Military Commissions

06/19/2013

Guántanamo Dispatch: Improvising Basic Trial Rights

By Ian Kysel, Aryeh Neier Fellow, ACLU Human Rights Program at 10:11am

Last week's military commissions proceedings in the trial of Abd al Rahim Al-Nashiri in Guantánamo Bay demonstrates the grave threat to justice posed by an ad hoc approach to a defendant's rights. Life and death decisions—Al-Nashiri could face the death penalty—mustn't be made using improvised rules, but in last week's pre-trial hearings at Guantánamo, the rules continued to be made up as the military commissions churn on.

06/14/2013

Guantánamo

Guántanamo Dispatch: New Revelations of Attorney–Client Surveillance

By Ian Kysel, Aryeh Neier Fellow, ACLU Human Rights Program at 4:37pm

As debate rages about the National Security Agency vacuuming up Americans' phone and Internet data, a different form of government surveillance is on the docket here in Guántanamo. This week, at the military commission pre-trial hearings of Abd al Rahim Al-Nashiri, arguments have concerned the extent of the government's monitoring of attorney–client communications and how that monitoring will impact the proceedings.

03/22/2013

Guantánamo

Censorship at Guántanamo: Thoughts and Memories Don't Belong to the Government

By Noa Yachot, Communications Strategist, ACLU at 4:16pm

In the Guantánamo Bay military commissions, the ACLU is persisting in its fight against the government's legally and morally untenable claim that it can censor from the public the 9/11 defendants' personal experiences and memories of torture, rendition, and detention by the CIA. This week, we filed a reply brief responding to the government's arguments in support of censorship.

03/15/2013

Women in the Military

Truly Dishonorable: Military Justice System Betrays Survivors of Sexual Assault

By Elayne Weiss, Washington Legislative Office at 4:49pm

Rebekah Havrilla, a former Army sergeant, received no justice after she was raped by a fellow soldier while serving in Afghanistan.

On Wednesday, Rebekah testified before the Senate Armed Services Personnel Subcommittee at a hearing on military sexual assault, recounting her traumatic and downright appalling time serving in a command culture that tolerated sexual assault and harassment. Her subsequent experience with the military justice system re-traumatized her after she decided to come forward and report her rapist.

01/09/2013

Solitary Confinement

A Misguided Ruling in the WikiLeaks Case: 23 Hours a Day Alone in a Cell is Always Solitary Confinement

By Amy Fettig, ACLU National Prison Project at 1:59pm

For nine months, Pfc. Bradley Manning was held in a windowless cell...

10/19/2012

Guantánamo Dispatch

Guantánamo Dispatch: Arguing for the First Amendment

By Zach Levine, ACLU National Security Project at 5:18pm

With the world watching, a pre-trial hearing got underway this week in the Guantánamo military commission prosecution of the five alleged 9/11 co-conspirators. Prime among the issues before the military judge was how transparent the commissions will be. The ACLU’s Hina Shamsi argued our motion in support of the public’s constitutional right of access to the proceedings – and against the government’s unconstitutional effort to prevent the public from hearing defendants’ testimony of their torture and abuse in U.S. custody.

10/15/2012

Guantánamo Dispatch

At Guantánamo Today: ACLU Asks Judge Not to Censor Torture Testimony

By Hina Shamsi, Director, ACLU National Security Project at 9:53am

I’m in Guantánamo today, expecting to argue the ACLU’s constitutional challenge to the censorship of torture in the military commissions this afternoon or tomorrow.

The Guantánamo military commissions were created in part to hide the government’s illegal torture program while permitting the use of information obtained through torture. Because of improvements in 2009 in the law governing the commissions, it’s harder (though not impossible) for coerced evidence to be used in the proceedings. But the government still wants to hide from the public what it did to prisoners in CIA and military custody.

08/28/2012

Guantánamo Dispatch

Guantánamo Dispatch: The Public’s Right to Know

This past week, I traveled to Guantánamo Bay to observe military commission hearings, continuing the ACLU’s long-standing commitment to be present at each and every hearing of these deeply flawed tribunals.

08/02/2012

Military Commissions

Guantánamo Military Judge Grants ACLU’s Request to Argue Against Censorship of 9/11 Defendants’ Testimony

By Hina Shamsi, Director, ACLU National Security Project at 6:18pm

In an order made public today, a military commissions judge at Guantánamo Bay announced that he will hear oral argument on the ACLU’s challenge to censorship of torture at the trial of the 9/11 defendants.

In May, we filed a motion asking the military commission to deny the government’s request to suppress statements by the defendants about their treatment while in U.S. custody, including torture and other abuse. As we said in our motion,

07/25/2012

Children's Rights

U.S. Military Treatment of Juvenile Detainees Undergoes International Scrutiny

By Allison Frankel, ACLU Human Rights Program at 11:37am

When the U.S. ratified the international treaty on the rights of children in armed conflict in 2002, it committed to protecting children under 18 from military recruitment and deployment to war and guaranteeing basic protections to former child soldiers, including those in U.S. military custody. Formally known as the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict (OPAC), the treaty requires ratifying nations to submit periodic reports on the progress they have made to implement their treaty obligations to the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child, a body of independent human rights experts charged with monitoring countries’ compliance with the treaty. The U.S. government’s latest report will be reviewed by the Committee in January 2013. The list of issues to be discussed during this review, which was adopted by the Committee on July 3, raises serious concerns regarding U.S. compliance with the Protocol and provides an opportunity for the United States to provide transparency and accountability for its treatment of juveniles in military custody.

American Civil Liberties Union