obama’s decision to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan is that those troops are likely to capture many more prisoners that end up at the U.S.-run prison at Bagram air base. That’s raising concerns among human rights groups that the More…
This weekend’s news that inmates at the part of the prison at the U.S. Air Base in Bagram, Afghanistan, run by Special Operations forces had suffered abuse sounded eerily reminiscent of the charges we’ve heard from previous prisoners victimized by interrogators at Guantanamo Bay. Joshua Partlow and Julie Tate at More…
The International Center for Transitional Justice usually focuses on bringing to light and holding perpetrators accountable for such heinous crimes as genocide, mass murder and systematic torture, often in far-off war-torn countries with dismal human rights records.
So it’s significant that today they’ve released a report More…
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.
The American Civil Liberties Union today asked a Washington, D.C., federal court to require the federal government to release the transcripts of 14 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay in which they describe abuse and torture suffered in CIA custody.
The transcripts come from the Combatant Status More…
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 More…
In a rare victory for torture victims, a federal judge yesterday ruled that detainees who claim they were tortured at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq can move ahead with their lawsuit against defense contractor CACI, which t the U.S. government hired to assist in interrogations of Iraqi prisoners. More…
We already knew that the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel held a broad view of executive power. But the memos released today suggest the OLC lawyers took that theory to a whole new level.
In the memo (pdf) concerning the “President’s power as More…
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