At Guantánamo, captives, war on terror devolves into fight over food

It’s lunchtime on the communal cellblocks for cooperative captives at Guantanamo, and detainees dressed in tan and white camp uniforms are steadfastly refusing the guards’ offer to wheel in food carts. | 03/24/13 08:55:53 By - Carol Rosenberg

U.S. acknowledges 14 on hunger strike at Guantánamo prison

The U.S. military said Friday that it had designated 14 captives at the Guantánamo detention center as “hunger strikers,” and that six of them were being force-fed through tubes in the first admission of a protest claimed by defense attorneys. | 03/15/13 18:46:23 By - Carol Rosenberg

Obama officials offer OAS panel no new date for closing Guantanamo

For the first time since President Barack Obama was re-elected, administration officials this week formally answered questions about human rights violations at the Guantanamo Bay detention center for suspected terrorists, but they avoided offering any timeframe for closing the facility. | 03/13/13 15:31:57 By - By Emma Kantrowitz

Guantánamo smoke detector/listening device revealed

Across several days at Guantánamo last month, lawyers and the military jousted at the war court over whether it was possible to know that a listening device was affixed to the ceilings of the cells where defense attorneys meet the men accused of orchestrating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. | 03/13/13 06:54:23 By - Carol Rosenberg

Pentagon prosecutor: Transparency sufficient at 9/11 trial at Guantanamo

The Pentagon’s war crimes prosecutor has agreed a review panel should hear a transparency challenge of the Sept. 11 trial, but insists that what the CIA did with the accused 9/11 conspirators on their way to Guantánamo are secrets that the public must not hear | 03/09/13 08:00:07 By - Carol Rosenberg

Guantánamo-bound barge dumps cargo into ocean

A U.S. Navy contract barge bound from Jacksonville to the base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, spilled 22 shipping containers into the Atlantic Ocean, the Coast Guard said Tuesday, sending household goods, aerosols, refrigerant gasses and food into the water. | 03/06/13 11:00:23 By - Carol Rosenberg

Guantánamo guard shot ‘non-lethal’ round at detainees

A guard in a watchtower shot a “non-lethal” round at detainees inside Guantánamo prison’s $744,000 soccer field for cooperative captives earlier this year in the latest disclosure of simmering unrest at the Pentagon outpost in southeast Cuba. | 03/05/13 18:43:44 By - Carol Rosenberg

Judge: No sleepover but lawyers can spend 12 hours in Guantánamo’s secret prison

They can’t sleep over, but a judge has ordered the military to let defense attorneys spend 12 hours inside the secret prison at Guantánamo that houses alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and his accused co-conspirators, attorneys said Thursday. | 02/21/13 15:11:23 By - Carol Rosenberg

Alleged 9/11 plotter disrupts testimony of Pentagon official at Guantánamo

A Yemeni man accused in the Sept. 11 attacks stood in protest at the war court Thursday over an apparent shakedown and seizure of legal mail from the cells of the alleged 9/11 plotters while the prisoners were in court earlier this week. | 02/14/13 13:13:20 By - Carol Rosenberg

Husband of Guantanamo observer Eve Bucca was a NYC firefighter

A woman whose firefighter husband was killed in the World Trade Center , is observing this week’s war court hearings focusing on the confidentiality rights of the men accused of the Sept. 11 terror plot and their lawyers. | 02/13/13 14:54:12 By - Carol Rosenberg

Attorney-client meeting room was bugged, Navy lawyer testifies at Guantánamo

The military had a hidden microphone in a room where defense attorneys met detainees awaiting death-penalty trials, a senior prison official disclosed at the war court Tuesday. | 02/12/13 21:33:16 By - Carol Rosenberg

American Airlines flight attendant wears uniform to Guantánamo war court

An American Airlines flight attendant and a 14-year-old boy who would’ve been a toddler at the time of the Sept. 11 attacks are among the victim family members watching this week’s 9/11 proceedings at the war court. | 02/11/13 18:57:43 By - Carol Rosenberg

Guantanamo is used for mass-migration scenario training by U.S. military

The boat people trying to reach U.S. soil are imaginary and so is the Caribbean nation in crisis. But the Army general who flew in from Texas to take charge is the real deal for hundreds of troops rehearsing to get ready for a humanitarian crisis. | 02/11/13 07:06:18 By - Carol Rosenberg

Mental health experts get access to detainee’s CIA file

An Army judge is giving a military mental-health board access to an alleged al Qaida deputy’s secret CIA file, covering the time when agents waterboarded the man and subjected him to a mock execution with a power drill, to help evaluate if he can go on trial. | 02/08/13 12:29:41 By - Carol Rosenberg

Torture expert testifies at Guantánamo war court

A doctor with expertise in torture was testifying at the war court Tuesday, advising the chief Guantánamo judge on how to conduct a no-harm medical examination on an alleged al-Qaida deputy who was waterboarded by the CIA. | 02/05/13 15:15:47 By - Carol Rosenberg

Guantanamo judge orders mental health exam for alleged Cole bomber

The military judge presiding at the USS Cole terror trial on Monday ordered the alleged architect of the warship’s bombing to undergo a mental health exam to determine if he’s fit to face a death-penalty trial. | 02/05/13 07:12:52 By - Carol Rosenberg

Guantánamo war court case stalled over ethics issue

Faced with a continuing controversy over who’s listening in on the war court, the judge Monday proposed ripping out microphones at the defense tables of alleged al-Qaida terrorists to assure attorney-client privacy. | 02/04/13 12:52:06 By - Miami Herald

Guantánamo spills its secrets slowly, in surprising ways

Once the war court revealed that a secret censor had silenced a defense lawyer arguing at hearings in the 9/11 case, the question became what other Guantánamo secrets was the military covering up? | 02/03/13 23:19:16 By - Carol Rosenberg

