● Election 2012... ● Shelby Steele: The Exploitation of Trayvon Martin... ● Protecting You From The UN-Frendly Skies... Prohibited Items Found 3/2 to 3/8... ● Congressional earmarks sometimes used to fund projects near lawmakers' properties... ● Public Law List (112st Congress - 2012)... ● Congress's Phony Insider-Trading Reform... ● Obama denounces Senate vote to block Cordray at consumer watchdog agency... ● Walker signs 'castle doctrine' bill, other measures... ● Holder faces House Republicans over health-care law, ‘Fast and Furious’... ● Postal workers behaving badly!...
PositiveReform header image 4
When the people fear the government, there is tyranny; When the government fears the people, there is liberty.  ~ Thomas Jefferson

 

Entries Tagged as 'Detainees'

Terrorist Attack on US in NY Court:Al-Qaeda terrorist Ahmed Ghailani acquitted of all but one charge of 285 counts

November 17th, 2010 · Democrats, Obama's Scheme, Selling Out the US, Terrorism from Within, Terrorist Attack, Treason

Only in America will you find that TERRORIST have more Constitutional Rights that it’s Citizens.
This is an OBAMA-nation.

By TOM HAYS – The Associated Press
Wednesday, November 17, 2010; 6:49 PM

NEW YORK — The first Guantanamo detainee to face a civilian trial was acquitted Wednesday of all but one of the hundreds of charges he helped unleash death and destruction on two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998 – an opening salvo in al-Qaida’s campaign to kill Americans.

A federal jury convicted Ahmed Ghailani of one count of conspiracy to destroy U.S. property and acquitted him on more than 280 other counts, including one murder count for each of the 224 people killed in the embassy bombings. The anonymous jurors deliberated over seven days.

Prosecutors said Ghailani faces a minimum of 20 years and a maximum of life in prison at sentencing on Jan. 25.

Ghailani, 36, rubbed his face, smiled and hugged his lawyers after the jury left the courtroom.

Prosecutors had branded Ghailani a cold-blooded terrorist. The defense portrayed him as a clueless errand boy, exploited by senior al-Qaida operatives and framed by evidence from contaminated crime scenes.

The trial at a lower Manhattan courthouse had been viewed as a possible test case for President Barack Obama administration’s aim of putting other terror detainees – including self-professed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four other terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba – on trial on U.S. soil.

[View Complete Article →]

Tags: ·········

No Comments

DOD lacks policy on housing convicted Gitmo detainees, judge says

August 11th, 2010 · Defense, Democrats, Homeland Security, National Security, Non-Transparency, Obama's Scheme, Selling Out the US, Terrorism from Within, Treason

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba–The Department of Defense has no written policy on how detainees convicted in military commissions should be housed after they are sentenced despite a 2008 Pentagon directive to create a plan for such prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a military judge said.

“This is troubling,” said Judge Nancy J. Paul, an Air Force Lt. Col., noting that two commissions are currently being held at Guantanamo Bay which could lead to the sentencing of two detainees this month. She said “no written plan, no written policy, or directive exists” about where to put convicted war criminals here.

The issue arose this week in the case of Ibrahim al-Qosi, a 50-year old Sudanese who cooked for al-Qaeda’s inner circle in Afghanistan, and who pleaded guilty last month to conspiracy and providing material support for terrorism.

As part of the deal, military prosecutors said Qosi could serve any time he gets in Camp 4, the minimum-security facility where detainees live communally.

The one person held at Guantanamo Bay who has been convicted of war crimes, Ali Hamza Ahmad al-Balul, Osama bin Laden’s former media secretary, is kept apart from the other 175 detainees. Balul was held for a time after sentencing in late 2008 in the Camp 5 maximum security facility, but he was subsequently moved. Military officials here refuse to say where he is currently held.

[View Complete Article →]

Tags: ······

No Comments

Obama Negotiates with Terrorists: Ibrahim al-Qosi’s plea agreement is kept secret

August 11th, 2010 · Defense, Democrats, Homeland Security, National Security, Non-Transparency, Obama's Scheme, Selling Out the US, Terrorism from Within, Treason

Guantanamo detainee Ibrahim al-Qosi’s plea agreement is kept secret

By Peter Finn – Tuesday, August 10, 2010

GUANTANAMO BAY, CUBA — A former cook for Osama bin Laden’s entourage in Afghanistan has reached an agreement with the U.S. government that will allow him to serve any sentence at a minimum-security facility at Guantanamo Bay, according to statements by lawyers at a military commission on Monday.

