Latest news with #GuantanamoBay
New York Times
4 days ago
- General
- New York Times
Fourth Military Judge in Sept. 11 Case Retires
The fourth judge in the long-running Sept. 11 case at Guantánamo Bay has retired and the chief judge for the military commissions assigned himself on Monday to oversee is unclear whether Col. Matthew S. Fitzgerald, the chief judge, will hold hearings in the death-penalty case or just manage it on an interim basis, as other chief judges have done. The next session is scheduled to start on July 14. A notice on Monday said that Colonel Fitzgerald was replacing Col. Matthew N. McCall, who had served in that role from the summer of 2021 until his recent retirement. Colonel Fitzgerald is also presiding in the destroyer Cole bombing case, Guantánamo's other capital prosecution. Both Colonel McCall and Colonel Fitzgerald were in law school at the time of the Sept. 11 attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, in Pennsylvania and at the Pentagon. Five men are charged in the case. They were detained between 2002 and 2003 but were held in secret C.I.A. prisons until their transfer to Guantánamo in 2006, one reason for the long delays in getting the case to trial. In his time on the case, Colonel McCall presided over fact-finding hearings on torture and the handling of secret evidence, and made consequential rulings that splintered the case into three separate tracks. He severed the case of one defendant, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, in September 2023 after a military mental health panel found him not mentally competent to stand trial. In April, Colonel McCall threw out the self-incriminating statements of another defendant, Ammar al-Baluchi, as tainted by torture and inadmissible at his trial, depriving prosecutors of key evidence. Colonel McCall also validated as lawful the guilty plea agreements of the other three defendants, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi. The military court of appeals upheld his finding last year, and prosecutors are seeking to overturn the guilty pleas in federal issue is whether former Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III acted too late and beyond the scope of his authority when he rescinded the three deals in the summer of 2024, two days after a senior Pentagon appointee had signed McCall postponed his retirement twice to help the case reach trial. Two of the three other judges also retired from the service while serving as judge in the case. Another left the bench to take up a command position in the Marine Corps. Other military judges have been named to the case, but they were mostly previous chief judges who assigned themselves as a caretaker until the next judge arrived.
Daily Mail
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mail
Trump's 'ICE Barbie' Kristi Noem sparks liberal meltdown with vulgar two word post: 'Best response ever'
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had two big, brutal words declaring victory over a lawsuit filed by the ACLU on behalf of two detained migrants that set the internet on fire: 'Suck it.' That was after the suit on behalf of several illegal migrants deported to Guantanamo Bay after being detained in Texas was voluntarily dropped. They include a pair of Venezuelan parents who were separated from their 2-year-old daughter, who was eventually returned to Caracas. 'ICE Barbie' Noem's department has said the girl was placed in foster care to protect her from her parents, who it claimed were members of Venezuela's Tren de Aragua drug gang. Lawyers for the plaintiffs in the suit dropped it after several had been removed from the country and others refused to keep the case going. That led Noem to post to X: 'Suck it.' Reaction was largely divided along party lines but heated and excited by the comment. A pro-MAGA user wrote: 'That's why Americans love you!' However, a more critical commenter made not of an embarrassing story from Noem's past: 'How unprofessional. But I don't expect anything less from someone who shoots puppies.' A more Noem-friendly account responded: 'Aaaaaand the snowflakes here have a meltdown.' 'Best response EVER!!!' tweeted another conservative account. One more excitedly said: 'That's not very lady I love it!' A more critical account noted that it was coming from Noem's official DHS X page. 'Coming from the Secretary of the Homeland, what are you getting at?' The suit filed by the ACLU claimed that the plaintiffs 'risk of being transferred to Guantánamo without any legal authority, in violation of federal law and the U.S. Constitution.' Under Trump, the DHS has carried out a crackdown on immigration, deporting thousands of primarily Latin American migrants that it says are undocumented and cancelling the legal status of others. The administration has said that many of those it has deported are members of criminal gangs, including Tren de Aragua, but has provided limited evidence to back that claim. Lawyers and family members of many deportees deny the allegations. Since February, more than 4,000 migrants have been sent home to Venezuela, some deported from the United States and others from Mexico, where they had gathered in the hope of crossing into the United States. The Trump government has horrified its critics by co-opting 'Gitmo', as it's often called, as the latest weapon in its battle against illegal immigration. 