Guantánamo defense attorneys worry about eavesdropping

Defense lawyers in the Sept. 11 case said they were worried Thursday about outside agencies listening in on their privileged conversations, and sought a freeze in the death-penalty trial. | 01/31/13 17:48:07 By - Carol Rosenberg

Guantanamo 9/11 trial judge orders hidden censors unplugged

The military judge presiding at the Sept. 11 trial Thursday ordered the government to unplug any outside censors who can reach into his courtroom and silence the war crimes tribunal. | 01/31/13 10:54:13 By - Carol Rosenberg

Guantánamo judge says ‘external body’ was wrong to censor war court

The judge presiding at the Sept. 11 death penalty tribunal declined Tuesday to say who cut the audio and video feed to his court for three minutes in an episode that has drawn protest. | 01/29/13 16:18:27 By - Carol Rosenberg

Pentagon, prosecution disagree on dropping 9/11 conspiracy charge

In a sign of disunity at the Pentagon over the coming Sept. 11 trial, a senior Defense Department official on Friday refused to scratch a conspiracy charge from the death penalty case, a move sought by the prosecution to make any future conviction less vulnerable to civilian appeal. | 01/18/13 17:49:13 By - Carol Rosenberg

Guantanamo war court prosecutors drop conspiracy charge in 9/11 trials

The Pentagon’s war crimes prosecutor has decided to no longer seek a conspiracy conviction at the Sept. 11 death penalty trial, a move designed to shore up the case after a federal court undercut the authority of the Guantánamo war court three months ago, the Defense Department said Wednesday. | 01/10/13 07:00:34 By - Carol Rosenberg

Guantanamo is a place of sometimes puzzling secrecy

When victims of al-Qaida attacks want to talk to reporters at Guantánamo, retired Navy Capt. Karen Loftus squires the so-called “victim family members” to Camp Justice’s press shed and introduces herself as their escort. | 01/07/13 07:09:46 By - Carol Rosenberg

Cuba helps U.S. Navy find a way to pay Guantánamo retirees

The Navy has secured a solution to the problem of how to pay some $45,000 a month in pensions due to 67 elderly Cubans who once worked as day laborers at the U.S. Navy base at Guantánamo, the Pentagon said Thursday. | 01/03/13 19:15:12 By - Carol Rosenberg

Obama: Guantánamo camps a waste of U.S. resources

President Barack Obama late Tuesday signed a $633 billion defense bill that continues to block his ability to close the prison camps at Guantánamo, then in a separate signing statement issued Wednesday called the prison camps a waste of national security resources. | 01/03/13 15:45:49 By - Carol Rosenberg

Yemeni’s death in Guantánamo still under investigation

Navy investigators are still investigating the suicide of a Yemeni prisoner who was found dead of an overdose complicated by acute pneumonia, a military spokesman said Tuesday. | 12/18/12 18:48:15 By - Carol Rosenberg

Guantanamo war court judge OKs audio delays, censor for 9/11 trials

The chief of the Guantánamo war court has approved the use of a time delay on public viewing of the Sept. 11 death-penalty trial as well as a censor in his court to make sure nobody divulges details of a now defunct CIA interrogation program, citing national security interests. | 12/12/12 13:57:15 By - Carol Rosenberg

GAO report says moving Guantánamo detainees to U.S. prisons is feasible

In a renewed Democratic effort to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Sen. Dianne Feinstein released an independent feasibility study that showed six military prisons on U.S. soil could absorb the 166 detainees held in Cuba — then the White House Thursday called Congressional limits on detainee transfers “misguided.” | 11/29/12 18:41:04 By - Carol Rosenberg

Guantanamo trials won't be televised

A surrogate of Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on Monday rejected a request by the Sept. 11 defense lawyers to let media organizations televise the Sept. 11 trial from the war court at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. | 11/26/12 19:44:19 By - Carol Rosenberg

Kansas disbars lawyer involved in Guantanamo case

The Kansas Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered the disbarment of a former U.S. Navy lawyer court-martialed for disclosing classified information about detainees at Guantanamo Bay. | 11/21/12 16:50:52 By - Tony Rizzo

Military lawyer cites civilian decision to seek dismissal of Guantánamo 9/11 tribunal

A Pentagon defense attorney is invoking a recent civilian court decision in a bid to get the military’s Sept. 11 death-penalty case dismissed at Guantánamo. | 11/06/12 18:40:42 By - Carol Rosenberg

Lawyers for 9/11 suspects ask Panetta to order broadcast of Guantanamo trials

Lawyers for the five alleged Sept. 11 conspirators wrote Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta on Thursday, asking him to order the Pentagon to offer national TV broadcasts of their death-penalty tribunals at Guantánamo. | 11/02/12 07:10:41 By - Carol Rosenberg

Hurricane Sandy damages Guantanamo war-court compound, cancels hearings for week

Hurricane Sandy swept through this remote base Thursday, ripping boats from their berths, cutting power to all but emergency facilities and shutting down the Pentagon’s war crimes tribunal. | 10/25/12 14:52:38 By - Carol Rosenberg

Guantánamo captives tuned into debate too

Dozens of well-behaved captives tuned into Monday night’s foreign affairs debate between President Barack Obama and challenger Mitt Romney, a detention center official said Tuesday. | 10/23/12 19:23:52 By - Carol Rosenberg

Pentagon: Alleged 9/11 mastermind dyed his beard with berry juice at Guantánamo

The alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, used improvised prison camp products – berries and breakfast juice, not store-bought henna – to dye his white beard red for this year’s war court appearances, a Pentagon spokesman said Tuesday. | 10/23/12 14:09:55 By - Carol Rosenberg

9/11 suspects skip Guantanamo trial

All five alleged 9/11 plotters skipped Friday’s legal arguments framing their eventual death-penalty tribunal, voluntarily staying behind in a secret prison lockup. | 10/19/12 11:20:40 By - Carol Rosenberg

Accused 9/11 architect wears hunting vest to Guantánamo court

Khalid Sheik Mohammed wore a $39.99 camouflaged vest to the war court Wednesday, a small victory for the accused architect of the Sept. 11 attacks awaiting his death-penalty terror trial. | 10/17/12 18:45:41 By - Carol Rosenberg

