Guantánamo Report

21/06/2024

Just released on the military commissions website, and I am astonished: This internal communication to the judges from the time they held their first simultaneous hearings at the war court compound called Camp Justice, decrying no "thoughtful analysis of facts."

It was written FIVE MONTHS after I had personally discussed with the public affairs director how journalists who specialize in court reporting function in courthouses across the United States. Five months earlier, and the subject was never discussed and analyzed?

Glossary:
OMC = Office of Military Commissions
TJ = Trial Judiciary
NGO = Representatives of nongovernmental organizations, mostly law students these days on a one-week peek inside the process.
VFMS = Victim Family Members who have their own reserved section

Here's a link to the just released submissionhttps://www.mc.mil/Portals/0/pdfs/KSM2/KSM%20II%20(AE946A).pdf

21/06/2024

It is pack-up day at Guantánamo Bay for legal teams in the decade-long war crimes case of the Afghanistan battlefield commander called Hadi the Iraqi. It reached its conclusion yesterday with a 30-year sentence busted down to 10, minus two. Explained here.

A U.S. military jury decided on a 30-year prison term. But under a plea deal, the prisoner’s sentence will end in 2032.

20/06/2024

Breaking news from Guantanamo Bay: A military jury has just sentenced an admitted commander of insurgent fighters in wartime Afghanistan to the maximum, 30 years. But there's a hitch. Under a plea deal he could get out in eight. My story...

A U.S. military jury decided on a 30-year prison term. But under a plea deal, the prisoner’s sentence will end in 2032.

19/06/2024

Latest from Camp Justice: The military jury now has the Al Qaeda commander case at Guantanamo Bay. The Navy lawyer-turned-civilian lead prosecutor and the enlisted scout sniper-turned-Marine defense lawyer offered some gripping closings.

The the prisoner's lead defense lawyer, also a civilian, delivered a classified, secondary closing to the jury in a closed session. No public, no defendant. No details.

Court resumes tomorrow at 0830, with either a verdict, questions or resumption of deliberations.

My dispatch...

The panel is deciding a sentence for a prisoner who pleaded guilty to commanding Qaeda and Taliban forces in Afghanistan that carried out war crimes.

18/06/2024

In a first, a former C.I.A. prisoner at Guantanamo Bay used 360 forensic photography to give his sentencing jury -- as well as the public -- a virtual tour of the former black site cells where he was held, interrogated.
The former Al Qaeda field commander in wartime Afghanistan said the U.S. imagery of a windowless, closet-size cell with no toilet, shower or bed resembled the place he was held in 2006 -- minus a blood stain on the wall.

Years after the agency’s “black site” program was shut down, details are slowly emerging during trials at Guantánamo Bay.

15/06/2024

Latest war court dispatch: The physical and emotional carnage of the early years of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, America’s longest war, was on display Friday as prosecutors presented their case in the sentencing trial of a Guantánamo prisoner.

Victims of insurgent attacks in wartime Afghanistan described their loss to a jury at Guantánamo Bay to give a human face to a written guilty plea.

13/06/2024

Check it out: There's a nuclear powered fast attack US submarine parked here at Guantanamo Bay and, rather than the typical base drill of imposing an embargo on a visiting vessel, the military is leaning forward and announcing it. The U.S. Southern Command, which oversees the Guantanamo prison, said today that the USS Helena is here "as part of a routine port visit as it transits the U.S. Southern Command geographic area of responsibility while conducting its global maritime security and national defense mission."

Southcom leaned forward and disclosed the port visit a day after the Navy revealed that, last month, a shipmate was found dead aboard Helena while the sub was parked in Norfolk, Virginia.

The Navy is investigating the death of a sailor on-board the submarine, the USS Helena.

12/06/2024

Down here at Guantanamo Bay this week, an Army judge is presiding over jury selection in a most unusual sentencing case involving war crimes in 2003-04 era Afghanistan. Meet an American family who has come to participate.

An Iraqi prisoner admitted to conspiring with Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. But his case is an outlier at the Guantánamo court.

04/06/2024

A celebration of Jon and Kem Sawyer and a welcome to Lisa Gibbs tonight as the Pulitzer Center shifts to a new era in supporting international journalism and crisis reporting.

03/06/2024

In DC for the day between Gitmo trips and stopped in at Arlington Cemetery.

