Osama bin Laden's driver told an FBI interrogator that he overheard the al Qaeda founder's glee at the casualty count in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, a former FBI agent testified at the war court Wednesday.
The Pentagon opened its first war-crimes prosecution Tuesday with words purportedly from the mouth of Osama bin Laden, a ghoulish postmortem overheard by his driver in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks:
The U.S. government opened its first war crimes prosecution Tuesday with a narrative of Osama bin Laden's driver overhearing his boss offer an eerie post-mortem in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks:
Last month, it was the alleged 9/11 mastermind who censored a Guantánamo war court sketch artist. Tuesday, U.S. Special Forces were the censors.
Osama bin Laden's driver went on trial Monday with a not-guilty plea -- after his military judge excluded ''coercive'' interrogations in Afghanistan -- before a six-officer military jury. It's the first U.S. war crimes tribunal since World War II.
A military judge without explanation on Monday excluded from the trial of Osama bin Laden's driver any FBI or other interrogations of him at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, then began seating a military jury in the first U.S. war crimes tribunal since World War II.
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba -- A six-member jury of senior military officers will hear the first U.S. war crimes tribunal since World War II -- the al Qaeda terror conspiracy trial of Osama bin Laden's driver.
A Navy judge on Wednesday rejected a bid by Osama bin Laden's driver to have his charges dismissed because, his lawyers claimed, they did not exist as war crimes at the time of his November 2001 capture in Afghanistan.
Congress may have given war-on-terrorism captives the right to act as their own lawyers. But based on pre-trial hearings this week for the men accused of the 9/11 attacks, the Pentagon and the prison camps haven't provided the ''worst of the worst'' with the tools to defend themselves.
An alleged al Qaeda fighter accused of training the Sept. 11 hijackers sought access to classified evidence Thursday, reassuring the war court here that, once convicted, he'll take U.S. secrets to his grave.
Alleged 9/11 hijack conspirator Ramzi bin al Shibh refused to leave his prison camp cell Thursday, causing a military judge to postpone his hearing by a month.
A U.S. Marine Corps. judge reopened hearings at the 9/11 terror case Wednesday, with a plea to an alleged Saudi Arabian financier to accept the services of a Pentagon lawyer.
A federal judge handling the appeals of more than 200 Guantánamo detainees vowed Tuesday to hold lawyers' ''feet to the fire'' to ensure that the cases are handled as quickly as possible.
Lawyers asked a federal judge in Washington Thursday to stop the Pentagon from trying Osama bin Laden's driver by military commission at Guantánamo Bay until a civilian court rules whether the war court is legal.
A military judge Tuesday said he would explore whether reputed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed bullied his alleged co-conspirators into firing their lawyers, and next week will question each of the men accused of plotting the 2001 terrorist attacks.
A military judge has refused to delay the midsummer trial of Osama bin Laden's driver at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, saying lawyers had sufficient time to review a recent Supreme Court decision.
A federal appeals court announced Monday that it has overturned the Pentagon's classification of a Guantánamo Bay detainee as an enemy combatant. The judges ruled in favor of Huzaifa Parhat, 37, an ethnic Muslim Uighur, who is a Chinese citizen.
Defending his ''intense and direct'' management style, the general overseeing the war trials here testified Thursday that he pushed Pentagon lawyers to pick up the pace of war-crimes prosecutions -- not for political purposes but in the interest of kick-starting sluggish military commissions.
An Afghan detainee interrupted the testimony Thursday of a Harvard sleep disorder expert to describe first-hand a controversial Guantánamo sleep deprivation regime called the ``Frequent Flyer Program.''
An Army judge making his debut at the Guantánamo war court Thursday set an Oct. 8 trial date for Canadian captive Omar Khadr, accused of the grenade killing of a U.S. Delta Forces medic.
GUANTANAMO BAY |SUPREME COURT RULING
A sharply divided Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Guantánamo Bay detainees can challenge their extended imprisonment in federal court, and struck down as inadequate an alternative review system that Congress set up.
A Supreme Court ruling that grants terrorist suspects confined at Guantánamo Bay the right to challenge their detention in civilian courts bolsters the arguments of the only detainee on U.S. soil classified as an enemy combatant, his attorney said Thursday.
Trials by military commission at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, will go forward despite a U.S. Supreme Court decision granting war-on-terror detainees recourse to federal court, the Bush administration said late Thursday.
