Departments of Defense and Justice Announce Forum Decisions for Ten Guantanamo Bay Detainees

The Departments of Defense and Justice announced on 13 November “forum decisions” for ten detainees at Guantanamo Bay whose cases were previously charged in military commissions, including five detainees accused of conspiring to commit the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks and a detainee accused of orchestrating the attack on the USS Cole.
The Attorney General, [...]

Revised military commissions provisions as stated in Defense Authorization Bill

Read it here, starting from p.979. Deborah Pearlstein lists the changes here.

CCR challenges constitutionality of military commissions provisions that bar judicial review of detainee treatment at Guantanamo

The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) filed papers with the D.C. District Court early October challenging the government’s claim that no federal court has the power to hear claims of abuse at Guantánamo. The challenge came in response to the government’s effort to dismiss claims on behalf of two men found dead at the base [...]

House passes amendments to Military Commissions Act

The US House of Representatives  on Thursday passed a bill (HR 2647) that amends the Military Commissions Act of 2006 to provide suspected terrorists with greater due process rights. The Military Commissions Act of 2009 was approved by a vote of 281-146  as part of the National Defense Authorization Act granting $681 billion in military [...]

Intelligence community legal reference book

The US Office of the Director of National Intelligence has declassified its Intelligence Community Legal Reference Book from which the US intelligence community ‘draws much of its authority and guidance’. Download the 949 pages here.

U.S. Seeking 3rd Delay on Guantánamo Cases

The Obama administration said it would decide by mid-November whether to bring charges in federal court in the United States against the five detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, accused of involvement in the September 2001 terrorist attacks, according to government legal papers filed Wednesday. It did so as it moved to head off a sweeping [...]

Academic Articles and opinions worth reading

Jens David Ohlin (Cornell Law School) has posted The Torture Lawyers (Harvard International Law Journal, Forthcoming) on SSRN.
Laurence R. Helfer (Duke Univ. – Law) and Emilie Hafner-Burton have a new piece on “Opting Out: Derogations from Human Rights Treaties in National Emergencies“
Peter Margulies (Roger Williams University School of Law) has posted The Wages of Playing [...]

Ramzi bin al-Shibh trial developments: military commissions are unconstitutional

After a US military judge ruled that lawyers for Guantanamo Bay detainee and accused 9/11 co-conspirator Ramzi bin al-Shibh will not be allowed to tour secret CIA prisons where al-Shibh was detained, his lawyers plead to stop all proceedings in his impending military commission trial. In a new brief they argued that Congress had no [...]

Lawyers for alleged al Qaeda media director appeal conviction

[JURIST] Lawyers for alleged al Qaeda media director Ali Hamza Ahmad Suliman al Bahlul appealed his conviction and life sentence for conspiring with al Qaeda, soliciting murder, and providing material support for terrorism. His Pentagon-appointed defense lawyers argued that his constitutional rights were violated because a supposed al Qaeda recruitment film he released is protected [...]

ACLU Sues For Memo On Constitutional Rights In Guantánamo Military Commissions

The American Civil Liberties Union and the New York Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit emanding disclosure of a legal memo from  the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) that reportedly addresses  the constitutional rights that Guantánamo detainees could legally claim during  military commission proceedings in the U.S. The memo, drafted in May 2009, [...]