Obama revives military trials at Guantánamo

President Barack Obama brought back Bush-era military trials for terror suspects at Guantánamo Bay on Wednesday by signing new rules into law that will give detainees stronger legal rights in court. Photo Gallery Available

GUANTANAMO BAY

Supreme Court agrees to consider Guantánamo Uighurs case

The decision on whether or not Chinese Uighurs imprisoned at the Guantánamo prison camps can be released into the U.S. is now up to the Supreme Court.

Republican South Carolin Sen. Lindsay Graham, at left, calls on a citizen as Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., does the same during a health care town hall meeting Sept. 14, 2009 at the Citadel in Charleston, S.C. In addition to healthcare reform the senators also commented on troop levels in Afghanistan.

Lindsey Graham seeks to block 9/11 trials in U.S.

South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said Friday that he'd attached an amendment to an appropriations bill that would prohibit the Obama administration from spending money on the prosecution and trial of the accused terrorists before U.S. civilian federal judges.

At left, a photo of Guantanamo detainee Fouad Rabia, 50, of Kuwait, taken before his 2001 capture in Afghanistan and at right U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly who ordered his release Sept. 17, 2009 after reviewing his habeas corpus petition claiming the Department of Defense has detained him unlawfully.

Judge: Free Kuwaiti engineer at Guantánamo

A federal judge late Thursday ordered the Obama administration to set free a 50-year-old Kuwaiti aeronautics engineer who had been held as a war crimes suspect at Guantánamo since 2002.

Assistant Attorney General David Kris, left, of the Justice Department's National Security Division testifies with Defense Department General Counsel Jeh Johnson before the Senate Armed Services Committee July 7, 2009 in Washington, DC. The full committee met to hear testimony on legal issues regarding military commissions and the trial of detainees for violations of the law of war.

While defending war court, White House seeks delay

The Obama administration Wednesday broadly defended as constitutional its predecessor's format for military commissions at Guantánamo but said it would seek to delay next week's sanity hearings in a Sept. 11 case while it revamps its war on terror prosecution strategy. Photo Gallery Available

Alleged 9/11 co-conspirator Ramzi bin al Shibh, now approved to face a death-penalty charges trial at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, is shown in this video image from January 2002.

Appeals court to hear 9/11 accused's emergency plea

A federal appeals court late Friday agreed to consider an alleged 9/11 plotter's plea to halt his sanity hearing slated for Sept. 21-25 at the war court at the U.S. Navy base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Photo Gallery Available

WAR ON TERRORISM

Guantánamo captives winning lawsuits 29-7

Judges weighing who must stay at and who can go from Guantánamo have so far ruled for the release of 29 detainees and told the Pentagon it can retain seven others.

Accused al Qaeda propagandist Ali Hamza al Bahlul waves a boycott sign at his May 7, 2008 arraignment on war crimes charges at Camp Justice, the military commissions complex, at the U.S. Navy base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as shown in a courtroom sketch submitted to U.S. military scrutiny before release. At his right is a Pentagon paid translator.

Bin Laden aide's Guantánamo conviction appealed

Pentagon defense lawyers this week appealed the war crimes conviction of Osama bin Laden's media secretary at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, on free speech grounds. Photo Gallery Available

Fawzi al Odah, now 32, has been held at the prison camps at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, since early 2002. On Aug. 24, 2009, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly upheld the Pentagon's authority to hold him as a war captive. Al Odah's was one of the first habeas corpus unlawful detention petitions filed at the federal court in Washington D.C.

Judge rules Kuwaiti at Guantánamo was foot soldier

A federal judge has upheld the military detention of a Kuwaiti man whose lawyers were among the earliest and most persistent challengers of President George W. Bush's right to lock him up as an enemy combatant at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Photo Gallery Available

Judge: CIA interrogations not relevant to 9/11 accused's sanity

U.S. military defense lawyers for accused 9/11 conspirator Ramzi bin al Shibh cannot learn what interrogation techniques CIA agents used on the Yemeni before he was moved to Guantánamo to be tried as a terrorist, an Army judge has ruled. Photo Gallery Available

UK judges: Intelligence officer visited Morocco

A British intelligence officer repeatedly visited Morocco at the same time that a former U.K. resident was allegedly being tortured there, two senior judges said Friday.

Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle was appointed to the United States District Court in October 1999. She received a B.A. from Wellesley College in 1970, a Masters in City Planning from Yale University in 1972, and a J.D. from Boston College Law School in 1975. Following law school, she served as law clerk to Chief Justice Edward F. Hennessey of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. From 1976 until 1984, Judge Huvelle was an associate at the firm of Williams & Connolly and in 1984, she became a partner at that firm. She was appointed Associate Judge of the D.C. Superior Court in September 1990 and served in the Civil, Criminal and Family Divisions until her appointment to the federal bench.

Judge orders young Guantánamo detainee's release

A judge ruled Thursday that one of the youngest detainees brought to Guantánamo Bay is being held illegally and must be released.

U.S. District Judge Ellen Huvelle's order does not end the case of Mohammed Jawad, however. Deputy Assistant Attorney General Ian Gershengorn told the judge that as the United States negotiates with the detainee's home country of Afghanistan for his return next month, the Justice Department also is pursuing a criminal investigation. Photo Gallery Available

In this June 5, 2008 file photo, approved for release by a U.S. military review, a U.S. trooper walks at Camp Justice, the legal complex of the Military Commissions, at the U.S. Navy base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Guantánamo war court faces technological, legal challenges

The Pentagon plunged forward Wednesday with pretrial hearings against eight detainees in its beleaguered war court system with challenges to both the ongoing terror prosecutions and their remote state-of-the-art technology.

This undated file picture released 10 October 2001 by the FBI shows Tanzanian Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani. The Pentagon announced on March 31, 2008 it had charged him with murder, attacking civilians and material support for terrorism among other charges related to the bombing of the US Embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, which killed 11 people.

Ex-Guantánamo detainee seeks 'black sites' access

Lawyers for a Guantánamo detainee charged with terrorism crimes have asked the U.S. government to preserve overseas locations where he was subjected to ''physical and psychological ill-treatment'' at secret CIA prisons known as ''black sites'' until they can inspect them.

Two Uighur Muslim detainees at Camp Iguana, Chinese citizens captured in Afghanistan but cleared of enemy combatant status, stage a crayon and sketchbook protest on June 1, 2009 inside their detention center compound in this photo cleared for release by the U.S. military at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. A judge ordered them set free last year but the Obama administration has yet to find a nation to grant them asylum. "We need to Freedom. Do not oppress us," says one page of their protest poster book in a neck-down photo that U.S. military censors insist upon to make the men unrecognizable.

Uighurs ask Supreme Court to free them from Guantánamo

Attorneys for 17 Muslims from China locked up inside a prison camp at Guantánamo asked the U.S. Supreme Court Friday to take on the case of the men whom a judge ordered set free eight months ago. Photo Gallery Available

The CIA waterboarded Khalid Sheik Mohammed in secret detention before his September 2006 transfer to the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Obama still deciding how to prosecute 9/11 accused

President Barack Obama is still deciding whether to go to federal court with the death penalty cases against five men accused of orchestrating the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a Defense Department official has notified the thousands of victim family members. Photo Gallery Available

U.S. Army military judge Col. James L. Pohl arrives for a pretrial hearing for U.S. Army Pfc. Lynndie England at Fort Hood, Texas, Thursday, July 7, 2005.

Army judge postpones Guantánamo hearing

The chief judge for the Pentagon's Military Commissions has bowed to a White House request and postponed until late September a war court hearing at Guantánamo Bay for a Saudi man accused of aiding al Qaeda, according to a document obtained by The Miami Herald. Photo Gallery Available

Ahmed Darbi, a Saudi, in an undated photo taken inside the detention center at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Judge won't delay May 27 military commission session

The chief of the Pentagon war court has spurned a defense request for delay and ordered a Military Commission hearing that will address the issue of torture to go forward after Memorial Day at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Lawsuit: Detainee was tortured by U.S. in late '01

A Tunisian man detained after the Sept. 11 attacks was tortured at CIA-operated secret prisons in Afghanistan months before a Justice Department memo sanctioned the practices, a lawsuit filed Thursday alleges.

In the Courts

Holder, Gates oppose restrictions on Gitmo trials