Ibrahim al-Qosi, a 50-year-old native of Sudan who worked for bin Laden for years before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, pleaded guilty last month to conspiracy and material support for terrorism as part of a pretrial agreement. The case marked the first conviction at Guantanamo Bay under President Obama, whose administration promised that reformed military commissions would offer greater due process and more transparency.

But the government and the defense, with the blessing of Judge Nancy J. Paul, an Air Force lieutenant colonel, have sealed the newly reached agreement, including the maximum sentence that Qosi can serve.

A spokesman for the military commission’s prosecutors, Navy Capt. David Iglesias, refused to discuss the agreement or explain why it was kept secret, except to say the plea raises “security issues” and is to the benefit of both Qosi and the government.

Iglesias said Qosi’s period of confinement would be made public after military officials review the record of trial, a process that he said could take several weeks. Another military official said the process could take several months.

A military defense lawyer would not discuss the agreement.

[View Complete Article →]

Tags: ·····

No Comments

Obama sends Guantanamo detainee Naji back to Algeria against his will.

July 20th, 2010 · Defense, Government, Homeland Security, Immigration, National Security, War on Terrorism

By Peter Finn Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 20, 2010

The Obama administration has for the first time sent a detainee at Guantanamo Bay back home against his will.

Aziz Abdul Naji, 35, an Algerian who had been held at Guantanamo for more than eight years, had appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to remain at the military detention center in Cuba. He argued that he would be tortured or killed in Algeria, either by the government or by terrorist groups that might try to recruit him.

In a unanimous decision, the justices declined late Friday to hear Naji’s appeal, and the Defense Department announced Monday that he had been repatriated.

The court ruled 5 to 3 earlier Friday evening that the executive branch could also proceed with the transfer of another Algerian detainee, Fahri Saeed bin Mohammad.

The decisions effectively ended the efforts of all six Algerian detainees at the prison camp to remain there rather than be repatriated.

Administration officials said they will nonetheless continue to examine each case individually before any repatriation. And officials have expressed some concern about returning one of the Algerians, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison in absentia while he was held at Guantanamo Bay.

[View Complete Article →]

Tags: ·····

No Comments

N.Y. plot brings the politics of terrorism to the forefront

May 4th, 2010 · Accountability, Deception, Defense, Democrats, Ethics, Foreign Policy, Homeland Security, Immigration, Non-Transparency, Obama Exposed, Obama's Scheme, Selling Out the US, Terrorism from Within, Terrorist Attack

By Michael D. Shear Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 4, 2010; 10:13 AM

As the U.S. government begins to build its case against Faisal Shahzad in the attempted New York car bombing, the politics of terrorism are sure to swell quickly in Washington as well.

For a White House that has been seeking a new relationship with the Islamic world, the prospect of another terrorist plot that appears to be connected to Pakistan will present a series of complicated — and politically treacherous — issues to confront.

High on the list of political questions is what impact the apparent plot will have on the controversial issue of whether Khalid Sheik Mohammed — the avowed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks — should stand trial in a federal courtroom in Manhattan.

[View Complete Article →]

Tags: ·······

No Comments

Gitmo’s Indefensible Lawyers

March 15th, 2010 · Corruption, Deception, Defense, Democrats, Homeland Security, National Security, Non-Transparency, Obama's Scheme, Selling Out the US, Terrorism from Within, Treason, War on Terrorism

Legal counsel to some of the detainees went far beyond vigorous representation of their clients. Doesn’t the public have a right to know?

Wall Street Journal – MARCH 15, 2010
By Debra Burlingame and Thomas Joscelyn

On the evening of Jan. 26, 2006, military guards at Guantanamo Bay made an alarming discovery during a routine cell check. Lying on the bed of a Saudi detainee was an 18-page color brochure. The cover consisted of the now famous photograph of newly-arrived detainees dressed in orange jumpsuits—masked, bound and kneeling on the ground at Camp X-Ray—just four months after 9/11. Written entirely in Arabic, it also included pictures of what appeared to be detainee operations in Iraq. Major General Jay W. Hood, then the commander of Joint Task Force-Guantanamo, concurred with the guards that this represented a serious breach of security.

Maj. Gen. Hood asked his Islamic cultural adviser to translate. The cover read: “Cruel. Inhuman. Degrades Us All: Stop Torture and Ill-Treatment in the ‘War on Terror.’” It was published by Amnesty International in the United Kingdom and portrayed America and its allies as waging a campaign of torture against Muslims around the globe.

