In the Courts

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Tweets from Guantánamo:


  • The view from the spectators gallery in the maximum security war court on May 8, 2008 when a series of glitches from power outages to frozen video feeds marred the arraignment of since convicted al Qaeda propagandist Ali Hamza al Bahlul of Yemen.

    Bin Laden propagandist convicted

    A military jury Monday convicted Osama bin Laden's media secretary of war crimes for creating an al Qaeda recruiting video that prosecutors argued incited suicide bombers. Photo Gallery Available

  • Detainee remains in limbo

    Even as the Pentagon resumes pre-trial hearings in the 9/11 case, the military is still dogged by what to do with its lone war court convict

  • 2008 | Driver's trial made war court firsts

    The first terrorist convicted at trial by military commission was also the first man acquitted of a war crime.

  • 9/11 victim can't speak at sentencing hearing

    A military judge Wednesday spurned a Pentagon plan to have an FBI agent who was in New York on Sept. 11, 2001, testify as a victim at the sentencing hearing of Osama bin Laden's driver.

  • Pentagon tribunal takes first secret testimony

    The military commission hearing the first U.S. war crimes tribunal since World War II took secret testimony on Thursday, a first.

  • Jihad expert: Driver doesn't fit al Qaeda elite profile

    Al Qaeda terrorists are the elite of Osama bin Laden's followers, gifted linguists with college degrees plucked from paramilitary training camps -- and don't fit the profile of a Yemeni truck driver with a fourth-grade education, a defense witness testified Wednesday.

  • Pentagon screens grisly movie at Gitmo trial

    Hijacked jets plunged into the World Trade Center and the towers toppled again and again on a huge flat screen at the Guantánamo war court on Monday -- a graphic, $20,000 made-to-order movie about al Qaeda at the trial of Osama bin Laden's driver.

  • Driver told FBI bin Laden's escape was fault of U.S.

    In his seventh of month of U.S. captivity, Osama bin Laden's driver told a pair of FBI agents that it was America's fault that the al Qaeda leader is alive.

  • A first, court says Pentagon erred in a combatant case

    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.

  • Alleged 9/11 architect: Martyr me

    A group of alleged senior al Qaeda leaders -- held secretly by the United States and interrogated since 2003 -- appeared Thursday before a war court judge.

  • In this sketch, reviewed by the US Military, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, center, and Waleed bin Attash, two of the alleged Sept. 11, 2001 attack co-conspirator, attend their June 5, 2008 arraignment inside the war crimes courthouse at Camp Justice.

    Terror suspect censors his courtroom sketch

    GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba -- Alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed was granted -- and wielded -- the right to censor his own courtroom sketch Thursday. Photo Gallery Available

  • Sudanese terror suspect boycotts war court

    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.

  • Smoke rises from the U.S. Embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in this frame grab from television, after a suicide car bomb exploded outside it Friday Aug. 7 1998.

    Embassy bombings widow advocates civilian trials

    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. Photo Gallery Available

  • Military judge rules for driver's defense

    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.

  • Abuse claims cloud war court

    Allegations of military abuse increasingly took center stage as the Guantánamo military commissions edged toward full-blown trials.

  • This sign marks the Pentagon's new pre-fabricated high-tech court complex at the U.S. Navy base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, called Camp Justice comprised of temporary structures.

    Defiance, shackles in Afghan's first war court appearance

    In a military commissions first, a Marine judge ordered a Guantánamo detainee to be shackled at the ankles at a chaotic hearing.

  • This single chair at a computer screens shows a detainee's eye view of the Military Commissions courtroom on Feb. 3, 2007.

    New court can silence captives who tell secrets

    A new court at Guantánamo would allow the U.S. military to keep its secrets by cutting off terror suspects' testimony from the ears of observers at the flick of a switch. Photo Gallery Available

  • REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK

    Some detainees turn in their Korans

    Seventy percent of the 320 or so captives currently keep Korans -- 30 percent, or nearly 100, of the men do not.

