Guantánamo: Idealists Leave Obama’s Sinking Ship by Andy Worthington

by Andy Worthington
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.andyworthington.co.uk
1 December 2009

Last week, lawyer, ex-Army Captain and Iraq veteran Phillip Carter, described by Glenn Greenwald as “a very harsh critic of the Bush administration’s detention and interrogation policies,” suddenly resigned his post as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Policy, which he had occupied since April. Carter claimed that he was leaving due to “personal issues,” which may be true, but as Greenwald noted, “the policies Obama has adopted in the last six months in the very areas of Carter’s responsibilities were ones Carter vehemently condemned when implemented by Bush.”

Greenwald then proceeded to explain how, in May 2008, Carter had condemned the Bush administration’s Military Commissions (the trial system for Guantánamo prisoners) as “fundamentally and fatally flawed,” arguing that “the rule of law will prevail only if they are perpetually blocked,” and cited a trial in a “civilian court” (his emphasis) of accused terrorists in France that involved “a combination of open and sealed (i.e., classified) evidence to prove the defendants’ guilt in a six-day trial,” which he regarded as the only viable model for the United States to follow.

African Embassy Bombing Suspect To Face Trial In September 2010 by Andy Worthington

by Andy Worthington
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.andyworthington.co.uk
4 July 2009

OK, so nearly 12 years after he was indicted for his alleged part in the African embassy bombings in August 1998, over six years since he was seized after a gunfight in Gujrat, Pakistan in July 2004, and four years after his transfer to Guantánamo — after two years in secret CIA prisons, where, he says, he was “a victim of the cruel ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’” — Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian and one of 14 supposedly “high-value detainees” transferred to Guantánamo in September 2006, will face a trial in a federal court in New York. On Thursday, Federal Court Judge Lewis Kaplan set a date of September 13, 2010 for his trial to begin.

A courtroom sketch of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, by Christine Cornell, at his arraignment in New York on June 9, 2009.

Guantánamo: Charge Or Release Prisoners, Say No To Indefinite Detention by Andy Worthington

by Andy Worthington
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.andyworthington.co.uk
30 June 2009

So what’s happening now? According to a joint Washington Post / ProPublica article on Friday, “The Obama administration, fearing a battle with Congress that could stall plans to close Guantánamo, has drafted an executive order that would reassert presidential authority to incarcerate terrorism suspects indefinitely,” according to “three senior government officials.”

The administration moved swiftly to refute the story, with the Justice Department maintaining that it would not comment on specific plans until after July 21, when the administration’s inter-departmental Guantánamo Task Force is scheduled to complete its review of all the Guantánamo cases, and an unnamed official telling AFP that “no such draft order existed, though internal deliberations were taking place on how to deal with those inmates who could not be released or tried in civilian courts.” The Post accordingly revised its story online, stating that administration officials were only “crafting language for an executive order.”

Out Of Guantánamo: African Embassy Bombing Suspect To Be Tried In US Court by Andy Worthington

by Andy Worthington
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.andyworthington.co.uk
21 May 2009

In a move that seems to open up a route out of Guantánamo for prisoners accused of having an active involvement with international terrorism that does not involve reviving the much-criticized system of trials by Military Commission, the Justice Department announced today that Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian, and one of 14 “high-value detainees” transferred to Guantánamo from a secret CIA prison in September 2006, will be put on trial in a federal court in New York, following a thorough review of his case that was conducted by the interagency Guantánamo Review Task Force established by Barack Obama on his second day in office.

Ghailani, who is charged with “assist[ing] in the purchase of the Nissan truck as well as the oxygen and acetylene tanks that were used in the bombing of the US Embassy in Tanzania,” and who is “further alleged to have participated in loading boxes of TNT, cylinder tanks, batteries, detonators, fertilizer and sand bags into the back of the truck in the weeks immediately before the bombing,” admitted at a hearing in Guantánamo in 2007 that he “bought the TNT used in the bombing, purchased a cell phone used by another person involved in the attack and was present when a third person bought a truck used in the attack,” but apologized for his involvement, saying that he did not know that the supplies would be used to attack the embassy.