LeBron James makes terror suspect’s ‘bad man’ list

In a bid to illustrate the absurdity of knee-jerk secrecy at Guantánamo, a Navy defense lawyer on Tuesday invoked none other than Miami Heat superstar LeBron James. | 10/16/12 17:50:24 By - Carol Rosenberg

Conviction of Osama bin Laden’s driver tossed out, raising questions about other cases

A federal appeals court’s decision to toss the conviction of Osama bin Laden’s former driver could have implications for future prosecutions of terrorism suspects. | 10/16/12 12:22:23 By - By Lindsay Wise and Carol Rosenberg

9/11 suspects cooperative at Guantánamo hearing

Alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four accused accomplices cooperated Monday at a pretrial hearing - a stark contrast to their defiant arraignment - and got the right to skip the rest of this week’s war court hearings. | 10/15/12 13:59:21 By - Carol Rosenberg

Radical UK preacher not bound for Guantánamo

A suspected radical Muslim preacher and four alleged other terrorists approved for extradition to the United States on Friday will not be going to the prison camps at Guantánamo under treaty negotiations carried out by the Bush administration with Britain. | 10/05/12 13:09:16 By - Carol Rosenberg

Sept. 11 suspect's lawyers at Guantanamo say rats are reason they want trial delay

Rat droppings and mold are health hazards in the Guantánamo offices of the accused 9/11 mastermind’s legal team, defense lawyers said Wednesday in a war court filing that seeks a delay in this month’s pretrial hearings at the Navy base in southeast Cuba. | 10/04/12 07:17:10 By - Carol Rosenberg

Omar Khadr goes home to Canada from Guantánamo

The United States sent Guantánamo’s youngest captive home to a prison in his native Canada on Saturday, ending the decade-long U.S. detention of the Muslim militant who grew from a teenager into adulthood at the Pentagon’s prison camps in Cuba. | 09/29/12 07:31:11 By - Carol Rosenberg

USS Cole suspects at Guantanamo seek 3-month delay for hearing

Defense lawyers in the USS Cole bombing case are asking a military judge to delay by three months their next Guantánamo hearing, to give torture experts time to examine the alleged mastermind who was waterboarded by the CIA. | 09/27/12 07:01:00 By - Carol Rosenberg

Pentagon prosecutors moving away from gag order on 9/11 suspects at Guantanamo

Defense lawyers in the Sept. 11 case said Tuesday that the Pentagon prosecutor is backing away from a national security doctrine that reflexively gags anything the accused 9/11 plotters say to anyone at Guantánamo. | 09/26/12 06:59:41 By - Carol Rosenberg

Guantanamo isn't a campaign issue in 2012

In 2007, Mitt Romney set himself apart from the pack of presidential candidates by staking out an extreme position on the prison camps at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. He said he wanted to “grow them” at a time when both Barack Obama and John McCain were advocating closure to improve America’s standing in the world. | 09/24/12 07:08:18 By - Carol Rosenberg

Omar Khadr, Guantanamo's youngest detainee, turns 26

Guantánamo’s youngest captive, Omar Khadr of Canada, turned 26 at the U.S. detention center in southeast Cuba on Wednesday — and got a visit from a Canadian government official. | 09/19/12 12:24:33 By - Carol Rosenberg

Judge rejects Guantánamo defense lawyers’ bid to televise USS Cole trial

The chief judge of the Guantánamo war court has rejected a defense bid to get the Pentagon to televise the USS Cole bombing trial from the U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba. | 09/12/12 14:48:44 By - Carol Rosenberg

Dead Guantánamo detainee won, then lost court-ordered release

The detainee found dead in a maximum-security cell at Guantánamo was a long-despairing Yemeni captive with a history of suicide attempts who at one time won a federal judge’s release order, only to see his case overturned on appeal and rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court. | 09/11/12 14:38:15 By - Carol Rosenberg

Military: Detainee found dead at Guantánamo

A Guantánamo captive who had until this summer been a hunger striker was found dead in his cell on Saturday and an investigation is under way, a spokesman for the U.S. detention center said Monday afternoon. | 09/10/12 14:46:48 By - Carol Rosenberg

Judge rejects new restrictions for attorneys at Guantanamo Bay

Using strong words, a federal judge has rejected the Obama administration’s efforts to change the rules under which Guantanamo Bay detainees are represented by lawyers. | 09/07/12 06:27:31 By - By Michael Doyle

Judge sides with Guantanamo detainees

Using strong words, a federal judge has rejected the Obama administration's efforts to change the rules under which Guantanamo Bay detainees are represented by lawyers. | 09/06/12 17:18:41 By - Michael Doyle

Pentagon charges Saudi at Guantánamo with aiding terror in al-Qaida case

The Pentagon war crimes prosecutor on Wednesday revived a Bush-era prosecution and charged a Saudi captive at Guantánamo with a 2002 terror attack on a French oil tanker in the Gulf of Aden, and other al-Qaida-connected crimes. | 08/29/12 19:41:58 By - Carol Rosenberg

9/11 hearing canceled as Guantánamo prepares for Isaac

In a drill all-too-familiar to South Floridians, Condition Readiness 4, or CORE 4, meant that Guantanamo base residents were instructed to clear their yards of lawn furniture and other loose objects that “may become projectiles during high winds,” said base spokeswoman Kelly Wirfel. It also meant that commanders watching National Hurricane Center reports anticipated “destructive winds” greater than 50 knots within 72 hours. | 08/22/12 16:48:39 By - Carol Rosenberg

Fiber optic link to Guantánamo cut by train derailment

A train derailment in Maryland cut internet service between the war court compound here and the Pentagon on Tuesday, forcing a day’s delay of pretrial hearings in the Sept. 11 terror case. | 08/21/12 19:36:40 By - Carol Rosenberg