30/05/2024

Overheard at the war court...
Soldier: How similar are the military commissions to a civilian court?
Lawyer 1: Not even a little.
Lawyer 2: In both courts the judge wears a robe.

28/05/2024

Here's how the base and prison staff commemorated Memorial Day at Guantanamo Bay. I was here but, truth be told, I did not hear that gunfire echo over to where I was staying.

26/05/2024

fyi, updated this Memorial Day weekend with some changes on the defense teams.

The case against the men accused of conspiring in the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackings that killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, at the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania.

24/05/2024

The things that turn up on your desk ahead of a long Memorial Day weekend at Guantanamo Bay.

(The war court is dark until Tuesday. Yet the military is moving its civil service and uniformed per diem people down there tomorrow.)

22/05/2024

Latest: The military judge has canceled the July 1-12 pretrial hearing in the USS Cole bombing case. Next week's session is still on track for a short four-day hearing, with remote testimony from Virginia from at least one witness.

One of the weeks in July had two simultaneous hearings in adjacent courtrooms. Now that won't happen until October, per the current calendar. That should give the war court management folks who freaked out over reporters silently signing out of one hearing and stepping next door to sign in for the other more time to bone up on how U.S. courts function every day.

AE554C

What to know about the death-penalty prosecution of a Saudi prisoner accused of plotting the attack on a Navy destroyer off Yemen in 2000 that killed 17 sailors.

16/05/2024

My latest from the 9/11 hearings at Guantanamo Bay with my colleague Charlie Savage: Had federal prosecutors been allowed to pursue a 9/11 trial in New York City, they intended to chart a different path, avoiding the years long exploration of whether the FBI's interrogations in 2007 were tainted by torture.

The revelation sets in stark relief the decision by military prosecutors to seek to include the evidence, which has opened the door to years of litigation over confessions by the men accused of plotting the attacks.

11/05/2024

Sunday read? Spend a little time with a former CIA prisoner, and the family that waited for him.

In a quick but eventful year since his release, Majid Khan reunited with his wife, met his daughter who was born after his capture and added to his family with a baby son.

09/05/2024

In the year since his release, this former CIA prisoner has been reunited with his wife, met the daughter who was born after his capture and has a new baby boy. My story with Natalie Keyssar's photos on the joys and struggles of building a new life in Belize after years of despair and isolation for the freed Guantanamo convict, Majid Khan.

In a quick but eventful year since his release, Majid Khan reunited with his wife, met his daughter who was born after his capture and added to his family with a baby son.

08/05/2024

Today's news from the 9/11 case: The judge, Col. Matthew McCall, said in open court today that he is open to postponing his retirement past the end of the year, if necessary, to get this critical suppression phase done. If he does, it would be his third retirement delay and a recognition of all the work ahead at this sensitive juncture -- more witnesses, filings, closing arguments. Soon after, prosecutor Chris Dykstra framed an answer to a logistics question around the remark, "if and when your honor retires..."

I spelled out the stakes after the last time the judge extended his time in service, in March.

The judge, Col. Matthew N. McCall, was initially expected to retire in April, a timetable that would have left it to a fifth judge in the case to make key decisions.

08/05/2024

Latest on this... Senator Mitch McConnell said on the Senate floor today that the president would pay "a steep political price" for any plea deal in the 9/11 case. "Khalid Shaikh Mohammed deserves nothing less than the death penalty. And the fact he hasn’t yet received it is a disgrace." https://nyti.ms/44FPWSU

Here's a link to his remarks: https://www.republicanleader.senate.gov/newsroom/remarks/mcconnell-remarks-on-support-for-israel-justice-for-terrorists?peek=AyS7KNYKi%2BfL4w7SLQv4vMr20%2B%2BKwuoSrCYJ1NfS6YzV1c59

The lead prosecutor briefed the judge on the talks in an effort to fend off a claim that members of Congress had unlawfully meddled in the negotiations.

02/05/2024

Today’s big news: Sept. 11 trial plea negotiations are still underway at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba
**I'm told this story has now been opened up for comments.

The lead prosecutor briefed the judge on the talks in an effort to fend off a claim that members of Congress had unlawfully meddled in the negotiations.

27/04/2024

In a first, a military judge at Guantánamo Bay crossed into the security zone containing the wartime prison and inspected a former C.I.A. “black site” facility at the center of a dispute over the taint of torture in the Sept. 11, 2001, case.
It was a noteworthy moment in the arc of the two-decade history of the Guantánamo trials. No war court judge had before made the five-mile trip to look at the detention operations, where the military maintains the only known, still-intact remnant of the network of overseas prisons that the C.I.A. operated from 2002 to 2009.

