British Arab Lawyers’ Association

This category deals specifically with the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba U.S. Detention Center.

A federal judge rejected on Monday a U.S. government request to keep secret the unclassified evidence that it says justifies the continued imprisonment of more than 100 Guantanamo Bay prisoners.

U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan ruled the government cannot keep the documents known as factual returns from public disclosure and must seek court approval to keep specific information secret.

“Public interest in Guantanamo Bay generally and these proceedings specifically has been unwavering,” Hogan wrote. “Publicly disclosing the factual returns would enlighten the citizenry and improve perceptions of the proceedings’ fairness.”

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — The U.S. military is planning a tribunal session at Guantanamo Bay next week to resolve an internal dispute involving the attorney for a Canadian detainee, the lawyer said Tuesday.

Navy Lt. Cmdr. William Kuebler, who was recently fired and then reinstated, said a military judge scheduled the hearing for Monday to address his status as the lead attorney for Omar Khadr, the last Western prisoner held at Guantanamo.

Leon Panetta, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, has been asked by lawyers of one Guantánamo Bay detainee not to dismantle the secret prisons used to interrogate suspected terrorists. The counsel for Abd al-Rahim Hussain Mohammed al-Nashiri argued in a letter to Panetta dated April 13 that the secret facilities should be preserved “ until such time as we have an adequate opportunity to document” the undisclosed locations where al-Nashiri was confined and tortured. The CIA has admitted that al-Nashiri, who is accused of plotting the attack on the USS Cole in 2000, was subjected to waterboarding while in CIA custody. But because videotapes depicting his torture have already been destroyed by the agency, al-Nashiri’s attorneys believe the only remaining relevant evidence may exist at the three secret sites where he was held until being transferred to Guantánamo in September 2006. Panetta announced on April 9, 2009, that the CIA would “decommission” the CIA secret facilities, but he did not explain the details of what that means.

A prisoner at Guantanamo Bay claims Barack Obama’s promises to end the abuse of inmates have not been followed through at the notorious United States detention centre.

Mohammad al-Qurani, from Chad, telephoned al-Jazeera from inside the camp to say he had been subjected to almost daily beatings from the guards, who used tear gas when he refused to leave his cell.

A Guantánamo detainee used his prison camp telephone privileges to ring up a reporter with the Middle Eastern news network al Jazeera and complain that he had been abused by prison camp guards, the U.S. military and network said Tuesday.

Mohammed el Gharani, whose attorneys say he was captured at age 14, in Pakistan, got the phone privileges in Camp Iguana, a transitional holding site for detainees awaiting release.

Attorneys for detainee Abd Al-Rahim Hussain Mohammed al-Nashiri today sent a letter to CIA Director Leon Panetta requesting that the CIA “black site” buildings, interrogation cells, prisoner cells, shackles, water boards and other equipment be preserved for inspection and documentation. Al-Nashiri, who is now detained at Guantánamo, was held in the secret CIA prison facilities from 2002 to 2006. Director Panetta has ordered the closure of CIA black sites, but al-Nashiri’s attorneys are concerned that the CIA intends to destroy the sites – including the buildings and the equipment used to interrogate and torture al-Nashiri and other detainees – and in doing so destroy evidence of his mistreatment.

The 240 people who live in very basic lodgings on the southern tip of a sunny Caribbean island may wish to reconsider the less-than-rosy opinion they have of their surroundings.

No less an authority than Miss Universe has visited Guantánamo Bay and pronounced the infamous US detention centre a “relaxing, calm, beautiful place”.

According to a blog posting that will strike fear into the hearts of diplomats in Caracas and Washington, the beauty queen - who is also known as Dayana Mendoza from Venezuela - visited the facility last week with her friend, Miss USA, Crystle Stewart.

A former top US government advisor who faces possible indictment in Spain for his role in establishing the Guantanamo Bay prison camp described the case against him as “outrageous.”

Douglas Feith — a key advisor in president George W. Bush’s Pentagon — told Fox News that moves before a Spanish court to indict him for facilitating torture were an effort to “intimidate US government officials.”

SAN JUAN: Many detainees locked up at Guantanamo were innocent men swept up by US forces unable to distinguish enemies from noncombatants, a former Bush administration official said yesterday. “There are still innocent people there,” Lawrence B. Wilkerson, a Republican who was chief of staff to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, said. “Some have been there six or seven years.”

In an attempt to win sanctions against a former top Bush administration official over brutal interrogations of prisoners at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, a lawyers group deployed a strategy Monday that worked against Presidents Nixon and Clinton.

Former Defense Department General Counsel William J. Haynes II is the first of several former policymakers the National Lawyers Guild wants reprimanded, suspended or disbarred for their roles in detainee abuse, said Carlos Villarreal, executive director of the San Francisco Bay Area guild chapter that filed a complaint against Haynes with the State Bar of California.