Soldiers relieve sailors at Guantánamo prison

The withdrawal from Iraq and drawdown of U.S. forces from Afghanistan mean that Army troops trained in detention duty now stand guard where the Navy once stood watch. | 08/20/12 19:25:05 By - Carol Rosenberg

Ramadan at Guantanamo is a quiet affair

It’s 3 a.m. on the third Tuesday of Ramadan — the 11th in U.S. custody for most captives, the first for most of their guards — and the American soldiers are moving stealthily through a maximum-security lockup. | 08/16/12 13:14:59 By - Carol Rosenberg

‘Fresh Prince’ replaces Harry Potter as entertainment for Guantánamo prisoners

Harry Potter books are passé among the prisoners. The adventures of the boy wizard have been supplanted by early episodes of Will Smith’s 1990s TV comedy, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, as a popular way to pass time among the 168 captives now in their second decade of U.S. detention. | 08/08/12 17:16:45 By - Carol Rosenberg

Australia abandons bid to seize freed Guantánamo detainee’s book profits

An Australian prosecutor Tuesday abruptly abandoned a government bid to seize the profits from freed Guantánamo captive David Hicks’ memoirs rather than defend the legitimacy of President George W. Bush’s first war crimes conviction. | 07/24/12 16:11:56 By - Carol Rosenberg

Accused planner of attack on USS Cole shuns Guantánamo court session

The accused architect of al-Qaida’s USS Cole bombing skipped arguments in his war crimes case Thursday, a day after both the public and the accused were excluded from a hearing that discussed CIA intelligence. | 07/19/12 17:58:48 By - Carol Rosenberg

Sweden says freed Guantánamo captive was not suicide bomber in Bulgaria

Sweden’s security services on Thursday flatly denied that a Swedish man released from the prison camps here in 2004 was responsible for a suicide bombing of a busload of Israeli tourists at a Bulgarian port city. | 07/19/12 15:28:35 By - Carol Rosenberg

Guantánamo war court in secret session; accused not present

A military judge Wednesday held the first secret hearing at the Obama-era war court, a 90-minute discussion of a defense bid in a death penalty case to learn more about the accused’s treatment in clandestine CIA custody. | 07/18/12 10:56:33 By - By Carol Rosenberg

Judge denies defense request to remove himself from USS Cole trial

The chief war court judge on Tuesday declined to disqualify himself from presiding at the USS Cole capital murder case, dismissing defense concerns about his post-retirement status and choice to preside at all the former CIA captives’ trials at Guantánamo. | 07/17/12 13:28:33 By - Carol Rosenberg

Guantánamo judge delays next 9/11 hearing until after Ramadan

The chief war court judge on Monday postponed until after Ramadan the next hearings in the death-penalty case of the alleged Sept. 11 plotters, yielding to a request by attorneys for accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and his co-defendants to respect their religion. | 07/16/12 15:29:06 By - Carol Rosenberg

Media oppose Guantánamo hearing closure

Media organizations filed a motion Thursday opposing a Pentagon prosecution proposal to close portions of the hearings next week at Guantánamo in the USS Cole bombing death-penalty case. | 07/13/12 16:08:44 By - Carol Rosenberg

Convicted al Qaida operative released from Guantánamo, repatriated to Sudan in plea deal

The United States sent home to Sudan one of Guantánamo’s longest-held prisoners, a 52-year-old confessed al Qaida foot soldier and sometime driver for Osama bin Laden whose release was seen as a crucial test case of the Barack Obama-era war court. | 07/11/12 06:22:18 By - Carol Rosenberg

9/11 accused don’t want Guantanamo hearings during Ramadan

Lawyers for accused Sept. 11 attacks mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and his four co-defendants are seeking to postpone their Aug. 8-12 hearing at Guantánamo, noting it falls toward the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. | 07/10/12 18:11:22 By - Carol Rosenberg

Guantánamo defense lawyers seek national broadcasts of Cole trial

In a war court first, defense lawyers for the accused architect of al Qaida’s USS Cole bombing are asking the military judge to broadcast the Guantánamo death-penalty trial to the world — not just to Pentagon-controlled viewing rooms in suburban Washington, D.C., and Virginia. | 06/08/12 19:37:17 By - Carol Rosenberg

Red Cross to take new photos of Guantanamo detainees

The International Committee of the Red Cross is arranging with the Pentagon to take fresh photos later this year of the captives at Guantánamo for their families. | 06/05/12 07:07:54 By - Carol Rosenberg

Fla. Sen. Marco Rubio visits Guantanamo

Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio visited the U.S. Navy base at Guantánamo Bay — setting foot on Cuban soil for the first time in his life — in a solo fact-finding visit on Tuesday that the Cuban-American lawmaker cast as nothing more than typical congressional business as a novice member of the intelligence committee. | 05/30/12 07:04:21 By - Carol Rosenberg

Prosecutors urge Guantánamo judge not to split up 9/11 trial

Pentagon prosecutors argued in a motion Thursday against splitting up the joint death-penalty prosecution at Guantánamo of the five men accused of orchestrating the 9/11 attacks. | 05/24/12 19:00:28 By - Carol Rosenberg

Accused 9/11 planners want Obama, Bush to testify at Guantanamo trials

Defense attorneys seeking to derail the trial of five men accused of orchestrating the Sept. 11 attacks are asking a military judge to order President Barack Obama and former president George W. Bush, Vice President Joe Biden, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham and Attorney General Eric Holder to testify at the Guantánamo war court. | 05/24/12 07:07:11 By - Carol Rosenberg

Accused 9/11 planners might get separate Guantánamo trials

Scheduling conflicts and legal issues might be reasons to split up the military trial of the five Guantánamo men accused of plotting the Sept. 11 attacks, the Army colonel presiding at the case wrote in a court order made public Monday. | 05/21/12 19:21:31 By - Carol Rosenberg

9/11 defense attorneys denounce Guantanamo court system as 'rigged,' 'unjust'

