Monday, February 25, 2008

Gitmo Chief Prosecutor and Defense Dept General Counsel Resign

In case you missed this -- Maj. Col. Davis resigned as chief prosecutor of the Gitmo tribunals. He recently had this to say to THE NATION about his Department of Defense General Counsel William Haynes.
Think Progress » Top Gitmo lawyer: ‘We can’t have acquittals.’:

DAVIS: "I said to him that if we come up short and there are some acquittals in our cases, it will at least validate the process,” Davis continued. “At which point, [Haynes’s] eyes got wide and he said, ‘Wait a minute, we can’t have acquittals. If we’ve been holding these guys for so long, how can we explain letting them get off? We can’t have acquittals, we’ve got to have convictions."
Today, Haynes announced that he would be returning to the private sector.

Saturday, February 23, 2008

GITMO lawyers on Zubaydah's Treatment and Mental State

Washington Post

Yet Zubaydah's mind may be beyond our reach. Regardless of whether he was "insane" to begin with, he has gone through quite an ordeal since his arrest in Pakistan in March 2002. Shuttled through CIA "black sites" around the world, he was subjected to a sustained course of interrogation designed to instill what a CIA training manual euphemistically calls "debility, dependence and dread." Zubaydah's world became freezing rooms alternating with sweltering cells. Screaming noise replaced by endless silence. Blinding light followed by dark, underground chambers. Hours confined in contorted positions. And, as we recently learned, Zubaydah was subjected to waterboarding. We do not know what remains of his mind, and we will probably never know what he experienced.