One by one, the U.S. military brought five accused 9/11 co-conspirators before a war court judge Thursday, and each one rejected his free-of-charge American lawyers. Two said they welcomed death.
Defense lawyers for the alleged 9/11 conspirators on Thursday accused the Pentagon prosecutor of rushing to begin the complex Sept. 11, 2001, terror trial in the height of the presidential campaign season.
U.S. military prosecutors swore out war crimes charges against a trio of Guantánamo Bay detainees alleging the men were part of an al Qaeda bomb-making squad. One has an engineering degree from a U.S. university.
REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK | GUANTANAMO
Guards put on a mock war court conviction to test the $12 million expeditionary legal compound; censors put a three-tent limit on photos; a Sudanese detainee cracked wise.
Military prosecutors filed war crimes charges Friday against a Sudanese man at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, for allegedly running a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan in the late 1990s, where some of the 9/11 hijackers also allegedly trained.
A military judge Thursday refused a defense request for delay and confirmed alleged al Qaeda kingpin Khalid Sheik Mohammed's June 5 court date at the military commissions, along with four other alleged 9/11 co-conspirators.
A detainee who had vowed a boycott turned up at his war court hearing Thursday and asked to call his family in his native Sudan to help him hire a lawyer, with his own money.
An Afghan detainee accused of spying on U.S. forces tried to bite and spit on his guards Wednesday, and was forced into his war court arraignment in handcuffs and leg shackles.
Lawyers for the five alleged 9/11 co-conspirators asked the court on Monday to postpone a June 5 arraignment -- seeking more time to build attorney-client relationships with the alleged architects of the Sept. 11 attacks.
A military commissions judge Friday postponed the scheduled trial of Osama bin Laden's driver until after the U.S. Supreme Court has decided another key detainee case.
Legal defense groups Tuesday accused the Pentagon of foot-dragging on security clearances that would let civilian lawyers help their military counterparts defend the alleged plotters of the Sept. 11 attacks at Guantánamo.
In a rebuke, a military judge has disqualified a key Pentagon general from any role overseeing the war crimes trial of Osama bin Laden's driver.
Attorneys for a detainee held here as an alleged al Qaeda co-conspirator filed suit against the British government on Tuesday, claiming it would violate its own foreign policy by permitting a former resident to face war crimes trial here with evidence allegedly obtained by torture.
An appeals court panel heard arguments Monday on whether to release the identities of some detainees at the Guantánamo Bay prison camp who suffered mistreatment by their handlers or other prisoners.
GUANTANAMO BAY
Osama bin Laden's driver mournfully declared a boycott of his war-on-terrorism trial Tuesday, despite a plea from his military judge that he press on because he had already beaten President Bush once, at the U.S. Supreme Court.
A former chief prosecutor for the war crimes court testified on Monday that the Pentagon rushed war-on-terror trials -- a move that could require secret sessions and the use of tainted evidence gleaned from water boarding.
Osama bin Laden's driver appeared at his war crimes trial Monday looking disheveled and threatening a boycott.
Detainees denounce the war-crimes court as a ''sham'' and refuse military lawyers. Attorneys consult their bars, worried that their licenses might be revoked for defending clients who fired them. And the Pentagon presses on in its push for speedy trials.
In an emerging trend, a defiant Sudanese terror suspect on Thursday became the third war court defendant in a row to fire his lawyer and boycott his military trial.
A Saudi Arabian captive accused of plotting terror attacks at sea in the Middle East called the war court here a sham on Wednesday, fired his Pentagon lawyer and was sent back to his cell with a promise from his judge that his military trial would go on without him.
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW
A Navy Reserves captain who in private life is a solo law practitioner in Virginia is assigned to defend Khalid Sheik Mohammed at his death-penalty 9/11 trial.
The chief defense counsel for the war crimes court at Guantánamo Bay on Monday appointed four U.S. military officers to defend four alleged co-conspirators facing possible death-penalty charges in the 9/11 attacks.
AT THE WAR COURT
A Pentagon appointee approved war crimes charges against an alleged al Qaeda foot soldier on Monday, starting the clock toward trial of the Afghan detainee accused of fighting the U.S. invasion.
Lawyers for Osama bin Laden's former driver argue that U.S. and allied forces assaulted their client in Afghanistan and treated him harshly at Guantánamo, in court papers that seek to have his statements to interrogators excluded from his war crimes trial.
