war on terror

Breaking news from Reuters:
An Italian judge sentenced 23 former CIA agents to up to eight years in prison on Wednesday for the abduction of a Muslim cleric in a landmark ruling against the “rendition” flights used by the former U.S. government.
The Americans were tried in absentia for the 2003 kidnapping, in a case that garnered [...]

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 [...]

The Washington Post’s story today about liberals who are frustrated that the Obama administration isn’t pressing harder to win confirmation for liberal-leaning judges to the federal courts should also serve as a reminder that there are a whole lot of key Justice Department posts still not confirmed yet, either. Whether that’s because the White House [...]

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 [...]

Among the cases the Supreme Court will consider reviewing in its private meeting tomorrow are two controversial cases arising out of the war on terror. Both question whether the president’s authority over detainees and information about their treatment is absolute, or reviewable by the federal courts.
The first and better-known case involves whether the executive branch [...]

9/11 had many horrendous consequences, and among them was the Bush administration’s descent into embracing torture in the name of preserving freedom. Some, like Vice President Dick Cheney, continue to defend the uncivilized practice. In response to that defense, two retired four-star generals, former Marine Corps Commandant Charles Krulak and Central Command chief Joseph Hoar [...]

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 violation for physicians. The group is calling [...]

Documents reveal the CIA was allowed to deny detainees sleep upward of 80 to 180 hours at a time.

I’m already hearing speculative groans that the CIA planted this story with Walter Pincus at The Washington Post today about how a military commander in 2003 did things just as bad as the things the CIA interrogators discussed in the recently-released CIA inspector general report did, so Attorney General Eric Holder’s investigation into CIA actions [...]

As Newsweek reported Friday evening, the CIA inspector general report expected to be released on Monday reveals that the CIA staged mock executions to terrify terror suspects into talking. Regardless of whether interrogators got the information they were looking for, these actions were clearly against the law. It is a violation of both the federal [...]