Col. Matthew McCall toured the part of the prison at Guantánamo Bay where, in 2007, federal agents obtained now-disputed confessions from terrorism suspects.

24/04/2024

At Guantanamo, completion of a prison sentence doesn't earn a detainee a Get Out of Jail Card: The United States' forever prisoner policy, as played out in the Sept. 11 trial this morning.

The argument, in a pretrial hearing, dealt with the unresolved question of whether a prisoner who completes such a sentence is entitled to release from military detention.

22/04/2024

So frustratingly Guantanamo. On Oct. 20, 2021 a 9/11 defense team filed a "Motion to Suppress Statements Made to the FBI ... for Lack of Rights Warnings Under Article 31, UCMJ, and Miranda v. Arizona." The security folks have yet to decide which part of it can be made public.

21/04/2024

And, as a reminder, the war court inaugurated its new $4M courtroom last week with a rather surprisingly hostile approach to the four journalists who traveled to Guantanamo to report on the proceedings.

On the eve of the big day, the court spokesman notified the four of us that, despite his hiring extra handlers, we could not move between the adjacent courts -- as news reporters routinely do in courthouses across America. Even with all those extra Pentagon paid contractors at our heels.

We heard the 9/11 judge was miffed, walked off the bench briefly, and perhaps was going to have a talk with other military jurists. But we still await the 4/16/2024 court transcript to see precisely what was said on the official court record as the events unfolded.

Planners added the national security courtroom for pretrial hearings and to prepare for the possibility of a Sept. 11 trial.

21/04/2024

Good afternoon from Camp Justice at Guantanamo Bay. We are preparing for Week 2 of this first ever five-week pretrial hearing session in the 9/11 case. We expect more closed testimony from FBI analyst Kimberly Waltz on Monday, Tuesday and maybe Wednesday.

A key witness, retired FBI agent Stephen Gaudin, will miss this hearing due to illness. So a bunch of court observers dropped out. We are two reporters, one 9/11 family member and a law student here for the hearings -- with an abundance of drivers and chaperones on call.

Canceled witnesses are part of the fabric of this case's excruciatingly long pretrial phase. But not without consequence. In case you haven't seen it yet, here's my on point story from February.

The military court at Guantánamo faces a new challenge as key witnesses die, become too sick to travel or no longer remember details.

19/04/2024

Looking for a weekend read? Check out this report of the unfinished business over a former CIA Black Site in Lithuania. At least two defendants awaiting capital trials at Guantánamo Bay were held there.

Despite rulings in European courts saying the Baltic country was home to a secret prison, the issue has been shrouded in official secrecy in a nation closely allied with the United States.

17/04/2024

It's a watershed week at Guantanamo Bay: The war court has finally opened its long awaited second national-security courtroom, eliminating one obstacle to the someday 9/11 death-penalty trial. There were a few snafus along the way.

Here's my dispatch from the court compound called Camp Justice.

Planners added the national security courtroom for pretrial hearings and to prepare for the possibility of a Sept. 11 trial.

13/04/2024

Good afternoon from Guantanamo Bay and we have some breaking news in the USS Cole case, the war court’s longest running death penalty prosecution: Anthony Natale, the lead defense lawyer for Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, is retiring on Sept. 14, when his Pentagon contract expires. Mr. Nashiri has already agreed to his departure.
Lawyers will notify the judge, Army Col. Matthew Fitzgerald, on Monday — and the military will soon invite applications for a new capital defense lawyer, aka learned counsel, for the team. Last month, Colonel Fitzgerald said on his first day on the bench that he hopes to hold the trial in 2025. Here's our guide, for now.

What to know about the death-penalty prosecution of a Saudi prisoner accused of plotting the attack on a Navy destroyer off Yemen in 2000 that killed 17 sailors.

07/11/2023

The 9/11 hearings transcript of the 10/5/2023 unclassified, open court testimony of the Guantanamo prison commander has been released -- after a long journey through . One intriguing piece of information that was vanished: For a time the codename of the secret guard force at Gitmo's Camp 7 -- the place where they kept former CIA black site prisoners -- was Task Force Pretorian.
(I was hoping to figure out whether the preferred spelling was Praetorian.)