'President Donald Trump has been very clear: Guantanamo Bay will hold the worst of the worst. That starts today,' said Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, referring to the Venezuelans. Trump has announced that the Cuban base will be a holding center for 30,000 immigrants – the 'worst criminal aliens' and people who are 'hard to deport'. The president 'is not messing around and he's no longer going to allow America to be a dumping ground for illegal criminals from nations all over this world', said his press secretary. Noem, who's earned the moniker 'ICE Barbie' for treating her Cabinet position like a prominent celebrity, has been suffering from the perception she cares more about image than fulfilling her responsibility to protect the homeland and crack down on illegal immigration. One particularly awkward photo shows her wearing an ill-fitting bulletproof vest, toting a machine gun that is accidentally pointed at the head of a Border Patrol Officer. In another apparent photo-op, Noem angered liberals for wearing an expensive watch while simultaneously berating suspected gangsters at the notorious El Salvador prison where the Trump administration banished some migrants. Just days after she took office as head of Homeland Security, she joined ICE agents on a predawn raid in New York City and tweeted about it before the raid had even concluded. Insiders told the outlet that her post potentially alerted targets to the operation and ultimately resulted in fewer arrests than officials had expected. 'Live this AM from NYC. I'm on it,' Noem posted on X at 4:43am on January 28, along with a picture of herself hopping into a vehicle wearing an ICE baseball cap. High profile conservatives including Meghan McCain and Megyn Kelly have torched the DHS secretary for her repeated photos ops, arguing that her desire for attention serves as a smoke screen to distract from the fact her agency has so far failed to fulfill Trump's central campaign promise to deport millions of illegal immigrants. Within her own department, some reportedly view her as little more than a spokeswoman or 'face' of the operation. Noem introduced herself to her new workforce by walking on stage at a town hall meeting to the country song 'Hot Mama', insiders claim. Since then, she's made a series of changes which have ruffled feathers within the department, from pushing voluntary staff exits to implementing the use of lie detector tests to root out disloyal staff and leakers. In spite of the criticism, the administration's border policies have delivered success, with illegal crossings down to the lowest point in decades. Noem has also re-established a government office focused on helping families devastated by crimes carried out by illegal aliens. The Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement (VOICE) office was officially re-established during an event Wednesday afternoon at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) headquarters. VOICE began under Trump's first administration in 2017 to fulfill a promise to aid those directly impacted by migrant crime. But Joe Biden axed the office in 2021 and opened a more 'inclusive victim support system' that, in addition to serving Americans, helped investigate alleged abuses at migrant centers. Speaking alongside victims, known as 'angel families,' Noem shared that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and ICE are now working again to support them.
The Guardian
18-05-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
What the last Trump presidency can teach us about fighting back
As Donald Trump abandons any pretense of promoting human rights abroad, he has sparked concern about the future of the human rights movement. The US government has never been a consistent promoter of human rights, but when it applied itself, it was certainly the most powerful. Yet this is not the first time that the human rights movement has faced a hostile administration in Washington. A collective defense by other governments has been the key to survival in the past. That remains true today. Trump no doubt poses a serious threat. He is enamored of autocrats who rule without the checks and balances on executive power that he would shirk. He has stopped participating in the UN human rights council and censored the US state department's annual human rights report. He has summarily sent immigrants to El Salvador's nightmarish mega-prison, proposed the mass ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza and threatened to abandon Ukraine's democracy to Vladimir Putin's invading forces. Even when his government has occasionally issued a rights-related protest – regarding Thailand's deportation of Uyghurs to China or Rwanda's invasion of eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo via its cold-blooded M23 proxy force – the intervention has been half-hearted and not sustained. Yet the human rights movement survived Trump's hostility during his first term, as well as such challenges as the George W Bush administration's systematic torture and arbitrary detention in Guantánamo Bay and the Ronald Reagan administration's support for brutal cold war allies. The most effective response, as I describe in my recent book, Righting Wrongs, was always to build coalitions of governments willing to defend human rights. Together, they had the moral and political clout to hold the line despite US opposition. In the first Trump administration, for example, the UN human rights council condemned Nicolás Maduro's dictatorship in