Military Prison

Karen J. Greenberg, the author of "The Least Worst Place: Guantanamo's First 100 Days," is the director of Fordham University's Center on National Security. Renewing his push to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, President Obama this past week said what many of his critics have been saying for years — that it is "inefficient," inspires new terrorists, alienates our allies and, above all, "is contrary to who we are. " Coming in response to the detainee hunger strikers , whose numbers increase every day, Obama's...

Karen J. Greenberg, the author of "The Least Worst Place: Guantanamo's First 100 Days," is the director of Fordham University's Center on National Security. Renewing his push to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, President Obama this past week said what many of his critics have been saying for years — that it is "inefficient," inspires new terrorists, alienates our allies and, above all, "is contrary to who we are. " Coming in response to the detainee hunger strikers , whose numbers increase every day, Obama's...

KABUL — President Hamid Karzai on Thursday called for the United States to hand over its biggest military prison in Afghanistan within a month, despite repeated warnings that Afghan institutions are woefully unprepared to detain or try suspected terrorists. Karzai said Afghan government investigators had found violations of the Afghan constitution and international human rights conventions at the prison, which houses about 2,600 inmates near Bagram Airfield. He did not provide details of the...

An Air Force fighter pilot is found guilty of sexually assaulting a woman in his home and sentenced to one year in military prison. He is dismissed from the service without benefits. Then, his commanding officer throws out the verdict and reinstates the pilot's active-duty status. That "inexplicable decision," as the New York Times called it in an op-ed Tuesday , may sound like the plot of a military novel or movie. But it's what reportedly happened in a case that is now under review at the highest levels of the...

In ordering a suspension of legal action against suspected terrorists at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, President Obama is taking a popular path, albeit one without particularly widespread or bipartisan support. A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows that 53 percent of Americans said the United States should shutter the controversial facility in Cuba and find another way to deal with the prisoners there. But 42 percent of those polled, including 69 percent of Republicans, said terrorism suspects should remain at the prison.

The U.S. military charged Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales on Friday with murdering 17 Afghans during a village massacre this month but did not shed light on a possible motive for the worst U.S. atrocity of the decade-long war. Bales, 38, a member of an infantry unit and the married father of two young children, was formally presented with the charges at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., where he is being held in a maximum-security military prison. In a statement from Kabul, the U.S. military said...

I've covered the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, since 2004 as military correspondent for The Post. Jumah al Dossari first caught my attention in October 2005, when I heard the story of his gruesome suicide attempt during a visit from his lawyer. Then known as Detainee #261, Dossari clearly was making a public plea for help. Though the U.S. military has said many times that all detainees at Guantanamo are treated humanely and that Dossari had been getting the help he needed, detention...

A Pentagon review of conditions at the Guantanamo Bay military prison has concluded that the treatment of detainees meets the requirements of the Geneva Conventions but that prisoners in the highest-security camps should be allowed more religious and social interaction, according to a government official who has read the 85-page document. The report, which President Obama ordered, was prepared by Adm. Patrick M. Walsh, the vice chief of naval operations, and has been delivered to the White House.

Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and four co-conspirators will be tried in Manhattan federal courthouse less than a mile from Ground Zero, the Justice Department announced Friday, the most concrete demonstration yet of the Obama administration's desire to reassert the primacy of the criminal justice system in responding to terrorist acts. In planning to transfer Mohammed and his co-defendants from the U.S. military detention center at...

KABUL — When Afghan President Hamid Karzai visits Washington this week, he'll bring with him a list of complaints he has enumerated for months in public speeches, including accusations that the United States has fomented corruption in Afghanistan and continues to violate the country's sovereignty. Karzai's top advisers say he has been forced to go public with his critique because meetings with U.S. officials here have yielded no progress on the issues he values...

KABUL — U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel got a stark taste of the challenges that continue to bedevil Afghanistan on Saturday, as insurgents carried out two deadly bombings, one within earshot of the Pentagon chief. The Afghan government, meanwhile, abruptly canceled a ceremony scheduled for Saturday that had been meant to show that Kabul and Washington had finally reached a deal for the handover of a U.S. military prison. At the last minute, Afghan President Hamid Karzai balked at the...

KABUL — When Afghan President Hamid Karzai visits Washington this week, he'll bring with him a list of complaints he has enumerated for months in public speeches, including accusations that the United States has fomented corruption in Afghanistan and continues to violate the country's sovereignty. Karzai's top advisers say he has been forced to go public with his critique because meetings with U.S. officials here have yielded no progress on the issues he values...

THE OBAMA administration has been wrongly constrained by Congress from winding down the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But the rebuke it recently received from the International Committee of the Red Cross was entirely its own fault. Despite promising to set up a new system of reviews for foreign detainees still held at the facility , the administration had yet to hold a single proceeding. That means there is less due process at Guantanamo now than there was during the last years of the George W. Bush...

A military judge has ruled that any testimony about the CIA's treatment of Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four other men accused of orchestrating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks will remain secret during their death penalty trial at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In a ruling dated Dec. 6 and released Wednesday, Army Col. James L. Pohl, the chief judge at Guantanamo, issued a protective order that will safeguard information the government deems classified during military commission...

WITH THE presidential election over, supporters of better U.S.-Cuban relations are calling on President Obama, who won a majority of the Cuban American vote, to seek accord with the Castro regime. They forget the case of Alan Gross , the American development contractor who this week began his fourth year in a Cuban military prison. Mr. Gross, of Potomac, was arrested on Dec. 3, 2009 , after he delivered satellite telephones to members of Cuba's tiny Jewish community. He had been hired to provide...

The Justice Department on Friday for the first time disclosed the names of detainees at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who have been approved for transfer but whose release has been delayed. The 55 detainees were identified in court papers filed in U.S. District Court in Washington . The Justice Department said there was "no longer a need to withhold" the information from the public. "Today's release is a partial victory for transparency, and it should also be a spur to action.

WITH THE presidential election over, supporters of better U.S.-Cuban relations are calling on President Obama, who won a majority of the Cuban American vote, to seek accord with the Castro regime. They forget the case of Alan Gross , the American development contractor who this week began his fourth year in a Cuban military prison. Mr. Gross, of Potomac, was arrested on Dec. 3, 2009 , after he delivered satellite telephones to members of Cuba's tiny Jewish community. He had been hired to provide the equipment...

In his first week in office, President Obama signed an executive order that would shut down the notorious U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, within a year. But as the United States moves to end this shameful episode, it's worth reflecting on the untold story of the very beginnings of Guantanamo. The following account, which draws on dozens of interviews I conducted over the past few years, tells the startling tale of a period shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, when military officers on the ground tried to do the right...

KABUL — The U.S. military prison known as Bagram, a hated symbol of U.S. interference in Afghan affairs , was officially transferred to Afghan control Monday. The long-demanded handoff of Parwan detention center , the facility's official name, occurred amid tensions between Washington and Kabul over the Afghan army's ability to guarantee security at the prison and the court system's preparedness to competently adjudicate detainee cases. Pledges of mutual cooperation masked a behind-the-scenes...

CAIRO — The Egyptian government requested this week that the United States release the sole Egyptian detained at the Guantanamo Bay military prison , language that amounts to a stark demand by a country that has been among Washington's most reliable counterterrorism allies in the Middle East. The case of Tariq Mahmoud Ahmed al-Sawah, 54, whom the United States accuses of belonging to al-Qaeda, has the potential to become the first thorn in the relationship between the two governments since the election of...