Remember the Polish prosecutor who got fired as he was preparing to charge top members of the Democratic Left Alliance party for their complicity in America’s torture site? The same newspaper that broke that story–Gazeta Wyborcza–just reported former President Aleksander Kwasniewski’s purported explanation of his role in the torture site: complete ignorance. “Aleksander Kwasniewski did [...]

Adam Goldman significantly fleshes out the story of what happened to Hassan Ghul after he was picked up in Iraq in 2004. It appears that Ghul may have been freed by the Pakistanis sometime after January 2007 because of his ties to Lashkar-e-Taiba, which has close ties to the ISI. The whole article is worthwhile [...]

The AP reports that, in addition to the grand jury investigation of Manadel al-Janabi’s death, the CIA Inspector General has reopened its investigation of Khalid el-Masri’s abduction. Forgive me for my cynicism, but this investigation–and its public announcement–seems like yet another attempt to stave off European pressure on this front. The EU Parliament just called [...]

Time reports that John Durham has sent out recent subpoenas for grand jury testimony pertaining to torture and war crimes, specifically as it relates to Manadel al-Jamadi, the dead Iraqi depicted in one of the most graphic Abu Ghraib photo. It has been nearly a decade since an Iraqi prisoner known as “the Iceman” — [...]

When our children askin the future how the Great Writ of Habeas Corpus, the foundation of law, died, this is the time and this is the answer.

Charlie Savage reports on the new “relaxed” standards that will allow Gitmo defense lawyers to glance at the Gitmo Detainee Assessment Briefs released by WikiLeaks. (h/t fatster) In guidance to the lawyers — who have security clearances, and so are required to follow government rules for the handling of classified information — the department’s court [...]

Back in April, the ACLU FOIAed a bunch of State Department cables that had been released via WikiLeaks. The State Department made no response. So now the ACLU is suing to get the cables. The suit is interesting for several reasons. First, check out which cables ACLU has FOIAed: The requested cables relate to the [...]

As fatster noted, Judge Kenneth Marra has allowed the suit against Chiquita for its support of Colombian terrorists to go forward. But the ruling is fascinating, because it holds that the plaintiffs can sue for Chiquita’s involvement in torture, but not for its involvement in terrorism. Relying in part on a 1984 Robert Bork opinion [...]

I had been predicting for weeks before Obama went to Poland that the Poles would move to quash their investigation into the black site at which KSM and others were tortured. And sure enough, that appears to be what happened. The first move actually happened before Obama arrived in Poland: three days before Obama got [...]

Former Gitmo prosecutor Morris Davis makes, in really powerful fashion, a point I’ve been contemplating: how does Hillary Clinton get off criticizing the torture of Syrian teenager Hamza Ali al-Khateeb or Pakistani journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad when we have done nothing to hold those who tortured Mohammed al-Qahtani accountable? (h/t Michelle Shephard) In the fall [...]