Even as the U.S. government edges toward full-blown, war-crimes trials by military commission, all sides are grappling with what information can be made public and what must be kept secret.
An American college professor whose Kenyan husband was killed in the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Tanzania says a Guantánamo detainee accused in the attack should be tried in a civilian federal court, not by a military commission.
A decade after he was indicted in New York, and four years after he was taken into U.S. custody, the Pentagon announced Monday that it will seek to try a Tanzanian man for war crimes in the 1998 East African bombings.
The lawyer for Osama bin Laden's driver argues in a military commissions motion that senior Pentagon officials are orchestrating war crimes prosecutions for the 2008 campaign.
The United States violates international law by holding a Canadian former child soldier at Guantánamo without access to courts, his lawyers told Canada's Supreme Court on Wednesday.
For a third time, a military judge has authorized lawyers for Osama bin Laden's driver to send questions to alleged al Qaeda kingpins in segregation at Guantánamo.
Canadian captive Omar Khadr alleges that he was repeatedly threatened with rape during interrogation in Afghanistan and at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba.
Lawyers for four Kuwaiti men held at Guantánamo Bay have asked a court to block U.S. military prosecutors from contacting the detainees without their consent, accusing the government Monday of violating legal ethics.
In a rebuke to the government, an Army judge Friday issued five successive orders instructing the Pentagon to do more to help lawyers for Canadian captive Omar Khadr forge a defense.
In another war court case clouded by allegations of military abuse, a Saudi captive who swears he was brutalized by Army interrogators in Afghanistan was arraigned Thursday by a judge who presided over the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse prosecution.
U.S. guards carried a war-on-terror detainee out of his prison camp cell and led him into his arraignment in leg shackles Wednesday, a war court first.
Accusing the Pentagon of a cover-up, human rights lawyers Thursday filed suit seeking the full transcripts of military hearings for the alleged senior leadership of the al Qaeda terror network.
Plunging ahead with foot soldier prosecutions, the Pentagon swore out war crimes charges Wednesday against an Afghan man accused of fighting the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.
AT THE WAR COURT
A Pentagon official on Wednesday formally approved charges against a Sudanese captive at Guantánamo who allegedly worked as a driver and bodyguard for Osama bin Laden.
Reacting to Pentagon plans to stage its first death-penalty trial, the American Bar Association has written President Bush, again, protesting the war court at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
When did the war on terror begin? Is the globe really one big battlefield? At the military commissions, the definition of the ongoing war with al Qaeda -- when it started, who is immune from prosecution -- is emerging as a core issue for military judges and eventually U.S. officers who will sit in judgment.
Pentagon prosecutors are challenging a military court's decision to let Osama bin Laden's driver send written questions to alleged senior al Qaeda members held incommunicado at Guantánamo.
Overruling government objections, a military judge has agreed to let lawyers for Osama bin Laden's driver send written questions to Khalid Sheik Mohammed and six other alleged senior al Qaeda captives in seclusion at Guantánamo, according to a decision made public Thursday.
The Pentagon Monday issued charge sheets against six Guantánamo captives in the Pentagon and World Trade Center attacks, accusing them of conspiring in the killings of nearly 3,000 people on Sept. 11, 2001 -- and is seeking to execute them, if convicted.
The military late Friday announced it would press war crimes charges against two more captives -- one allegedly Osama bin Laden's press security, the other his reputed bodyguard and driver.
In a partial victory for Osama bin Laden's driver, a Navy judge Thursday said defense lawyers should be able to at least send in questions to alleged senior al Qaeda leaders in secret detention at this base.
On the eve of the resumption of its war crimes trials, the military on Sunday unveiled a new state-of-the-art court capable of trying six alleged terrorists simultaneously -- and silencing them from the outside world, if they try to spill state secrets.
Osama bin Laden's driver is so traumatized from long-standing solitary confinement that he may be unable to assist in his war court defense, his lawyers argue in a brief.
The Pentagon moved forward Wednesday with plans to try by military commission another Guantánamo detainee who was captured as a teenager in Afghanistan while fighting the U.S. invasion.
The U.S. Supreme Court turned down a lawyer's request Tuesday for immediate access to the medical files of a Guantánamo prisoner who says he has AIDS.
