Guantánamo

01/10/2012
Indefinite Detention

Check Out Our "Close Gitmo" Activist Toolkit!

By Ateqah Khaki at 5:45pm

Tomorrow marks 10 years since the first prisoners were sent to the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, making it the longest-standing war prison in U.S. history.

To learn how you can amplify the call to close Guantánamo, once and for all, check out our new activist toolkit.

And in case you missed them, be sure to check out the “Gitmo by the Numbers” Infographic that we blogged about yesterday, and our blog post about Lakhdar Boumediene, an innocent man who was imprisoned at Guantánamo for seven and a half years without charge or trial. Tomorrow, we’ll feature a podcast conversation with Mr. Boumediene.

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07/05/2011
U.S. Torture

The Value of the Rear-View Mirror

By Allie Bohm, Advocacy & Policy Strategist, ACLU at 1:32pm

Remember back in the 1980s when some cars only had one side rear-view mirror? Remember how that was later made illegal, and cars were required to have mirrors on both sides as a matter of safety?

On Friday, Gen. David Petraeus was quoted in the Wall Street Journal as saying, "It is time to take the rear-view mirrors off the bus with respect to certain actions out there." Now, I remember driver education, and I remember the video showing just how large buses' blind spots are and just how necessary their mirrors are. As any 16-year old in drivers' ed can tell you, rear-view mirrors — and the ability to see behind yourself — are paramount to safety on the road.

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04/25/2011
Guantánamo

ACLU Lens: Guantánamo Documents Reveal Dubious Claims to Hold Detainees

By Suzanne Ito, ACLU at 1:38pm

Last night, a handful of news organizations released hundreds of pages of documents profiling past and present detainees held at Guantánamo. Among other things, the documents reveal:

The New York Times reports:

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10/29/2010
Guantánamo Dispatch

The Victims

By Jennifer Turner, Human Rights Researcher, ACLU Human Rights Program at 5:07pm

Yesterday was an emotional day of testimony from widow Tabitha Speer and Omar Khadr. As a reminder, on Monday, Khadr pled guilty as part of a plea agreement to all of the charges against him, including throwing a grenade that killed Sgt. Christopher Speer eight years ago. We are now in the sentencing phase of the case.

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05/05/2010
Guantánamo

Taxi to the Dark Side

By Jennifer Turner, Human Rights Researcher, ACLU Human Rights Program at 12:40pm

Hearings continued Monday and Tuesday in the case of Canadian Omar Khadr, the last Western national still being held at Guantánamo. 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. Unless a plea bargain is reached, Khadr will be the first person prosecuted in a military commission under President Obama.

We have long known, since the creation of the military commissions, that the question of torture is at the heart of these proceedings. Since Omar Khadr first announced he had been abused while detained at Bagram and Guantánamo, we've faced the shameful possibility that he could be convicted using confessions extracted through torture and abuse. This week the commission is examining whether self-incriminating statements Khadr made to interrogators should be excluded from trial because of torture and other abuse.

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01/25/2010
Guantánamo

ACLU's Anthony Romero on Obama's First Year

By Suzanne Ito, ACLU at 4:05pm

ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero spoke with Glenn Greenwald for Salon Radio about the release of our report evaluating President Obama's first year in office. Speaking specifically about the president's failure to meet his own deadline to close Guantánamo, Anthony says:

Guantánamo is not just a physical location or a symbolic gesture. It's also about a set of rules and policies that have been attached at Guantánamo. The holding of individuals without charges or trial, the lack of access to counsel, the conditions of their confinement, the conditions of their transfer, have not been worked out in the Thompson proposal. And in the end, if we move individuals who are being held indefinitely without charges or trial from Guantánamo to Thompson, Illinois, and we still hold them indefinitely without charges or trial, we've not fixed the Guantánamo problem, we've just shifted it to Guantánamo North.

Listen to the entire interview here, or read the transcript here.

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09/08/2009
Indefinite Detention

Indefinite Detention Sacrifices Human Dignity

By Suzanne Ito, ACLU at 5:39pm

Last weekend , NOW on PBS explored indefinite detention in its latest episode, "After Guantánamo." In it, host David Brancaccio interviewed Marine Lt. Col. Stuart Couch, who was tasked with prosecuting Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a Guantánamo detainee accused of 9/11-related crimes. In 2004, Couch became the first of six military lawyers to resign from prosecuting the military commissions cases assigned to them because they disagreed with the commissions' flawed system of "justice," which includes using evidence gained through torture and rigging the trials in favor of a conviction.

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07/09/2009
Indefinite Detention

President Obama: The Whole World Is Watching

By Suzanne Ito, ACLU at 11:01pm

As President Obama travels overseas, the ACLU reminds him that in order to restore America's name around the world, we must end indefinite detention and close Guantánamo. This ad appears in the July 10, 2009, edition of the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera:

(Click to enlarge)
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07/09/2009
Guantánamo

What Do Vacuums and the Military Commissions Have in Common?

By Amanda Simon at 7:10pm

This week has been a busy one for those following the military commissions debate. Congress has held not one, but two hearings on recent proposed changes to the military commissions.

Before we get into that, a brief history lesson: The military commissions were created in 2006 by the passage of the Military Commissions Act. I could write paragraph after paragraph about why this bill was unconstitutional, should never have been written in the first place and was partially ruled illegal by the Supreme Court but, for the sake of time and space, I'll just point you here.

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02/06/2009
Guantánamo

Gitmo Truth Out

By Suzanne Ito, ACLU at 5:53pm

Cue the smoke machine and spooky lights: Fox News is raising the specter of terrorists living in people's "backyards."

Honestly, we expected this to happen. President Obama makes good on a campaign promise by signing orders to close Guantanamo and end torture—and really, when's the last time you remember a politician doing that?—and his detractors pounced practically before the ink dried.

Senators are saying that bringing detainees to the U.S. "will endanger American lives." Rush Limbaugh is spreading the totally unsupported claim that 61 already-released detainees have "returned to the battlefield." And, naysayers continue to make claims that our criminal justice system is incapable of prosecuting terrorism suspects. We've already debunked both claims, here, and here.

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