The five men accused of plotting the Sept. 11 attacks used their weekend war court appearances to stage “peaceful resistance to an unjust system” being used for political reasons, defense lawyers said Sunday — a day after the 9/11accused turned the judge’s plans to hold a simple arraignment into a 13-hour marathon of prayer and protest. | 05/06/12 16:53:32 By - By Carol Rosenberg

KSM, 4 others to face murder charges again in Guantánamo

The ringleader is the U.S.-educated one-time chief of al-Qaida operations who bragged that he was responsible for the Sept. 11 terror attacks “from A to Z.” The others include a one-legged militant, a self-described wannabe 9/11 hijacker, a money manager and the mastermind’s nephew, who has introduced himself in court as a Microsoft-certified software engineer. All five are being brought to the Guantánamo war court Saturday to face arraignment as the architects of the worst terror attack on American soil in U.S. history. | 05/01/12 19:49:20 By - Carol Rosenberg

Judge for Guantanamo 9/11 trials also handled Abu Ghraib abuse case

When President George W. Bush proposed razing Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison in 2004, this American Army judge declared it a crime scene and forbade its demolition. When five years later President Barack Obama asked the Guantánamo war court to freeze all proceedings, the same judge refused the brand-new commander-in-chief’s request. | 04/30/12 07:14:52 By - Carol Rosenberg

Guantánamo defense team cites Santeria case as due-process precedent

In arguing that the U.S. discriminates against alleged al Qaida terrorists by subjecting them to a special war court, a Pentagon defense attorney invoked a surprising precedent at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, last week: The 1993 U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing animal sacrifice in Hialeah. | 04/20/12 18:55:13 By - Carol Rosenberg

U.S. resettles 2 Guantánamo captives in El Salvador

El Salvador is resettling two long-held Guantánamo captives, both citizens of China from the Uighur Muslim minority who sought asylum in a friendly country, the Pentagon announced Thursday. | 04/19/12 19:37:58 By - Carol Rosenberg

Lawyers spar over funding in Guantánamo court

Lawyers haggled intensely over funds and resources Thursday to prepare for the capital murder trial of the man accused of orchestrating the USS Cole bombing, with the military judge ordering the government to try to tally the cost of its decade-plus investigation into al Qaida’s attack on the warship off Yemen. | 04/12/12 19:35:05 By - Carol Rosenberg

Guantánamo judge’s ruling avoids issue of secret testimony

A First Amendment attorney, in a first-ever appearance at the war court, urged a military judge Wednesday not to close testimony by a captive on how the CIA interrogated him. The military judge then mooted the issue, for now, by ordering the prison camps to unshackle the captive for meetings with his lawyers. | 04/11/12 19:19:34 By - Carol Rosenberg

Guantanamo court date set for alleged 9/11 conspirators

The chief war court judge, Army Col. James Pohl, has assigned himself to preside at the death-penalty trial of the five men accused of plotting the Sept. 11 attacks and has set a provisional arraignment date for May 5 at Guantánamo. | 04/11/12 07:07:04 By - Carol Rosenberg

In first, judge will let media lawyer argue in Guantanamo courtroom

The chief war court judge Tuesday agreed to let a First Amendment attorney argue against closure of the first ever military commissions testimony by a captive about CIA interrogations that the government contends are secret. | 04/10/12 09:13:27 By - Carol Rosenberg

News organizations protest closure of Guantanamo hearing

News organizations including The McClatchy Co., The Washington Post and The New York Times filed an objection Thursday to Pentagon plans to close a terrorism hearing next week where details could emerge of a detainee's mistreatment at secret CIA prisons overseas. | 04/05/12 19:05:10 By - Matthew Schofield

Death penalty trial of five 9/11 suspects to resume at Guantanamo

The Pentagon on Wednesday cleared the way for a death penalty trial against five Guantanamo Bay captives charged with engineering the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. | 04/04/12 16:21:23 By - Carol Rosenberg

Trial of five 9/11 suspects to resume at Guantanamo

The five men believed to be behind the deadliest terror attack in U.S. history were officially charged Wednesday under military law with crimes that carry a maximum sentence of death. | 04/04/12 13:13:39 By - Matthew Schofield

Secrecy likely to engulf Guantánamo testimony of alleged USS Cole bomber

The most interesting and significant testimony at the war court so far — a Saudi captive’s account of how CIA agents interrogated him while shackled in secret custody — is likely to be unseen and unheard by the public when pre-trial hearings reconvene in the USS Cole case at Guantánamo next month. | 03/27/12 16:47:17 By - Carol Rosenberg

Navy appoints next commander of Guantánamo prison camps

The Navy has chosen a Key West-based admiral, a helicopter pilot who ran Hurricane Katrina air relief operations, to take over as the next commander of the detention center at Guantánamo. | 03/02/12 18:45:50 By - Carol Rosenberg

Guantánamo detainees did not see al Qaida magazine, prison commander says

At no time did a copy of al Qaida's fiery Inspire magazine reach a captive or a cell at the prison camps, the detention commander said in a press conference Wednesday night, six weeks after a Navy prosecutor made headlines by informing the chief Guantánamo judge that it had. | 03/01/12 06:22:11 By - Carol Rosenberg

Majid Khan, U.S.-educated al Qaida foot soldier, admits to war crimes, turns government witness

Majid Khan, a 1999 Maryland high school graduate who claims he was kidnapped by the CIA and tortured, walked into court in a suit and tie Wednesday and confessed to serving as a foot soldier for al Qaida. He walked out three hours later, taken back to a prison cell as a convicted terrorist turned government witness. | 02/29/12 13:41:36 By - Carol Rosenberg

$744,000 buys cooperative Guantánamo captives a new soccer field

The military unveiled a new $744,000 soccer field on Tuesday, a dusty enclosure with two-toned gravel and fences topped by barbed wire — all designed as a quality of life improvement for cooperative captives. | 02/28/12 18:03:43 By - Carol Rosenberg

