Alla Ali bin Ali Ahmed, an innocent Yemeni stranded at Guantanamo for months after being ordered released by a U.S. District Court Judge, has been sent home to Yemen. Judge Gladys Kessler's May opinion is here. (pdf.)

Two other Gitmo detainees have been sent to Ireland. Their names haven't been released yet. Here's a chart with the names of those ordered released but still detained in red. The New York Times has this list of countries that have accepted Guantanamo detainees.

Attorney General Eric Holder took months to decide on whether to investigate any cases of abuse of detainees overseas with an eye towards criminal prosecution. He got a lot of praise (and in some venues, criticism) when he announced he'd consider it. The Washington Post reports the number of cases the DOJ may prosecute is down from more than a dozen to just a few .

A senior official who took part in the review confirmed that of two dozen referrals, the Salt Pit episode was one of two or three cases close to being considered for criminal indictment.

This is really a big deal. A three judge panel in the 9th Circuit has ruled Abdullah al-Kidd, an American who converted to Islam during college, was illegally detained by the Bush Administration under the material witness statute, and can seek damages personally from former Attorney General John Ashcroft. The opinion is here (pdf).

“We find this to be repugnant to the Constitution, and a painful reminder of some of the most ignominious chapters of our national history,” said the opinion, written by Judge Milan D. Smith Jr.

al-Kidd was represented by the ACLU, which has released this statement: [More...]

About those doctors who attended the CIA interrogation sessions at which enhanced technigues, aka torture, were used:

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), a non-profit group that has investigated the role of medical personnel in alleged incidents of torture at Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram and other US detention sites, accuses doctors of being far more involved than hitherto understood.

....The most incendiary accusation of PHR's latest report, Aiding Torture, is that doctors actively monitored the CIA's interrogation techniques with a view to determining their effectiveness, using detainees as human subjects without their consent. The report concludes that such data-gathering was "a practice that approaches unlawful experimentation".

The report cites the recently released 2004 CIA Inspector General's report. [More...]

Two Syrian detainees at Guantanamo have arrived in Portugal and are now free.

The U.S. has not released their names. In June, a federal judge ordered the release of Syrian detainee Abdul Rahim Abdul Razak al-Janko. The court's opinion is here (pdf.)

Al-Janko was first captured by al-Qaeda who tortured him, causing him to falsely confess he was an American spy. Then he was imprisoned by the Taliban who thought he really was an American spy. The Taliban abandoned the prison where al-Janko was being held but left him there. The Americans found him, imprisoned him in Kandahar and sent him to Guantanamo where he has remained for 7 years. Hopefully, he's one of those released to Portugal and freed.

[More...]

Dick Cheney continues to insist the CIA interrogators should neither be investigated nor prosecuted. He continues to praise their work.

"The people involved deserve our gratitude. They do not deserve to be the targets of political investigations or prosecutions," he said in a statement dated Monday.

[More...]

Mohammed Jawad (smiling, on the left) seized as a young teenager in Afghanistan 8 years ago, and sent to Guantanamo in 2003, has arrived home in Afghanistan. The DOJ's paltry announcement is here. From the Herald article:

Mohammed Jawad, whose confession to throwing a hand grenade that wounded two U.S. soldiers was rejected as coerced by torture, was taken by helicopter into Kabul from Bagram Air Base and taken to the office of the Afghan attorney general. A former defense attorney, U.S. Marine Corps Maj, Eric Montalvo, said Jawad would meet with President Hamid Karzai and would then be released to an uncle.

[More...]

Today's document release on detainee interrogations continues. The ACLU has received Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel Letters and Memos to CIA Regarding Detention and Interrogation Policies - Documents Responsive to 2009 Torture FOIA. They include:

• August 31, 2006 Letter to Rizzo from OLC concerning Conditions of Confinement

• August 31, 2006 Memorandum to Rizzo from OLC concerning Application of Detainee Treatment Act to Conditions of Confinement

• 2007 OLC opinion on Interrogation Techniques

[More...]

In addition to the CIA's Inspector General report (pdf) released today, the CIA and Justice Department finally released documents in the ongoing FOIA litigation with the Center for Constitutional Rights, Amnesty International and other organizations over ghost detainees. (Background here.)

The first is a 2005 CIA report entitled Detainee Reporting Pivotal in War Against Al-Qa'ida. The second is a 2004 report, Khalid Shaykh Muhammad, Preeminient Source Against Al-Qa'ida.

These are the documents Dick Cheney said would support a case for torture. [More...]

The Inspector General's 2004 Report is out and available here (pdf). Hightlights are here. (According to the AP, the correct spelling is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.)

One thing that leapt out at me was Paragraph 95 on page 43: Interrogators threatened to kill Khalid Shaikh Mohammed's children. Then there's a blacked out portion, followed by a statement that the interrogator reporting this did not believe the threat violated the law.

Do the blacked out lines refer to what they did to convince Khalid Shaikh Mohammed they could carry out the threat? In March, 2003, I wrote about the CIA's acknowledgement it had taken custody of Mohammed's sons from Pakistan to use them as leverage to get their father to talk: [More...]

Attorney General Eric Holder issued this statement today about his decision to conduct a review of some cases of CIA abuse of detainees as recommended in the Inspector General's report.

"I have reviewed the OPR report in depth. Moreover, I have closely examined the full, still-classified version of the 2004 CIA Inspector General’s report, as well as other relevant information available to the Department.

As a result of my analysis of all of this material, I have concluded that the information known to me warrants opening a preliminary review into whether federal laws were violated in connection with the interrogation of specific detainees at overseas locations.

[More...]

Three documents are scheduled to be released today by the Department of Justice on detainee abuse.

• The 2004 inspector general’s report on abuses that took place at the Central Intelligence Agency’s secret prisons. Here are some tidbits already leaked.

• "A 2007 Justice Department memo reauthorizing the C.I.A.’s “enhanced” interrogation techniques, which former Vice President Dick Cheney has said provide evidence that the interrogation methods produced valuable information about Al Qaeda"

• "Justice Department memos from 2006 concerning conditions of confinement in C.I.A. jails."

Among the leaks are that the inspector general's report will recommend the reopening of some detainee abuse cases.