Kind of swamped on Danger Room stuff today, so I figured I’d keep these going to feed the beast. Geneve Mantri, Amnesty International USA: “The bottom line is that Ahmed Ghailani was convicted and faces at least 20 years to life in prison with no chance at parole. He was tried in an open, fair [...]

If you were a shook Obama administration official, wringing your hands over trying Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in civilian court like you said you would, the fact that Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani was found guilty on a conspiracy charge today is not going to inspire confidence. A New York jury acquitted Ghailani of pretty much every other [...]

My friend Michelle Shephard is an amazing reporter. No journalist knows more about Omar Khadr than she does. And she even kills snakes. And what a writer. I just had occasion to read this November 6 Toronto Star dispatch of hers, a kind of epilogue for Khadr’s military commission. Holy crap. Imagine something like this [...]

Marcy hit this too, but I can’t see Joint Task Force-Guantanamo officers going in for the Taliban’s request to free their detainees to participate in peace talks with Karzai. Why wouldn’t the Taliban just claim all Afghan detainees are big-time Taliban operatives and demand their freedom? But it’s a savvy strategy for the Taliban: make [...]

How Omar Khadr’s military commission ends: with an eight-year plea deal… and a 40-year sentence that the commission’s members decided that Khadr should serve but won’t. According to the Department of Defense, here’s how it’s most likely to actually play out in Canada, where Khadr will serve out his time after another year at Guantanamo [...]

My friend Muna Shikaki of al-Arabiya tweet-reports: A plea deal has been reached in the case of the accused war criminal Omar Khadr in Guantanamo that will assure the US government a conviction will ensure Khadr return to Canada to serve the majority of his sentence “soon” sources close to the trial tell Al-Arabiya. Last [...]

Not that this was unanticipated, but behold the Defense Appropriations Committee’s summary of its mark-up yesterday for next year’s defense bill: Includes language which prohibits the transfer, release, or incarceration of any individual who was detained as of October 1, 2009, at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to or within the United States or its [...]

Speaking of the non-existent/invented-by-me-in-a-moment-of-cheekiness campaign to return Jack Goldsmith to the Office of Legal Counsel, check out Goldsmith’s detentions-dilemma op-ed in the Washington Post. Befitting this blighted world, Goldsmith endeavors to find some pragmatic ways out of the terrorism detentions stalemate. Among his basic tradeoffs: keep Guantanamo open and lose the military commissions. If the [...]

The actual military commission of Omar Khadr — who, at 15 years old in 2002, allegedly threw a grenade that killed an Army Special Forces sergeant during the storming of a Khost Province terrorist compound in which he stayed — will begin on October 18 at Guantanamo. While I was in Afghanistan, the military judge [...]

My friend Carol Rosenberg of the Miami Herald has won the Society of Professional Journalists’ First Amendment Award. Carol is the most knowledgeable reporter to have ever covered Guantanamo Bay. The Pentagon’s pathetic efforts at banning her from doing her job gave way to a face-saving climbdown. Carol doesn’t need any vindication, since her work [...]