A stunning development

It is always a pleasant surprise when a judge hearing Guantanamo issues actually follows the rules of law:

Judge Bars Statements Made by Guantánamo Detainees During F.B.I. Interrogations


https://nyti.ms/2nMB7dr?smid=nytcore-ios-share

h/o to David R.

From Roger Fitch and Our Freinds Down Below at Justinian

Controversy continues at Guantánamo, with the political firing of the commissions' Convening Authority; the sudden retirement of the judge in the Cole bombing case; fresh revelations in declassified prosecution documents; and new disclosures of top-secret CIA cables from Thailand detailing al-Nashiri's torture at the time Gina Haspel (now CIA director) was in charge.  

The group habeas previously reported in Fitch, al-Bihani, has now been argued in Washington DC, with the Trump administration claiming it can hold the men (including this man) for "100 years", more here. 

It's not very different from the government's justification in 2003 before the 9th Circuit. There, in the Gherebi case, the Justice Department lawyers - led by Robert McCallam, afterwards ambassador to Australia - presented arguments the court characterised as follows:

"Under the government's theory, it is free to imprison Gherebi indefinitely along with hundreds of other citizens of foreign countries, friendly nations among them, and to do with Gherebi and those detainees as it will, when it pleases, without any compliance with any rule of law of any kind, without permitting him to consult counsel, and without acknowledging any judicial forum in which its actions may be challenged. Indeed, at oral argument, the government advised us that its position would be the same even if the claims were that it was engaging in acts of torture and that it was summarily executing the detainees."  

READ THE REST HERE.