Guantánamo plea deal unveils new trial strategy

When a suburban Baltimore high school graduate steps out of the shadows of CIA detention this week to admit to serving the senior leadership of al Qaida, the Obama administration will be unveiling its latest strategy toward an endgame. | 02/27/12 18:34:19 By - Carol Rosenberg

Alleged 9/11 facilitator makes new bid to avert death penalty trial in Guantanamo

Lawyers for a Pakistani man accused of wiring money used in the Sept. 11 attacks argued in a memo Friday that, because the alleged terrorist was accused of a lesser role in the terror attacks, he should not face the possibility of a death penalty. | 02/17/12 19:08:50 By - Carol Rosenberg

Pentagon advances case against Guantánamo captive Khan

A senior Pentagon official approved terror charges Wednesday against a U.S. high school graduate accused of conspiring with confessed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed — a swift turnaround that sets the stage for a new war court case at Guantánamo within the month. | 02/15/12 19:21:08 By - Carol Rosenberg

Guantanamo judge won't subpoena Yemen's Saleh

A military judge has rejected a Guantánamo captive’s request to have his lawyers question Yemeni leader Ali Abdullah Saleh in New York about the investigation of al Qaida’s bombing of the USS Cole, a lawyer said Tuesday. | 02/15/12 07:15:26 By - Carol Rosenberg

Pentagon charges former U.S. resident in terror plot

The Pentagon’s war crimes prosecutor proposes to put a graduate of a suburban Baltimore high school now detained at Guantánamo on trial for attempting to kill Pakistan’s president and conspiring to blow up gas stations. | 02/15/12 07:12:49 By - Carol Rosenberg

The Greening of Guántanamo

Solar-powered lights serve as sentries where U.S. Marines once faced-off along the Cuban frontier. A team of Navy cops now rides bikes rather than gas-guzzling patrol cars in the searing Caribbean sunshine at Guantanamo | 02/08/12 17:36:02 By - Carol Rosenberg

State Department: Guantánamo lawyers can’t question Yemeni leader

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh is in the United States with full diplomatic immunity, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s legal advisor has written the Pentagon, and should not be compelled to provide sworn testimony for the Guantánamo war court. | 02/08/12 13:54:24 By - Carol Rosenberg

Pentagon won’t slow 9/11 death penalty filings

A senior Pentagon official on Friday refused to delay a pre-arraignment phase in the prosecution of five Guantánamo captives accused of conspiring in the Sept. 11 attacks. | 02/03/12 18:07:34 By - Carol Rosenberg

Alleged al Qaida bomber's lawyer wants to question Yemen's Saleh

Guantánamo defense lawyers for an alleged al Qaida bomber asked an Army judge on Tuesday to order Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh to undergo war court questioning at a New York hospital. | 02/02/12 07:19:25 By - Carol Rosenberg

Copy of al Qaida magazine 'Inspire' found at Guantanamo

A copy of Al Qaida's fiery magazine Inspire somehow got inside the prison camps at Guantánamo, a prosecutor disclosed at the war court Wednesday. | 01/18/12 15:28:19 By - Carol Rosenberg

Guantánamo commander: Contractors read inmate lawyers' mail

In unprecedented war court testimony, the prison camps’ commander on Tuesday defended a three-tier system of classifying lawyers’ mail to alleged terrorists that sparked a defense lawyer’s boycott and is threatening to stall future war crimes trials. | 01/17/12 20:21:10 By - Carol Rosenberg

Report: French judge wants to probe Guantanamo torture claims

A French judge is seeking U.S. permission to visit the prison camps here to investigate claims by former French inmates that they were tortured. The request is the third indication that international authorities have renewed their interest in the legality of Bush-era policies on the treatment of war-on-terror captives. | 01/17/12 14:09:41 By - Carol Rosenberg

Military lawyers blast Guantanamo mail search as violating rights, ethics

Military lawyers for Guantanamo detainees who could someday be put to death are accusing the new prison commander of censoring protected attorney-client documents, raising a new legal controversy that spotlights ongoing concern about the fairness of possible military trials. | 01/15/12 18:50:36 By - Carol Rosenberg

Protesters gather to mark Guantanamo anniversary

Chants of "Guantanamo has got to go" echoed down Pennsylvania Avenue on Wednesday as a crowd of rain-dampened protesters marked the 10th anniversary of the arrival of the first 20 detainees at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. | 01/11/12 19:16:00 By - Emily Seagrave Kennedy

What's ahead for Guantanamo camps in new decade?

Ten years ago, U.S. troops marched 20 men in chains off a military cargo plane at Guantanamo Bay to launch America’s war-on-terror experiment in offshore detention and justice. Now, the prison camps enter their second decade with death penalty tribunals on the horizon and President Barack Obama still struggling to find a formula for closure. | 01/10/12 21:21:00 By - Carol Rosenberg

Congress, rules keep Obama from closing Guantanamo Bay

The last two prisoners to leave the U.S. detention center at Guantánamo Bay were dead. On February 1, Awal Gul, a 48-year-old Afghan, collapsed in the shower and died of an apparent heart attack after working out on an exercise machine. Then, at dawn one morning in May, Haji Nassim, a 37-year-old man also from Afghanistan, was found hanging from bed linen in a prison camp recreation yard. | 01/09/12 07:05:00 By - Carol Rosenberg

Secret Guantanamo cellblock cost about $700,000

A once-secret Guantánamo cellblock now used to punish captives was built in November 2007 for $690,000 from a crude, then 5-year-old temporary prison camp design. | 01/04/12 06:59:00 By - Carol Rosenberg

Supreme Court will consider health care law challenge in 2012

The Supreme Court said Monday it will consider a challenge to the Obama administration's health care law next year, setting the stage for a legal and political blockbuster. | 11/14/11 10:45:20 By - Michael Doyle and David Lightman