Venezuela and established a fact-finding mission to monitor and report on his repression. Had Trump led the effort, Maduro might have dismissed it as Yanqui imperialism, but Trump had withdrawn from the council. Instead, the effort was led by a group of Latin American democracies plus Canada, operating as the Lima Group. They offered a principled defense of human rights that prevailed. Similarly, Trump played no role when my colleagues and I encouraged Germany, France and Turkey to pressure Vladimir Putin to stop Syrian-Russian bombing of hospitals and other civilian institutions in Syria's north-western Idlib province. That initiative forced Putin to halt the bombing in March 2020, sparing 3 million civilians the constant threat of death from the skies. In December 2024, the HTS rebel group emerged from Idlib to overthrow Syria's ruthless president, Bashar al-Assad. Nor was the US supportive when, in September 2017, the Netherlands led a small group of governments that persuaded the council to investigate and report on the Saudi-led coalition's bombing of civilians in Yemen. When that scrutiny was lifted four years later, Yemeni civilian casualties doubled, showing that the bombers had behaved better when watched. When Trump withdrew from the council, the United States was replaced by tiny Iceland. Aided by the perception that it had no special interest other than a principled concern with human rights, it convinced the council to scrutinize the 'drug war' summary executions by the former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte. Duterte is now in custody in the Hague on an international criminal court arrest warrant. Even Democratic presidents have sometimes vehemently opposed human rights initiatives. Bill Clinton's administration was dead set against the creation of an international criminal court that could ever prosecute a US citizen. It tried one ploy after another to secure an exemption. A coalition of some 60 small and medium-sized governments from all parts of the world resisted. Their combined moral clout was enough to stand up to the superpower. When the final vote was held in Rome to establish the ICC in July 1998, the United States lost overwhelmingly, 120 to 7. A comparable coalition was behind the adoption of the treaty banning antipersonnel landmines, despite opposition by Washington and other major powers. Similar coalitions are key to defending human rights today. We see that already as an array of European governments refuses to accept Trump's inclination to sacrifice Ukraine's democracy to Putin's aggression. We see it as Arab states, despite jeopardizing substantial US military aid, reject Trump's war-crime proposal to 'solve' the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Gaza by expelling the Palestinians. We see it as the UN human rights council, despite the US absence, continues to play an essential role in defending rights in such countries as Myanmar, North Korea, Belarus and Iran. But there is much more to be done. For example, Trump shows little interest in the fate of the Uyghurs. He once reportedly told Xi Jinping that China's detention of 1 million of them (of a population of 11 million) 'was exactly the right thing to do'. But western governments have not yet matched US law, adopted under Joe Biden, that presumptively bars all imports from the Chinese region of Xinjiang, where most Uyghurs live, unless the imports can be proven not to have been made through forced labor. That is an important way to avoid complicity when Beijing blocks efforts to investigate supply chains in China. If other western governments went beyond a theoretical opposition to Uyghur forced labor, which cannot be upheld amid China's obfuscation, to adopt a similar presumption against all imports from Xinjiang, it would go a long way toward ending this despicable practice. Sign up to Fighting Back Big thinkers on what we can do to protect civil liberties and fundamental freedoms in a Trump presidency. From our opinion desk. after newsletter promotion The Biden administration imposed sanctions on seven United Arab Emirates companies for their role in arming the genocidal Rapid Support Forces in Sudan's Darfur region, where one of the world's worst atrocity-induced humanitarian crises is unfolding. Other western governments should match or extend those penalties. Rwandan president Paul Kagame's invasion of eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo via the M23 force also calls out for concerted resistance. In 2013, the Obama administration, working closely with the British government, forced Kagame to end his support of the M23 by threatening to suspend Rwanda's aid. The M23 immediately collapsed. Now that Rwanda is again using the M23 to invade eastern DRC, similar pressure is needed – not just condemnation, which has happened, but the suspension of aid, which has only begun to occur. The Trump administration, evidently seeking access to the region's mineral wealth, has helped to negotiate a ceasefire between Rwanda and DRC but not the withdrawal of Rwandan forces or the M23 from DRC. That next step will come only with tougher economic pressure. But the European Union has done the opposite. In July 2024, it entered into a deal with Rwanda for minerals, a virtual invitation to export the proceeds of illegal mining in eastern DRC. Trump now seems to be doing the same. Western governments have also been tepid in responding to Trump's outrageous sanctions on