American Civil Liberties Union

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.

Today, President Obama ordered the federal government to purchase the Thomson Correctional Center, a maximum security prison in northwestern Illinois, and the new home for a "limited number" of detainees currently held at Guantánamo Bay.

This sounds like a good thing—we've been advocating for the closure of Guantánamo for years.

Today, a group of musicians, including REM, Pearl Jam and The Roots filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to find out whether their music was played at the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay.  The request for information stems from former Guantánamo detainees’ testimony and released government documents that document that music has been used as part of interrogations.

Today we learned that evidence gained through the torture of Mohammed Jawad would not be used against him in his federal court case challenging his unlawful detention. Jawad was a young boy when captured in Afghanistan in 2002. Evidence gained through torture following Jawad's arrest was previously thrown out by the judge in Jawad's military commission hearing. In his habeas case, the government had sought to rely on this same evidence, as well as statements obtained through torture and other coercion at Guantanamo and Bagram.