Search Results for: waterboarding

In the aftermath of the devastating attacks on September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush established the Guantanamo Bay detention facility to incarcerate and punish those responsible for the deaths of more than 3,000 Americans. At least 780 detainees were held in Guantanamo, several of whom were subject to extreme punishment measures including—but certainly not [...]

Amnesty International (AI) stated on Wednesday that President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office were marked by authoritarian behavior and discriminatory policies that weakened the rule of law and damaged human rights protections. Mass deportations, attacks of freedom of expression, and the erosion of rights for women and LGBTQIA+ communities, have created in the [...]

The last of the six members of the Mississippi law enforcement group known as the “Goon Squad,” Joshua Hartfield, was sentenced to just over ten years in prison on Thursday for his involvement in the January 2023 torturing of two Black men. All six officers were terminated and pleaded guilty to their involvement in the [...]

The UK Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that a Guantanamo Bay prisoner held by the US can bring a claim in the English and Welsh courts against UK authorities. The detainee, Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn (Zubaydah), alleged that British intelligence services asked the  CIA to interrogate Zubaydah and sent the spy agency numerous questions to elicit [...]

A US military judge ruled on Thursday that Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a 9/11 defendant detained in US custody at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is unfit to stand trial. Military Judge Colonel Matthew N. McCall’s ruling comes after a medical panel found that al-Shibh has PTSD with “Secondary Psychotic Features” resulting from his abuse in Central Intelligence [...]

The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention released a report alleging that Afghanistan, Lithuania, Morocco, Poland, Romania, Thailand, United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the US all participated in human rights violations against Abd al-Rahim Hussein al-Nashiri, a man accused of assisting in the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000. Al-Nashiri is currently held in [...]

Almost five years ago I contributed to a Commentary to JURIST entitled, “Guantanamo: An Unnecessary Presidential Legacy,” which focused on former President Barack Obama’s unsuccessful attempt to shut down the Guantanamo prison facility because of missed opportunities, faulty decision making, internal administration opposition and ultimately partisan political division that resulted in an unnecessary presidential legacy.  [...]

Saudi women’s rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul was released Wednesday after spending a total of 1,001 days—almost three years—in prison. Al-Hathloul had been championing Saudi women’s rights since 2013 and lobbied especially for the right to drive, as well as for an end to male guardianship laws in the kingdom. While women were granted the right [...]

The Trump administration executed Corey Johnson by lethal injection on Thursday. Johnson was convicted for a series of seven murders committed in 1992 and became the twelfth federal inmate put to death since July. The execution followed two separate appeals by Johnson’s attorneys for a stay of execution. In the first appeal they argued that Johnson [...]

The US Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday that the execution of two men on federal death row would go forward this week, overturning a stay that would have delayed their executions until mid-March. Corey Johnson and Dustin Higgs, the men scheduled for execution, were both diagnosed with COVID-19 in mid-December. They requested a preliminary injunction [...]