The Annihilation of International Law and the Right to Freedom of Speech: Julian Assange
Julian Assange is an Australian hacker, famous for revealing US secrets relating to war crimes committed in Iraq and Afghanistan. A whole cache of classified information was published by Assange’s organization WikiLeaks, which revealed the details of the ruthless murders of innocent civilians and the capture of hundreds of innocent civilians in the US’s Guantanamo [...]
Pakistan High Court commutes death sentence in Daniel Pearl case
A court in Pakistan on Thursday commuted the death sentence of the man accused of beheading Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002. Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh had been arrested and sentenced to death for orchestrating the kidnapping and murder of Pearl. Pearl had been in Pakistan following a story about “shoe bomber” Richard [...]
Federal judge allows psychological evaluation of Guantanamo detainee
A judge for the US District Court for the District of Columbia on Friday granted a Guantanamo Bay detainee’s motion to compel a psychological evaluation by a mixed medical commission. Mohammed al-Qahtani, a Saudi Arabia national who, for the past 18 years, was detained at Guantanamo and subject to torture as a result of his alleged [...]
The 2021 trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the “architect of 9/11,” and the other accused will write an important page in the legal chapter of dealing with terrorism. What is not clear is if this page will solve issues, sustain them, or even create more. Ultimately, these trials will be essential not only for the [...]
Retired US Supreme Court Justice Justice John Paul Stevens died on Tuesday at 99 years old. Stevens was appointed by President Gerald Ford in 1975 and retired in 2010 after serving more than 34 years on the bench. He was known for his evolution into a liberal-leaning judge who authored a number of precedential opinions, [...]
House approves defense bill limiting presidential authority to attack Iran
The US House of Representatives approved an amendment to the defense bill for fiscal year 2020 on Friday that would require the president to obtain congressional approval before ordering a military strike against Iran. The amendment passed 251-170, largely along party lines but with 27 Republican representatives signing on. The bill itself, the 2020 National [...]
The US Supreme Court’s Monday orders added five new cases on a range of topics from the EPA to race discrimination in media, but denied a case filed by a current Guantanamo prisoner. A Yemeni national, al-Alwi, has been held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for 17 years, since the early days of the war on [...]
The US Navy on Saturday fired the commander of the Guantanamo military prison for “loss of confidence in his ability to command,” according to a Defense Department official who does not have the authority to speak publicly. Navy Rear Adm. John Ring took command of the task force that oversees the prison facilities at Guantanamo. [...]
The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled Tuesday that more than two years of decisions by Colonel Vance Spath, a military tribunal judge who formerly oversaw the case of Abd Al-Rahim Hussein Muhammed Al-Nashiri, should be discarded because he failed to disclose his application to be an Immigration Judge in the Department [...]
Canada judge rules former Guantanamo detainee's war crimes sentence has expired
Alberta Judge Mary Moreau decided Monday that the war crimes sentence against former Guantanamo detainee Omar Khadr has now expired. Khadr was charged with crimes in Afghanistan when he was 15 years old. He was detained at Guantanamo and spent a few years there before pleading guilty to certain charges to avoid being sentenced for [...]