Guantanamo trial for Cole bombing suspect delayed for a year

The reputed mastermind of the USS Cole bombing made his first appearance in before a U.S. military commission judge Wednesday, the first time Abd al Rahim al Nashiri had been seen in public since he was arrested in 2002 and spiritied into a series of secret CIA prisons. | 11/09/11 17:42:42 By - Carol Rosenberg

Alleged USS Cole bomber Nashiri faces Guantanamo war court

An alleged al Qaida chieftain facing a death-penalty trial was brought before an Army judge at Camp Justice on Wednesday, his first ever court date nine years after CIA agents captured him in the Arabian Gulf region and spirited him off to waterboarding and other secret interrogation techniques. | 11/09/11 11:58:39 By - Carol Rosenberg

Judge opens remote Guantanamo war court viewing site to 'general public'

Hours ahead of the arraignment of an alleged al-Qaida chieftain, a military judge on Tuesday ordered the Defense Department to admit dozens of members of the “general public” to the first-ever broadcast of a Guantánamo terror tribunal on U.S. soil. Wednesday’s hearing was expected to be quick, and historic. | 11/09/11 07:01:01 By - Carol Rosenberg

Pentagon publishes Guantanamo war court procedures

The Pentagon on Monday published its long awaited regulations for military commissions, the Obama administration era handbook for how to do a war crimes trial, including a sample prosecution that charged a captive with murder as well as “pillaging” by stealing a Rolex watch, six goats and $20 American. | 11/08/11 06:58:59 By - Carol Rosenberg

After years of secrecy, Pentagon seeks order to let public view hearing for accused Cole bomber

Pentagon prosecutors have filed a sealed motion with the Guantánamo war court that apparently proposes allowing the general public for the first time to watch military proceedings against an accused al Qaida terrorist. | 11/05/11 15:56:13 By - Carol Rosenberg

Prosecutor: Guantánamo court can’t free innocent captive

The U.S. military tribunal for the USS Cole bombing suspect has no power to free a captive found innocent of war crimes but shouldn’t be told the terror suspect could be held for life anyway, Pentagon prosecutors said in a court document made public Wednesday. | 11/02/11 19:01:29 By - Carol Rosenberg

Defenders want accused Cole bomber's jury told if acquittal equals freedom

In the war on terror detention system the Bush and Obama administrations built, a captive can be executed if he¡¯s convicted of a capital crime and kept forever if he¡¯s acquitted. And defense attorneys for the next alleged terrorist to be tried at Guant¨¢namo want jurors told this from the start. Lawyers for Saudi-born captive Abd al Rahim al Nashiri made the request of the military commissions chief judge, Army Col. James Pohl, in a motion filed last week. The Pentagon unsealed it, uncensored, late Monday. | 10/25/11 16:34:55 By - Carol Rosenberg

Guantánamo Inc.? Oops

Guantánamo Inc? Not so fast. In the Pentagon’s zeal to rebrand its beleaguered war court in southeast Cuba, the lawyers who pioneered a nearly $500,000 new website went too far. They declared it copyrighted. | 10/12/11 18:19:31 By - Carol Rosenberg

Judge resets USS Cole bombing case to Nov. 9

The chief war court judge Thursday delayed until Nov. 9 the Guantánamo Bay arraignment of a Saudi-born captive accused of orchestrating the 2000 attack on the Navy warship USS Cole off Yemen that killed 17 American sailors. | 10/06/11 18:00:07 By - Carol Rosenberg

Transparency a goal not yet reached by Pentagon's new war court website

The website was unveiled last month to rehabilitate the reputation of the Guantanamo war court. So far, it's a hodgepodge of secrecy. But a review of the content has found that it pointedly leaves out some of the key controversies that have bedeviled the war crimes trials, from allegations of torture to a comparison of the Seminole Indian tribe to al Qaida. | 10/05/11 19:44:35 By - Carol Rosenberg

No 9/11 trial this year at Guantánamo

The trial of five Guantánamo captives accused of the Sept. 11 mass murder cannot begin until next year at the earliest under a timetable set out Monday by the legal authority in charge of the war court. | 10/03/11 18:30:22 By - Carol Rosenberg

Pentagon announces trial of alleged Cole mastermind on new Guantanamo website

Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, 46, a former Saudi millionaire, faces the death penalty in al Qaida’s suicide bombing of a U.S. Navy warship in a Yemen port a decade ago. The announcement came on a new website that news organizations had requested. | 09/28/11 17:11:31 By - Carol Rosenberg

Pentagon launches war court website

The Pentagon on Wednesday morning went live with a new, slicker interactive military commissions website, then used it to announce the first death penalty war crimes prosecution of the Obama administration. | 09/28/11 11:53:17 By - Carol Rosenberg

Report: Pentagon to beam war crimes trials to US soil

The Obama administration’s handpicked choice to run prosecutions at the Guantánamo war crimes court is pledging a new era of transparency from the remote base, complete with near simultaneous transmissions of the proceedings to victims and reporters on U.S. soil. | 09/26/11 19:52:26 By - Carol Rosenberg

Pentagon plans to transmit Guantanamo trials to U.S. points

The Obama administration’s choice to run prosecutions at the Guantanamo war crimes court is pledging a new era of transparency from the remote base, including the nearly simultaneous broadcast of the proceedings to locations in the United States where reporters and families of victims would be able to view them. | 09/25/11 19:44:28 By - Carol Rosenberg

Stinky Guantanamo prison camp standoff over

The waste war is over — for now. War on terror captives are no longer smearing their cells with feces in a stomach-wrenching power struggle with the guards at the maximum security Camp 5 lockup on this remote navy base. | 09/21/11 15:55:05 By - Carol Rosenberg

Admiral prepares Guantanamo for 9/11 tribunals

In the few weeks since Rear Adm. David B. Woods took charge At Guantanamo Bay, he has looked in on the men accused of killing two of his Naval Academy classmates, walked the camps where President Barack Obama’s closure order has faded in the Caribbean sun and presided over a somber ceremony marking the 10th anniversary of America’s 21st Century Day of Infamy. | 09/16/11 06:50:30 By - Carol Rosenberg

