President Barack Obama signed the intelligence authorization bill—the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Included in the bill were restrictions that would make it harder for his administration to transfer detainees from Guantanamo Bay prison and the Bagram prison in Afghanistan. Human rights groups, which had opposed the restrictions and urged the president to veto the [...]

Senators from the Republican Party have asked a federal appeals court to permit them to participate in oral argument in a lawsuit against the indefinite detention provision of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).  Through their lawyers, according to Josh Gerstein of POLITICO, they filed a motion requesting ten minutes to give a presentation on [...]

Lawyers involved in bringing a lawsuit against an indefinite detention provision in the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) have expressed outrage over a Congressional conference committee decision to remove an amendment offered by Sen. Dianne Feinstein that she thought would ban the indefinite detention of US citizens. Michael B. Kelley for Business Insider reports [...]

UPDATE – 9:10 PM EST Josh Gerstein of POLITICO reports the Feinstein Amendment has been dropped: Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) announced the removal of Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s indefinite detention amendment Tuesday afternoon as he described the results of a House-Senate conference on the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act. “The language of the [...]

The Senate Intelligence Committee recently adopted a six thousand page report on CIA torture and abuse. The report, a product of a three-year review of CIA practices, including its rendition, detention and interrogation (RDI) program, remains classified. It stems from at least six million CIA documents and could be the most comprehensive record to-date of [...]

The media organization WikiLeaks has released the first of more than one hundred classified or “otherwise restricted” policies from the US Department of Defense that lay out rules and procedures for detainees in US military custody. The “Detainee Policies” show how the US military has handled detention for the past decade and will be released [...]

(update below) A three-judge motions panel of the US Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit issued a permanent stay against a permanent injunction a federal judge had issued to block a provision of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), signed last year, which granted the military the power to indefinitely detain people suspected [...]

The United States government has disclosed the names of fifty-five of the eighty-six prisoners cleared for transfer from  Guantanamo Bay prison. All of the names made public were of prisoners President Barack Obama’s interagency  Guantanamo Bay Review Task Force approved for release from the prison. Previously, the US government had maintained the names of prisoners cleared [...]

A federal appeals court judge granted the government a stay against a federal judge’s ruling permanently enjoining a provision of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which passed last year and granted the military the legal authority to indefinitely detain persons. Lawyers from the Justice Department under Obama argued they needed an emergency stay because [...]

“The president strongly believes that to detain American citizens in military custody infinitely without trial, would be a break with our traditions and values as a nation, and wants to make sure that any type of authorization coming from congress, complies with our Constitution, our rules of war and any applicable laws.” Those were the [...]