the international criminal court prosecutor Karim Khan (freezing his assets and limiting his travel to the United States) for having quite properly charged Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli prime minister's former defense minister Yoav Gallant for the war crime of starving and depriving Palestinian civilians in Gaza. All ICC members should support Khan if he in turn criminally charges Trump for obstruction of justice under article 70 of the Rome Statute, which prohibits threatening or intimidating court personnel for the performance of their official duties – exactly what Trump has done. Despite Trump's expressed interest in staying on as 'king', his reign will end. The question is what damage he will do to the human rights cause. Whether he leaves a global crisis or merely a discredited US government will depend in significant part on how other governments respond – whether they emulate or resist Trump's indifference. Today, many governments are understandably concerned with simply managing the turmoil that Trump has caused, from tariff increases to military abandonment, but the need is urgent for them also to keep their broader responsibilities in mind. History shows that if they mount a concerted defense, the human rights movement will survive this rough patch. The rights of people around the world depend on such a principled, collective commitment. Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch (1993-2022), is a visiting professor at Princeton's School of Public and International Affairs. His book, Righting Wrongs: Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abusive Governments, was published by Knopf and Allen Lane in February
The Independent
14-05-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
2-year-old girl separated from parents by US deportation arrives in Venezuela
A 2-year-old girl separated from her parents by deportation arrived Wednesday in Venezuela where her mother was deported from the United States, a move that the South American country has repeatedly denounced as a kidnapping. Maikelys Espinoza arrived at an airport outside the capital, Caracas, along with more than 220 deported migrants. Footage aired by state television showed Venezuela's first lady Cilia Flores carrying Maikelys at the airport. Later, Flores was shown handing the girl over to her mother, who had been waiting for her arrival at the presidential palace along with President Nicolás Maduro. The U.S. government had claimed the family separation last month was justified because the girl's parents allegedly have ties to the Venezuelan-based Tren de Aragua gang, which U.S. President Donald Trump designated a terrorist organization earlier this year. The girl's mother was deported to Venezuela on April 25. Meanwhile, U.S. authorities sent her father to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador in March under Trump's invocation of an 18th-century wartime law to deport hundreds of immigrants. For years, the government of Maduro had mostly refused the entry of immigrants deported from the U.S. But since Trump took office this year, hundreds of Venezuelan migrants, including some 180 who spent up to 16 days at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have been deported to their home country. The Trump administration has said the Venezuelans sent to Guantanamo and El Salvador are members of the Tren de Aragua, but has offered little evidence to back up the allegation. ____
CBS News
12-05-2025
- Politics
- CBS News
Pentagon spent $21 million on flights to Guantanamo Bay amid deportation effort
Washington — The Defense Department has spent more than $21 million on flights to Guantanamo Bay amid the Trump administration's migrant deportation efforts, according to figures shared in a letter sent to Congress and obtained by CBS News. The $21 million figure was first reported by NBC News. In January, President Trump directed his administration to use the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as a holding site for migrants, where he said the highest priority, "worst" offenders would be held as part of his aggressive crackdown on immigration. Since then, limited details about the flights have been available — including the costs. In February, the administration transferred Venezuelan migrants to the facility, before they were taken to Honduras. And the administration has intermittently brought migrants to the base before transferring them elsewhere in the proceeding months. In the letter, which came in response to questions from Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the Pentagon outlined that U.S. Transportation Command has flown a total of 46 flights on military aircraft "in support of migrant deportation flights" to Guantanamo Bay between Jan. 20 and April 8, with a total of 802 hours and an average cost of $26,277 per flight hour, adding up to more than $21 million. "Every American should be outraged by Donald Trump wasting military resources to pay for his political stunts that do not make us safer," Warren said in a statement. "U.S. servicemembers did not sign up for this abuse of power." CBS News previously reported that the Trump administration has transferred both detainees considered to be "high-threat" and "low-risk" to Guantanamo, and a government memo shows the Trump administration created broad rules outlining which migrants can be held at Guantanamo Bay, allowing officials to send non-criminal detainees there.