ACROSS THE GLOBE
President Bush told activists Saturday that two of the last four Kuwaitis held at Guantánamo Bay will be charged, but did not provide specifics. The fate of the four Kuwaiti men still held at Guantánamo was also on the agenda of a meeting Friday between Bush and the Kuwaiti emir, Sheik Sabah al Ahmed al Sabah.
The Defense Department confirmed late Friday that the latest man facing charges at the Guantánamo war court was related, by marriage, to a member of the hijack squad that slammed American Airlines 77 into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.
A military judge set a trial date for Osama bin Laden's former driver. Later, the Pentagon swore out charges against the brother-in-law of a 9/11 hijacker.
In an interim ruling made public Tuesday, a military judge said Osama bin Laden's Yemeni driver, captured in Afghanistan, is entitled to consideration that he may be a prisoner of war -- a status that would collapse his war crimes trial at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, for a third time.
Lawyers are asking a court to examine the way he was questioned while in three years of secret CIA custody -- and decide whether he was tortured.
The military commissions for detainees at the U.S. detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, fall short of international standards, a U.N. human rights expert who visited the camp said Wednesday.
A trio of federal court judges Tuesday ordered the Bush administration to preserve any evidence of possible torture in the case of Baltimore-raised Guantánamo detainee Majid Khan, who claims he was tortured while in secret CIA custody for years.
A U.S. military legal advisor wouldn't rule out the possibility that statements by suspected terrorists subjected to waterboarding, or simulated drowning, could be used at the coming trials by military commissions at Guantánamo Bay.
Lawyers for a Guantánamo detainee from Baltimore are asking a federal court to order the Bush administration to preserve evidence of how their client was treated in three-plus years of CIA custody, say he was tortured.
Military prosecutors Thursday showed a Navy judge a video clip of Osama bin Laden and his driver at a Muslim feast -- and introduced the driver's prison camp confessions that he spirited the al Qaeda founder to safety ahead of terrorist operations.
U.S. Supreme Court justices sounded skeptical Wednesday about the Bush administration's treatment of foreign-born prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay, raising questions about the future of White House war-on-terrorism tactics.
In an unusual alignment of court dockets, presidential-power watchers will be monitoring far-flung courtroom dramas -- reflecting the ongoing struggle to forge a coherent policy on how to detain and sometimes prosecute suspected enemies in the war on terrorism.
Five news organizations, including The Miami Herald's parent company, complained in a motion filed on Wednesday that they are being denied access to much of the military commission proceeding against Canadian war-on-terror captive Omar Khadr.
On a Pentagon detainee's birthday behind the razor wire, the U.S. Supreme Court declines to hear the case of the man who fears torture on his return to Algeria.
Canadian captive Omar Khadr's war crimes trial sputtered to a new start Thursday -- with no plea, no evidence and the explosive disclosure that the defense had learned of a top secret U.S. eyewitness who could help their client's case.
REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK
Seventy percent of the 320 or so captives currently keep Korans -- 30 percent, or nearly 100, of the men do not.
MILITARY COMMISSIONS
The FBI has assigned up to 300 agents to a special team to help build war crimes cases against Guantánamo Bay detainees once held by the CIA.
Even as the Pentagon moves to resume its war-on-terrorism trials, called military commissions, the detention center's commander said he has received no instructions and made no plans to to carry out the ultimate penalty they may impose -- death.
For the first time since the disclosure of black-site interrogations by the CIA, some civilian lawyers have been allowed to meet with a ''high-value detainee.''
The Pentagon on Monday named a veteran Army colonel with a military intelligence as well as defense lawyer's background to serve as chief prosecutor for war crimes trials at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
MILITARY COMMISSION
Pentagon prosecutors issued new charges Thursday against a Guantánamo captive, accusing him of the war crime of attempted murder in a 2002 grenade attack in Afghanistan.
The Bush administration insisted that Guantánamo Bay captives don't have a constitutional right to have judges hear their cases, and defended its treatment of the war-on-terrorism captives in a brief filed at the Supreme Court.
The Pentagon said Friday that the chief war crimes prosecutor for the occasional military commissions at Guantánamo Bay had abruptly resigned in a dispute over his independence.
In a surprise development for the on-again, off-again military commissions at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the Pentagon's chief war crimes prosecutor has abruptly resigned in a dispute over his independence.
The Senate on Wednesday rejected legislation that would have allowed terrorist suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to petition federal courts claiming that they're being held in error.