At Guantanamo, Woods quietly takes command

The Pentagon has quietly installed a Navy aviator who lost classmates in the 9/11 attacks as the 11th commander of its Guantánamo detention center in Cuba. | 08/29/11 06:54:29 By - Carol Rosenberg

With 9/11 trials looming, Guantanamo makes a practice run

Court was abruptly recessed when a captive tried to make a speech. Guantánamo guards found a suspicious package and ordered an evacuation. Translators struggled to keep pace with a lawyer reciting from a transcript of the Omar Khadr “child soldier” trial. All of it was scripted, a string of travails bedeviling the war court while Tropical Storm Emily bore down on the U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba last week | 08/12/11 17:00:29 By - Carol Rosenberg

Navy pilot named Guantanamo's commander

The Pentagon on Wednesday named Rear Adm. David B. Woods, a pilot now working on Navy policy and strategy, as the 11th commander of its detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. | 08/10/11 18:16:02 By - Carol Rosenberg

Guantanamo prisoners face Ramadan fasting

With the vast majority of the prisoners at Guantánamo now marking their 10th Ramadan in a row behind the razor wire, the military is providing food around the clock for both the faithful honoring the dawn-to-dusk fast and those Muslim captives who choose to ignore it. | 08/05/11 15:49:35 By - Carol Rosenberg

USS Cole bombing case called 'too tainted' for death penalty trial

The military’s case against a former Saudi millionaire accused of masterminding the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole is tainted by delay, torture and destruction of evidence, lawyers argued Friday in a bid to spare the Guantánamo captive a death penalty trial. | 07/18/11 07:06:47 By - Carol Rosenberg

Navy photographer in Guantanamo case settles for probation

A U.S. military veteran of the Iraq surge and Guantánamo averted a federal passport fraud trial on Tuesday by settling for probation in a deal that lets him stay in the United States for now and perhaps continue Navy service. | 07/12/11 12:09:39 By - Carol Rosenberg

Navy Guantanamo photographer freed pending trial

A federal magistrate ordered a veteran U.S. military combat photographer released from a federal detention center Friday, on condition he returns to court for next week’s federal passport fraud trial. | 07/08/11 18:43:03 By - Carol Rosenberg

EU still supports resettling Guantánamo detainees

Europe is still open to resettling Guantánamo detainees on a case by case basis despite U.S. domestic politics that are thwarting President Barack Obama’s closure ambitions, the European Union Ambassador to the United States said Wednesday. | 07/06/11 17:56:09 By - Carol Rosenberg

Florida Rep. Wilson steps in for jailed Navy photographer

A South Florida congresswoman is going to bat for a U.S. military war veteran from her district who is in a Miami lockup on a passport fraud charge and fears deportation to his mother’s native Bahamas. | 07/01/11 12:48:11 By - Carol Rosenberg

Navy photographer spurns deal, will spend July 4 in jail

A U.S. military veteran of Iraq and Guantánamo on Friday spurned a government offer of pre-trial probation and instead faced the prospect of the Fourth of July in a Miami lockup while awaiting a federal passport fraud trial later this month. Navy Reserves Petty Officer 2nd Class Elisha Leo Dawkins, 26, has been confined to the downtown federal detention center since soon after he returned from the Guantánamo detention center earlier this year. | 07/01/11 19:34:04 By - Carol Rosenberg

Latest Guantánamo prison camp suicide was 'indefinite detainee'

An Afghan man who was found hanging from a bedsheet at Guantánamo last month was held by the Pentagon as an "indefinite detainee" — an Obama administration designation originally conferred on 48 captives at the prison camps in Cuba. | 06/28/11 12:54:32 By - Carol Rosenberg

Deal could help Navy photographer of Guantanamo detainees avoid trial

A federal judge disclosed Tuesday that the U.S. Attorney’s office has made a secret offer to resolve the curious passport prosecution of a Miami combat veteran who photographed detainees at Guantánamo and is now a detainee himself. U.S. District Judge Cecilia M. Altonaga revealed the offer of “pretrial diversion” without elaboration in a conference that set a July 12 trial date for Navy Reserves Petty Officer Elisha Dawkins, 26. | 06/28/11 22:22:10 By - Carol Rosenberg

Guantánamo Navy photographer in Miami lock-up

A Miami veteran of U.S. service in Iraq, who took some of the military’s most intimate photos of captives in the prison camps at Guantánamo as a combat photographer, was in a detention center Thursday, facing a federal fraud trial. | 06/23/11 20:05:51 By - Carol Rosenberg

Pentagon names new Guantanamo war crimes prosecutor

The Pentagon on Thursday named a Harvard Law trained career Army general as the chief war crimes prosecutor at Guantánamo, which has two major death penalty prosecutions in the pipeline, notably the 9/11 mass murder trial of five former CIA captives charged as co-conspirators. | 06/23/11 21:13:31 By - Carol Rosenberg

Another former Guantanamo detainee named to terrorist list

The State Department Thursday added a freed Guantánamo detainee to its list of government-sanctioned terrorists, saying the Saudi Arabian soldier is now a fundraiser for the Yemeni offshoot Al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula. | 06/17/11 06:50:37 By - Carol Rosenberg

Guantanamo captives ‘weaponize’ bodily fluids

When a fiddle player and her band toured the prison camps at Guantánamo recently, guards told of a new devious and disturbing tactic confronting them. A captive on a hunger strike had been jamming something foul up his nose to contaminate the pathway for medical staff who feed him a nutritional shake twice a day. | 06/16/11 17:12:12 By - Carol Rosenberg

Europeans ask U.S. not to seek death penalty in Cole bombing

The European Parliament, long a foe of the death penalty, urged the U.S. Thursday to abandon plans to seek the death penalty for a Saudi-born captive accused of orchestrating the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole. | 06/09/11 19:18:00 By - Carol Rosenberg

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