Blog of Rights
Jennifer
Turner
08/20/2010
Guantánamo

The Gitmo Sentence Guessing Game

By Jennifer Turner, Human Rights Researcher, ACLU Human Rights Program at 11:27am

Before Omar Khadr's trial ground to a halt last week, the sentencing hearing of 50-year-old detainee Ibrahim al-Qosi continued apace. Al-Qosi is the first detainee to be convicted in the military commissions under the Obama administration, in a plea deal in which he admitted to being an al Qaeda cook and occasional driver.

During the two days of sentencing hearings, everyone in the room other than the jurors knew that there had been a secret plea agreement capping the actual amount of time al-Qosi will serve at 10 years (two years in addition to the eight he's already served). On Monday, the judge, Lt. Col. Nancy Paul, ruled that this true sentence would be kept secret until the military commissions' Convening Authority approves it, at an unspecified date. The jurors were only given the enumerated charges to which al-Qosi had pled guilty, and had to set a formal sentence based on that information.

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07/13/2010
Guantánamo Dispatch

A System Designed to Produce Convictions, Not Justice

By Jennifer Turner, Human Rights Researcher, ACLU Human Rights Program at 4:40pm

On Monday pretrial hearings resumed in the case of Canadian Omar Khadr, captured at age 15 by U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Accused of throwing a grenade that killed an American soldier and participating in a terrorist conspiracy beginning when he was only 10 years old, Khadr has spent a third of his life at Guantánamo. Unless a plea bargain is reached, Khadr's August military commission trial will be the first under President Obama.

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05/08/2010
Guantánamo

Interrogator One

By Jennifer Turner, Human Rights Researcher, ACLU Human Rights Program at 12:08am

(Originally posted on Daily Kos.)

Bombshell Testimony from Bagram Interrogator Convicted of Abuse, Reporters Banned from Gitmo for Reporting his Name

On Thursday, pretrial hearings continued in the case of Canadian Omar Khadr, who has spent a third of his life in U.S. detention since he was captured at age 15. Though the Obama administration has claimed it intends to erase the taint of torture and abuse from the Bush-era Guantánamo military commissions, the government is trying to use evidence coerced out of the teenage boy in an illegitimate trial eight years later.

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04/29/2010
Guantánamo

Making It Up As We Go Along

By Jennifer Turner, Human Rights Researcher, ACLU Human Rights Program at 6:25pm

(Originally posted on Daily Kos.)

At least 30 journalists and human rights observers descended on Guantánamo this week to witness the pretrial hearings in the case of Canadian Omar Khadr. Now 23, Khadr was 15 when he was captured by U.S. forces in Afghanistan for allegedly throwing a grenade that killed a U.S. medic. Khadr will be the first person prosecuted in a military commission under President Obama, and the second person selected for military commissions trial who was a juvenile at the time of his alleged offenses.

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11/20/2009

It is Time to Join the Rest of the World: Omar Khadr and the Convention on the Rights of the Child

By Jennifer Turner, Human Rights Researcher, ACLU Human Rights Program at 12:53pm

Today marks the 20th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the most comprehensive treaty on children's rights. The convention has been ratified by nearly every country in the world, except the United States. The convention would fill current gaps in U.S. law, and provide all children in America with the same robust protections that children in 193 countries are already entitled to.

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01/16/2009
Guantánamo

International Intervention Needed on Behalf of Obama's Child Soldiers

By Jennifer Turner, Human Rights Researcher, ACLU Human Rights Program at 3:37pm

President-elect Barack Obama will make history on his inauguration day. And if a scheduled Guantánamo military commission trial goes forward on January 26, President-elect Obama will make a wholly different kind of history, by presiding over a terrible historical event.

On January 26, Guantánamo detainee Omar Khadr, a 22-year-old Canadian national who has been held at Guantánamo for nearly one-third of his life, is slated to be tried by military commission for war crimes allegedly committed when he was 15. If Omar Khadr's trial goes forward as scheduled on January 26, one of the first acts of President-elect Obama's administration will be to preside over the first war crimes prosecution of a child soldier in U.S. history.

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05/22/2008
Children's Rights

U.N. Grills U.S. on Detention of Accused Child Soldiers in Iraq and Guantánamo

By Jennifer Turner, Human Rights Researcher, ACLU Human Rights Program at 9:11pm

Today here at the United Nations headquarters in Geneva, the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child reviewed the United States for its compliance with the Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict. Ratified by the U.S. in 2002, the Optional Protocol lays out guidelines for the treatment of former child soldiers in U.S. custody and establishes the U.S.'s minimum obligations to protect children under 18 from military recruitment. Twenty-two U.S. officials, including Department of Defense officials overseeing Detainee Affairs, reported to the U.N. Committee during a public review session today.

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03/21/2011

While Manning Languishes in Military Custody, U.N. Calls for Accountability for Torture

By Jennifer Turner, Human Rights Researcher, ACLU Human Rights Program at 1:49pm

Friday in Geneva, the U.N. Human Rights Council, comprised of 47 nations, adopted a long list of over 200 recommendations of policy changes needed to bring the U.S. into compliance with its human rights obligations. The council's recommendations came out of the first-ever comprehensive review of the United States' human rights record, called the Universal Periodic Review (UPR). The recommendations covered a broad range of issue areas, including calling for the U.S. to impose a moratorium on the death penalty, to close Guantánamo, to reduce prison overcrowding, and to take steps to prevent racial profiling.

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12/17/2010

A Step Forward for Promoting Indigenous Rights

By Jennifer Turner, Human Rights Researcher, ACLU Human Rights Program at 4:43pm

Yesterday, the Obama administration announced that the U.S. will lend its support to the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), which recognizes a broad range of rights for indigenous peoples and articulates the rights set forth for indigenous peoples in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The decision is a reversal of the position taken by the Bush administration in 2007, when the U.S. voted against the UNDRIP even as 145 nations supported it. The ACLU and the Human Rights at Home Campaign have long called for unqualified endorsement of UNDRIP.

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10/26/2010
Guantánamo Dispatch

Escape from Guantánamo by Plea Deal

By Jennifer Turner, Human Rights Researcher, ACLU Human Rights Program at 11:22am

Yesterday, Canadian detainee Omar Khadr pled guilty to all five charges against him, in an 11th-hour plea deal that averted the scheduled resumption of his military commission trial. Imprisoned since his capture in Afghanistan at age 15, Khadr has spent a third of his life in U.S. detention.

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