The defense for Pfc. Bradley Manning indicated in a military court that ensuring crowd-funded stenographers had access to create an unofficial transcript of the trial, which would be made available to media outlets around the world, was something they supported. “We believe that this enforces Pfc. Manning’s right” under the Sixth Amendment during trial, defense [...]

It has now been one hundred days since prisoners being held at the Guantanamo Bay prison launched a hunger strike. According to the Miami Herald‘s Carol Rosenberg, the Pentagon says 102 prisoners are now on hunger strike, and thirty are being “tube-fed.” The hunger strike was sparked in February. As noted in a letter sent by [...]

A military appeals court has decided journalists and media organizations in a lawsuit being brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) do not have standing to challenge the lack of access to court records in the court martial of Pfc. Bradley Manning, the soldier being prosecuted by the military for disclosing information to WikiLeaks. [...]

Considering the way the military has handled the situation at Guantanamo — forbidding reporters at the island, making nice to the ICRC only to conduct violent raids on detainees as soon as Red Cross officials leave, force-feeding hunger-striking detainees against all medical ethics and protocols — you’d think the Pentagon thought they had another Koje-Ko prison camp rebellion on their hands.

Apparently the White House was notified in advance of the nighttime raids on the debilitated hunger strikers, who according to military accounts (which one must take with maximum suspicion), fought back with mop and broom handles and plastic water bottles.

Whatever military police met in terms of opposition, what they certainly encountered were emaciated prisoners, worn down by years of interrogation, isolation, brutality, and now hunger, as they wield the only real weapons they know, their very bodies, choosing death over the hopelessness and torture that is indefinite detention.

The United States Constitution and international law make it illegal to kill someone without due process except in armed conflict or where they pose an imminent threat and there is no other option available, staff attorney Maria Lahood of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) explains. The reality is the Obama Administration, in expanding the [...]

Legal proceedings in the case of Pfc. Bradley Manning, the soldier accused of releasing classified information to WikiLeaks, resumed yesterday, with the defense arguing in the military court at Fort Meade that all charges should be dropped with prejudice. David Coombs, Manning’s lead defense attorney, argued the government did not understand basic military rules for [...]

Pakistani lawyer Shahzad Akbar, who sued the United States government over family members of civilian victims of US drone attacks, was invited to participate in an upcoming International Drone Summit in Washington, DC, on April 28, but, the peace group CODEPINK reports the US is refusing to grant him a visa. The refusal by the [...]

A new examination of waterboarding and other “water treatment” torture practices by the Department of Defense, published today at Truthout, seriously calls into question the accepted narrative around waterboarding by the U.S. government. Up until now, it’s been accepted that only the CIA waterboarded detainees at black sites in the “war on terror,” and only three prisoners at that. But a new investigation of available materials from Congress, Inspector General reports, first-hand and second-hand accounts in the press, as well as other documentary evidence, shows that use of waterboarding-style torture was likely used widely by U.S. forces, from Afghanistan to Iraq to Guantanamo.

“The first large array of photographs depicting the devastating impact of US unmanned aircraft (‘drone’) attacks on innocent civilians in Pakistan” goes on display in London today. Its photographic evidence belies claims by the U.S. of no collateral killing of civilians by the drone attacks. The exhibit opens just as former CIA counsel John Rizzo is being charged for murder in Pakistan for his role in approving the attacks, and as Human Rights Watch has begun a campaign to seek the prosecution of Bush administration officials for torture. Is the Obama administration listening? Not only are they against investigations or prosecutions of past officials, they have engaged in war crimes of their own, most particularly around the controversial drone program of targeted killings.

Alex Koppelman and Benjamin Wittes, both of whom wrote hit pieces attacking Scott Horton’s award-winning article in Harper’s, “The Guantanamo Suicides,” won a bit of infamy by having their attacks cited in a government brief seeking a denial of a lawsuit filed by the parents of two of the dead prisoners. What’s even more galling is that their articles were poorly researched and basically government apologia. The U.S. government appears to have taken notice, and used their articles for their own purposes, making Koppelman and Wittes, wittingly or not, government proxies in the matter of the Guantanamo suicides controversy.