SUPREME COURT
With the U.S. Supreme Court set to take up Guantánamo detention policy again, the justices have received some unusual advice from a far-flung, friendly corner of the war-torn Middle East.
With plans scrapped for a massive war-crimes legal compound that might have cost $125 million, the Pentagon is now building a more modest tent city.
First military insider urges Congress to scrap the military-run reviews conducted at the U.S. Navy base detention center in southeast Cuba.
MILITARY COMMISSIONS
Guantánamo military judges dismissed war crimes charges against two detainees, citing the Pentagon's failure to comply with an act of Congress.
A Navy officer facing up to 13 years was sentenced to six months and will be dishonorably discharged for giving names of Guantánamo captives to a rights group in 2005.
The Pentagon renewed a terrorism case against Osama bin Laden's driver, resurrecting the conspiracy charge that he challenged all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Guantánamo's prison camps chief backed away from a proposed three-meeting limit between attorneys and detainees, saying the restrictions are no longer needed.
The Pentagon is undergoing some senior supervisory management changes in its units that run the war court.
Just as Guantánamo visitors never saw the entire story, the full picture of the first U.S. war-crimes tribunal since World War II emerged slowly.
MILITARY COMMISSION
In a surprise deal, an al Qaeda foot soldier from Australia trades silence on any possible Guantánamo abuse for a nine-month prison sentence in his homeland.
A Pentagon official quit to end a brouhaha over the service of pro-bono detainee defense attorneys.
Pressing forward with plans to try some Guantánamo captives, the Pentagon sent to Congress a manual for a war-crimes court that would permit hearsay evidence, coerced testimony and the execution of terrorists by order of the president.
A ruckus is brewing in legal circles over a Pentagon lawyer's targeting of law firms for providing free work to alleged terrorists.
The Navy lawyer who took the Guantánamo case of Osama bin Laden's driver to the U.S. Supreme Court - and won - has been passed over for promotion by the Pentagon and must soon leave the military.
In a major reversal of a keystone policy, the Bush administration declares all detainees in U.S. military custody are entitled to Geneva Convention protections that prohibit humiliating treatment and torture.
IN THE PRISON CAMPS
Osama bin Laden's driver praised Allah upon learning that the Supreme Court had sided with him against President Bush over military trials at U.S. prisons at Guantánamo.
SUPREME COURT
The Supreme Court dealt the Bush administration a devastating legal loss in the war on terrorism, ruling that the president overstepped his constitutional authority by creating ad hoc military tribunals for prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK
A prosecutor apologized to a Supreme Court justice, military judges differed on culturally appropriate attire and artists' sketches had a few surprises.
''I'm innocent and I'm not supposed to be here,'' said 27-year-old Binyam Ahmed Muhammad, who challenged virtually every portion of the Military Commissions proceedings.
A defense lawyer pleaded the Fifth Amendment and a captive who claims he was tortured dominated the most chaotic war-court session yet at Guantánamo.
SUPREME COURT
The Supreme Court heard the case of Osama bin Laden's former driver who is challenging President Bush's right to try him before a military commission.
SUPREME COURT
Osama bin Laden's driver is about to challenge President Bush's Military Commissions at the Supreme Court. At issue: Is the anti-terrorism court at odds with the U.S. Constitution?
The Pentagon will prohibit military commissions trying Guantánamo captives from including evidence gained through torture.
A captive facing conspiracy charges before a Military Commission raised the possibility during pre-trial hearings when, during questioning of a judge's competence to serve, the captive asked to be moved to a cell alongside the man known by his acronym ``KSM.''
Bush administration tells a federal appeals court commissions should be allowed to run their course before letting defendants appeal to U.S. courts.
Detainee tells Navy lawyer: "I don't want to make history. I just want to go home."
The decision by U.S. District Judge James Robertson, sitting 1,300 miles away in Washington, D.C., brought pretrial motions here to a skidding halt in the case of Yemeni captive Salim Hamdan, 34.
A lawyer for a suspected Sudanese terrorist wants to question former presidents Bush and Clinton and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.
Opening the United States' first war crimes trial since World War II, the government charged a wiry Yemeni who worked as Osama bin Laden's chauffeur with conspiracy as a member of the al Qaeda network.
Navy lawyer got special clearance to speak to a Herald reporter about his client -- Osama bin Laden's ex-driver.