  • Air Force Col. Morris Davis as Pentagon prosecutor at Guantanamo in 2006.

    War court prosecutor quits

    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. Photo Gallery Available

  • Senate rejects giving terror suspects access to federal courts

    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.

  • Lakhdar Boumediene, a 41-year-old Algerian former relief worker for the Islamic counterpart of the Red Cross, the Red Crescent, in Sarajevo, Bosnia Herzegovina, is the named plaintiff in the latest Guantanamo case to be argued before the U.S. Supreme Court. Detainees have won in the earlier two cases.

    SUPREME COURT

    Diverse litigants side with Gitmo captives

    With the Supreme Court poised to decide another Guantánamo case, foreign and domestic lawyers, lawmakers, diplomats and others are filing briefs defending the rights of the captives.

  • The Pentagon is building a $10-$12 million tent city at the site of a once proposed $100 million or more military compound for staging war crimes trials at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The new plan follows instructions from Defense Secretary Robert Gates to develop an "expeditionary" approach soon after he replaced former Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

    Big Savings: Trials in tents

    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.

  • Officer calls Guantanamo reviews a sham

    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

    Judges toss 2 war crimes cases

    Guantánamo military judges dismissed war crimes charges against two detainees, citing the Pentagon's failure to comply with an act of Congress.

  • Navy officer sentenced for leak of captives' names

    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.

  • Pentagon re-charges bin Laden's driver

    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.

  • Camp boss: Don't limit lawyer visits

    Guantánamo's prison camps chief backed away from a proposed three-meeting limit between attorneys and detainees, saying the restrictions are no longer needed.

  • Staff changes hit war court

    The Pentagon is undergoing some senior supervisory management changes in its units that run the war court.

  • Full scope of tribunals taking shape

    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

    Hicks pleads guilty; sentence reduced to 9 months

    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.

  • Pentagon official quits over lawyer remarks

    A Pentagon official quit to end a brouhaha over the service of pro-bono detainee defense attorneys.

  • Pentagon unveils war-court manual

    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.

  • Lawyers condemn Pentagon official

    A ruckus is brewing in legal circles over a Pentagon lawyer's targeting of law firms for providing free work to alleged terrorists.

  • Navy lawyer's promotion rejected

    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.

  • Administration: Detainees get Geneva Conventions

    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.

  • Detainee Salim Ahmed Hamdan, who worked in Afghanistan as a driver for Osama bin Laden, is seen in this undated file photo. (AP Photo/photo courtesy of Prof. Neal Katyal)

    IN THE PRISON CAMPS

    Prisoner grateful to Allah and U.S. courts

    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

    Military tribunals ruled illegal

    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

    War-crimes proceedings open with lawyer's `sorry'

    A prosecutor apologized to a Supreme Court justice, military judges differed on culturally appropriate attire and artists' sketches had a few surprises.

  • Ethiopian terror suspect proclaims innocence

    ''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.

  • Terror suspect tells court he was tortured

    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

    Justices hear tribunal challenge

    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

    Driver for bin Laden tests war tribunal

    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?

  • U.S. bars any evidence resulting from torture

    The Pentagon will prohibit military commissions trying Guantánamo captives from including evidence gained through torture.

  • Is alleged architect of 9/11 at Guantánamo?

    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.''

  • U.S. defends commissions to try terrorism suspects

    Bush administration tells a federal appeals court commissions should be allowed to run their course before letting defendants appeal to U.S. courts.

  • 2004 | Historic ruling puts Guantánamo trials on hold

    Detainee tells Navy lawyer: "I don't want to make history. I just want to go home."

  • 2004 | Judge halts the trial of Bin Laden's chauffeur

    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.

  • Lawyer seeks testimony of ex-presidents

    A lawyer for a suspected Sudanese terrorist wants to question former presidents Bush and Clinton and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

  • Bin Laden's driver charged at first tribunal

    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.

  • 2004 | Driver for Bin Laden in Guantánamo cell

    Navy lawyer got special clearance to speak to a Herald reporter about his client -- Osama bin Laden's ex-driver.

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