“One thread that runs through many of the testimonies from prisons in Afghanistan and Iraq, and from Guantanamo,” the brochure read, “is that of anti-Arab, anti-Islamic, and other racist abuse.”

[View Complete Article →]

Tags: ·····

No Comments

Obama advisers (NOW) set to recommend military tribunals for alleged 9/11 plotters

March 6th, 2010 · Deception, Defense, Democrats, Ethics, Foreign Policy, Homeland Security, National Security, Non-Transparency, Obama's Scheme, Selling Out the US, Terrorism from Within, Treason

By Anne E. Kornblut and Peter Finn Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, March 5, 2010

President Obama‘s advisers are nearing a recommendation that Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, be prosecuted in a military tribunal, administration officials said, a step that would reverse Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.’s plan to try him in civilian court in New York City.

The president’s advisers feel increasingly hemmed in by bipartisan opposition to a federal trial in New York and demands, mainly from Republicans, that Mohammed and his accused co-conspirators remain under military jurisdiction, officials said. While Obama has favored trying some terrorism suspects in civilian courts as a symbol of U.S. commitment to the rule of law, critics have said military tribunals are the appropriate venue for those accused of attacking the United States.

If Obama accepts the likely recommendation of his advisers, the White House may be able to secure from Congress the funding and legal authority it needs to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and replace it with a facility within the United States. The administration has failed to meet a self-imposed one-year deadline to close Guantanamo.

[View Complete Article →]

Tags: ·······

No Comments

Obama appointees to the Justice Department represented detainees earlier in their careers.

March 4th, 2010 · Corruption, Deception, Defense, Democrats, Ethics, Government, Government Control, Homeland Security, Immigration, National Security, Obama Nominees, Obama's Scheme, Terrorism from Within, Treason

Conservatives raise ruckus over Justice appointees’ prior work with detainees

By Carrie Johnson Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 4, 2010

Conservatives who are unhappy with the decision to close the prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have trained their fire on an unusual target: political appointees in the Obama Justice Department who represented detainees earlier in their careers.

Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) has been demanding for months the names of nine appointees who previously advocated for or represented detainees in their private law practices. Grassley has argued that the lawyers’ backgrounds could pose “conflicts of interest” and complained that the department had been “nonresponsive” to his requests.

The rhetoric reached new levels this week when Keep America Safe, a group affiliated with Elizabeth Cheney, the daughter of former vice president Richard B. Cheney, released a YouTube video that featured the headline “DOJ: Department of Jihad?” and asked, “Who are these government officials? . . . Whose values do they share?”

[View Complete Article →]

Tags: ·······

No Comments

Obama will help select location of Khalid Sheik Mohammed terrorism trial

February 13th, 2010 · Deception, Ethics, Foreign Policy, Government Control, Homeland Security, National Security, Selling Out the US, Terrorism from Within, Treason, War on Terrorism

By Anne E. Kornblut and Carrie Johnson Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 12, 2010

President Obama is planning to insert himself into the debate about where to try the accused mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, three administration officials said Thursday, signaling a recognition that the administration had mishandled the process and triggered a political backlash.

Obama initially had asked Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to choose the site of the trial in an effort to maintain an independent Justice Department. But the White House has been taken aback by the intense criticism from political opponents and local officials of Holder’s decision to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed in a civilian courtroom in New York.

Administration officials acknowledge that Holder and Obama advisers were unable to build political support for the trial. And Holder, in an interview Thursday, left open the possibility that Mohammed’s trial could be switched to a military commission, although he said that is not his personal and legal preference.

[View Complete Article →]

Tags: ······

No Comments

Obama faces dwindling options in his effort to close Guantanamo Bay

January 30th, 2010 · Congress, Deception, Defense, Foreign Policy, Homeland Security, National Security, Non-Transparency, Obama's Scheme, Selling Out the US, War on Terrorism

By Peter Finn and Del Quentin Wilber Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 29, 2010

The closure of the military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is beginning to look like a protracted and uncertain project for the Obama administration as political, legal and security concerns limit the president’s options.

Having blown the one-year closure deadline set last January in an executive order, the administration is planning to transfer some detainees to a state prison it hopes to acquire in Illinois. But there appears to be little mood in Congress to provide the administration with either the funding for the prison or the authority to transfer detainees who will be held indefinitely.

At the same time, opposition is building to plans to transfer a number of detainees, including Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, to a civilian court in Lower Manhattan for federal trial.

[View Complete Article →]

Tags: ····

No Comments