By Mary Ostberg, HLS 2012 NSJ Staff Writer On Friday, October 16, 2009, the United Kingdom’s High Court ruled that seven paragraphs of UK-U.S. exchanges detailing the alleged torture of Binyam Mohamed should be disclosed.  In reversing its 2008 ruling, the High Court called the public interest in disclosing the paragraphs “overwhelming.” Mr. Mohamed, a British resident who was born [...]

By Brian Itami, HLS 2012 NSJ Staff Writer The Obama Administration’s Sudan policy, unveiled on Monday, October 19, 2009, maintains support for the prosecution of President Omar al-Bashir in the International Criminal Court (ICC) despite seeking greater engagement with the Sudanese government. The three major policy objectives include bringing about an end to the “conflict, gross human rights abuses, and [...]

By NSJ Staff Writer The Obama Administration is one step closer to achieving its goal of closing the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay by January 22, 2010.  On Tuesday, October 20, 2009, the Senate, by a vote of 79 to 19, passed the $44.1 billion budget for the Department of Homeland Security, which includes a provision that would permit the [...]

By NSJ Staff Writer Today’s Wall Street Journal features an op-ed from former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, in which he argues that alleged terrorist detainees should not be tried in US civilian courts. In particular, Mukasey criticizes Attorney General Holder’s August decision to try Ahmed Ghailani in New York rather than Guantanamo for the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and [...]

By Anthony Palermo and Lindsay Schare “DADT is government-sanctioned discrimination. There are thousands of closeted gay women and men serving in our armed forces today, and we disrespect their service by clinging on to this insulting law,” said Captain Joe Lopez, a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point and a current JD/MBA candidate at Harvard Law [...]

A federal judge ruled Friday that the government may withhold portions of records that allegedly describe torture and abuse in a case related to detainees held at Guantanamo Bay. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for information on 14 detainees and unredacted Combatant Status Review Tribunal (“CSRT”) hearing transcripts.  In response, the CIA [...]

On Thursday, a divided Senate Judiciary Committee approved a bill to renew three key provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act that were set to expire at year’s end.  By a tally of 11-8, the SJC voted to extend until 2013 the authorities of the federal government to obtain individual business and financial records that may be relevant to a counterterrorism [...]

In what appears to be a sudden reversal of policy, Congressional leaders on the Homeland Security Appropriations Conference Committee on Wednesday included compromise language in the FY 2010 Homeland Security Appropriations Act that would allow detainees currently held in the Guantanamo Bay detention facility to be transferred to the United States for prosecution.  Members of the Defense Authorization Conference Committee [...]

The Obama Administration announced last week that it no longer plans to seek new legislation creating a framework for preventive detention of Guantanamo Bay detainees.  The move represents a departure from the plan for such legislation laid out by President Obama in his May 2009 speech at the National Archives.  In that speech, the President described a category of detainees [...]

The Supreme Court agreed on Wednesday to hear Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project and a countersuit, Humanitarian Law Project v. Holder.  These cases will address whether, under the First and Fifth amendments, the “material support” for terrorism provision of 18 U.S.C. § 2339B is unconstitutionally vague.  The petitioners, which include Attorney General Holder and the Department of Justice, as well [...]