Guantanamo’s Last Terror Trial
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on February 8th, 2009 5:41 am by HL
Guantanamo’s Last Terror Trial
The legacy of terror trials at Guantanamo Bay has potentially come to an end, as a judge has dropped the charges for the last case at the naval base in accord with President Obama’s executive order to halt all court proceedings there.
The Guardian:
The last terror trial at Guantánamo Bay had been halted after the senior military judge dropped charges against a suspect in the 2000 USS Cole bombing, the Pentagon has said.
The military charges against suspected al-Qaida bomber Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri marked the last active war crimes case at the US Navy base in Cuba.
The decision by Susan Crawford, the top legal authority for military trials at Guantánamo, brings all cases into compliance with Barack Obama’s executive order to halt terror court proceedings at the base.
A Pentagon spokesman said Crawford dismissed the charges against al-Nashiri without prejudice. That means new charges can be brought again later. He will remain in prison for the time being.
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Biden Cautious, Conciliatory in Message to Russia
Will the Obama administration take a different tack than the Bush team did when it comes to relations with the Kremlin? It’s hard to say at this stage, but Vice President Joe Biden has suggested that it’s “time to press the reset button and to revisit the many areas where we can and should be working together with Russia.” He made the comment Saturday in a speech at a security conference in Germany.
The New Tork Times:
The highly anticipated speech, seen as the first major outline of the new administration’s relations with the world, came just days after Kyrgyzstan’s president announced a decision to close a United States base there that is crucial to the war in Afghanistan, which President Obama has made his top foreign policy priority. That announcement was made in Moscow, and many American officials concluded that the Russians had pressured Kyrgyzstan as part of their campaign to reassert control over former Soviet republics.
Some Western diplomats had expected Mr. Biden to announce a strategic review of the planned missile defense system as a way to defuse tensions between Washington and Moscow. Although Mr. Biden did not go that far, he did leave room in both the speech — and an interview afterward — for unspecified changes in the plan put forward by the Bush administration.
“We will continue to develop missile defenses to counter a growing Iranian capability, provided the technology is proven and it is cost-effective,” Mr. Biden said during the speech.
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