The Military Commissions building at the U.S. Navy Base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

U.S. OKs one, dismisses another war crime case

In two little noted decisions, the Obama administration has decided to go ahead with the Guantánamo prosecution of an Afghan detainee who allegedly hid mines in his homeland and late last year quietly sent home another captive who was once taken to the war court for allegedly spying on U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. Photo Gallery Available

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.

Pentagon drops Kuwaiti's war crimes case

A day after the emir of Kuwait sent his royal jet to fetch a citizen from Guantánamo, the Pentagon has dropped war crimes charges against the Kuwaiti Airways executive who has long claimed he was a victim of mistaken identity.

Guantánamo war court gavels into 1-day session

With a prison camps closure date now uncertain, the Pentagon gaveled into business a military commissions session Wednesday with an Afghan foot soldier case.

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.

Judge sides with U.S. on detainee documents

A federal judge ruled Friday in a case on detainees at Guantánamo Bay that the U.S. government can maintain the secrecy of portions of some records that allegedly describe torture and abuse. Audio Available

Judge OKs Guantánamo detention of Algerian

A federal judge has upheld as lawful the indefinite detention of an Algerian accused of being an al Qaeda bomb maker, raising the tally of U.S. government victories in Guantánamo habeas corpus lawsuits to eight.

Alleged al Qaeda kingpin Khalid Sheik Mohammed posed for this photo in July, at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. It was taken by the International Committee of the Red Cross to be sent home for Ramadan, and first showed up on Arabic language websites seen as sympathetic to al Qaeda last week, according to counter-terror expert Jarret Brachman. It is the first known public picture since his widely circulated March 2003 capture photo of him rousted from sleep in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.

GUANTANAMO BAY PRISON CAMPS

9/11 mastermind: 'Allah,' not lawyers, will protect me

Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who has bragged about his role in the Sept. 11 attacks, has asked to dismiss his ACLU lawyers and face his death-penalty case alone

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

A demonstrator dressed as a detainee stages a protest outside the Supreme Court in Washington, Dec. 5, 2007, as the court was hearing arguments about the rights of prisoners being detained at the U.S. Navy base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. AP

WAR ON TERRORISM

Guantánamo captives winning lawsuits

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. Photo Gallery Available

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

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.

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

In the Courts

Justice: Noriega case had Guantánamo application