Group items tagged

The judge set out the timeline while rejecting two defense challenges that he was unqualified and should suspend the proceedings until he was up to speed.

FORT MEADE, Md. — The new judge presiding in the Sept. 11, 2001 case at Guantánamo Bay said on Monday that the trial of the five men accused of plotting the attacks will not begin for at least another year.

Colonel McCall was ruling on objections by defense lawyers for two of the defendants, Walid bin Attash and Ramzi bin al-Shibh. The lawyers questioned his qualifications to preside in a death-penalty case because he had not read the filings and court record stretching back to the arraignment of the defendants in May 2012, including the 33,660-page transcript.

Cuban President Raul Castro told President Barack Obama that normalizing relations between the two countries could best be achieved by returning land currently occupied by the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay and lifting economic sanctions, Cuban officials said on Tuesday.

The two leaders met with on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Tuesday — the first such sit-down between leaders of the two countries on American soil since the Cuban revolution.

In a statement the White House said the president "also highlighted steps the United States intends to take to improve ties between the American and Cuban peoples, and reiterated our support for human rights in Cuba."

The Guantánamo story may finally be coming to an end, and as the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks approaches, the question is who will write the last chapter, the White House or the Supreme Court?

President Biden has vowed to close the island detention center, through which nearly 800 detainees have passed since it opened in early 2002 to house some of the “worst of the worst,” in the words of the Pentagon at the time

President Barack Obama also wanted to close Guantánamo but couldn’t manage to do it. Circumstances are different now

Obama plays a “long game.” The defining element of his global strategy is that it reflects the totality of U.S. interests — foreign and domestic — to project leadership in an era of finite resources and seemingly infinite demands.

For too many critics, the answer is almost always for the United States to do more of something and show “strength” by acting “tough,” though usually what that something is remains very vague. And doing more of everything is not a strategy.

The foreign policy debate, on the other hand, tends to be dominated by policy day traders — or flashy real estate developers — whose incentives are the opposite: achieving quick results by making a big splash, getting rewarded with instant judgments and reacting to every blip in the market.

After years of watching his influence in Latin America slip away, Mr. Obama suddenly turned the tables this week by declaring a sweeping détente with Cuba, opening the way for a major repositioning of the United States in the region.

Washington’s isolation of Cuba has long been a defining fixture of Latin American politics, something that has united governments across the region, regardless of their ideologies. Even some of Washington’s close allies in the Americas have rallied to Cuba’s side.

“We never thought we would see this moment,” said Brazil’s president, Dilma Rousseff, a former Marxist guerrilla who chided the Obama administration last year over the National Security Agency’s surveillance of her and her top aides. She called the deal with Cuba “a moment which marks a change in civilization.”

The groundbreaking memoir of a current Guantánamo inmate that lays bare the harrowing details of the US rendition and torture programme from the perspective of one of its victims is to be published next week after a six-year battle for the manuscript to be declassified.

Mohamedou Ould Slahi describes a world tour of torture and humiliation that began in his native Mauritania more than 13 years ago and progressed through Jordan and Afghanistan before he was consigned to US detention in Guantánamo, Cuba, in August 2002 as prisoner number 760.

The journal, which Slahi handwrote in English, details how he was subjected to sleep deprivation, death threats, sexual humiliation and intimations that his torturers would go after his mother.

President Obama sent Congress a plan on Tuesday to close the United States military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, his latest attempt to deliver on an unfulfilled promise of his presidency, which faces near-certain rejection by Congress.

The prison has come to symbolize the darker side of the nation’s antiterrorism efforts, but the series of steps that Mr. Obama outlined at the White House were as much an acknowledgment of the constraints binding him during his final year in office as they were a practical blueprint for transferring prisoners.

n presenting them, the president made little secret of his frustration that his quest to close Guantánamo, once regarded as a bipartisan moral imperative, had become a divisive political issue.

Trump has been many things -- a billionaire real-estate developer, a brash reality-TV star and a best-selling author. But he's never held elected office or delved deeply into foreign policy. Read More

"He comes across as someone with a lot of instincts and not a lot of reserve about acting on those instincts."

Trump vows to champion U.S. economic strength and military power -- "to make America great again," as he says.He's giving voice to many voters' frustrations and fears about America's place in the world.

Aamer, 48, was held over extremely serious claims - that he had led a Taliban unit and was an associate of Osama Bin Laden. The US military classified him as a threat, but he was never charged.

His lawyers say the case against him came from unreliable allegations extracted during torture and that his treatment at the US military base in Cuba raises serious questions about the legality and morality of the so-called war on terror.

The Saudi national lived in London for five years, settling with a British wife - but says he found it hard to be a practising Muslim in the UK.

highest level of military court-martial, which can impose a harsh penalty.

walking off his post in Afghanistan

captured by Taliban insurgents, who held him for nearly five years.

Zayn Husayn, also known as Abu Zubaydah, is a former associate of Osama bin Laden who was detained abroad after his capture in Pakistan and who is now being held at the U.S. government’s Guantanamo Bay detention facility.

it determined that certain categories of information — including the identities of its foreign intelligence partners and the location of former CIA detention facilities in their countries — could not be declassified without risking undue harm to national security, and thus invoked the “state secrets” privilege.

A district court struck down the law, relying on Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, a 2016 decision involving Texas abortion regulations. After the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit affirmed this decision, the secretary decided not to pursue any further appeals.

Some Games, such as the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Berlin, saw countries (including the U.S. and the U.K.) threaten to pull out, before deciding to participate. World Wars I and II forced the cancellation of three Olympic Games—in 1916, 1940 and 1944. And other countries have been banned for a variety of reasons: Germany and Japan in 1948 because of their roles in WWII, South Africa during the era of apartheid and Russia in 2020, due to a doping scandal (although individual athletes were ultimately allowed to compete.)

The Details: Australia’s first hosting stint also marked the first Olympic boycott, with numerous countries withdrawing for a variety of political reasons. Less than a month before the opening ceremony, the Soviet Union invaded Hungary to stop the Hungarian Revolution against the Communist regime; in protest, the Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland all refused to participate. Meanwhile, the People’s Republic of China also withdrew—and would not return until the 1980 Winter Games—because Taiwan, which it considers a breakaway province, was allowed to participate as a separate country. And, finally, Egypt, Iraq and Lebanon boycotted the 1956 Olympics due to the Suez Canal Crisis following the British-Israel-French invasion of Egypt to control the waterway.

‘Blood in the Water’: Despite other countries’ boycott against the Soviets, Hungary competed in the Olympics, and its athletes received support from fans, while Soviet athletes faced boos. A violent water polo match between the two teams left one Hungarian player bleeding from the head and led to a fight among spectators and athletes. Hungary, up 4-0 at the start of the brawl, was named the winner and the team eventually won the gold medal. The Soviets, for their part, went on to win the most medals for the first time. Of Note: In a show of peace, the Olympic athletes, for the first time, marched into the closing ceremony mixed together, rather than as separate nations—a tradition that continues today.