| November 25, 2008 | - Osama bin Laden's former chauffeur Salim Ahmed Hamdan was released from Guantanamo Bay after spending more than five years at the detention camp.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| November 24, 2008 | - After a trial based predominantly on classified evidence, much of which could not be discussed with the defendants, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon ordered the release of five Algerian prisoners from Guantanamo Bay, where they have been held without charge for seven years based on a single, unidentified source. “To allow enemy combatancy to rest on so thin a reed,” said Leon, “would be inconsistent with this court's obligation.” The judge called upon the Justice Department to accept his ruling, saying that the Algerians deserve to go home and that an appeal would keep the prisoners at Guantanamo for two additional years; more than 100 cases related to the prison camp, which President-elect Barack Obama has promised to close, were under review by federal judges.
| Source 1:
AP
Source 2:
AP
|
| September 25, 2008 | -
Guantanamo Bay prosecutor Army Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld resigned after his superiors failed to turn over evidence to a detainee's lawyers. “I am highly concerned,” he said, “about the slipshod, uncertain 'procedure' for affording defense counsel discovery.”
| Source:
The Washington Post
|
| June 30, 2008 | - A federal appeals court ruled that evidence against Hozaifa Parhat, a Chinese
Muslim held at Guantanamo Bay for six years, consisted of nothing more than the reassertion of his guilt in three top-secret documents. “Lewis Carroll notwithstanding,” wrote one judge, quoting “The Hunting of the Snark,” “the fact the government has 'said it thrice' does not make the allegation true.”
| Source:
CNN.com
|
| June 14, 2008 | - The Supreme Court ruled 5–4 that detainees held as “enemy combatants” by the United States in Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba, have a constitutional right to challenge their detention through habeas corpus petitions in federal courts. “Liberty and security can be reconciled...within the framework of the law,” wrote Justice Anthony M. Kennedy in the court's decision. “The Framers decided that habeas corpus...must be...a part of that law.” Dissenting, Chief Justice John Roberts asked, “So who has won? Not the detainees. The Court's analysis leaves them with only the prospect of further litigation.” Defense lawyers for the detainees moved to establish that their clients have the right to other constitutional protections and sought to halt ongoing military-commission trials, which permit hearsay and evidence gained from torture.
John McCain called the ruling “one of the worst decisions in the history of this country.” Barack Obama said, “I think the Supreme Court was right.”
| Source 1:
New York Times
Source 2:
New York Times
Source 3:
cnn
|
| May 13, 2008 | - Curators at the Museum of Modern Art pulled the incubator plug on a tiny coat made of living mouse stem cells after it grew too fast.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| March 28, 2008 | -
Israel “Cachao” Lopez, one of the inventors of the mambo, died. At his funeral, as an orchestra performed his Afro-Cuban “Misa de Mambo,” a statue of Cuba's patron saint appeared to be swaying to the beat.
| Source:
Miami Herald
|
| February 24, 2008 | - In Cuba,
Fidel Castro ceded power to his brother Raul through an election in which Raul was the only candidate. “I distrust the seemingly easy path of apologetics,” wrote Castro in his resignation letter, “or its antithesis the self-flagellation.”
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 5, 2007 | - An inmate at Guantanamo Bay was placed under observation after he slashed his own throat with a sharpened fingernail.
| Source:
BBC
|
| November 25, 2007 | - Abraham Bolden, a former Secret Service agent, told reporters that a plot by Cuban exiles to kill President John F. Kennedy in Chicago was uncovered three weeks before his assassination in Dallas. The would-be assailants, who had allegedly rented a motel room overlooking Kennedy's motorcade route and were said to possess automatic rifles with telescopic sights, were never caught, and the investigation, Bolden claimed, was covered up.
| Source:
Telegraph
|
| October 14, 2007 | -
Hugo Chavez broadcast his weekly television program, “Aló Presidente,” from Che Guevara’s mausoleum in Santa Clara, Cuba, to honor the fortieth anniversary of the guerilla leader’s death. “We are the Axis of Evil,” said Fidel Castro to Chavez via phone. “You will never die,” said Chavez to Castro. “You remain forever on this continent, and with these nations, and this revolution is more alive today than ever, and Fidel, you know it.”
| Source:
CBS News
|
| September 16, 2007 | -
Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson, an outspoken advocate of Cuban sanctions, defended his large collection of Cuban cigars. “You know,” he said, “if it's good, I smoke it.”
| Source:
St. Petersberg Times
|
| June 13, 2007 | -
President Bush became the first sitting president to visit Albania, where Prime Minister Sali Berisha welcomed him as “the greatest and most distinguished guest we have ever had in all times.” “Bush is eager for affection,” wrote Fidel Castro in an editorial published in the Cuban newspaper Granma entitled “The Tyrant visits Tirana.”
| Source 1:
Washington Post
Source 2:
Washington Post
|
| June 7, 2007 | - The U.S. military was developing lethal water guns to combat scuba-equipped
terrorists,.
| Source:
Wired
|
| May 10, 2007 | -
Guantanamo detainee Salim Ahmed Hamdan was charged with being a driver and bodyguard for Osama bin Laden.
| Source:
AP via Yahoo
|
| March 15, 2007 | - At a military hearing in Guantánamo Bay Khalid Sheik Mohammed confessed to being the mastermind of the September 11 attacks; he also claimed to have been “responsible” for: the 1993 World Trade Center bombing; Richard Reid's attempted shoe bombing of an airplane; the bombing of a nightclub in Bali, Indonesia; and plots to assassinate several former presidents, including Jimmy Carter. “For sure,” he said, “I'm American enemies.” According to the released transcript, when asked whether his statement was the result of mistreatment by his interrogators, he said, “CIA peoples. Yes. At the beginning when they transferred me [REDACTED].”
| Source:
WP
|
| February 21, 2007 | - An appeals court in Washington, D.C., ruled that the writ of habeas corpus does not apply to prisoners in the American concentration camp at Guantánamo Bay,
Cuba.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| February 16, 2007 | -
Congress approved the Defense Department's request to spend $18 million to convert, in preparation for a post-Castro Cuba, a U.S. Navy base at Guantánamo into a shelter that could house 500,000 fleeing Cubans.
| Source:
Miami Herald
|
| February 14, 2007 | - The Navy announced that specially trained dolphins and sea lions may patrol a military base in Washington State that is vulnerable to attack by swimmers and scuba divers; the sea lions are trained to clamp cuffs around swimmers' legs so that the swimmers can be reeled in.
| Source:
AP
|
| February 4, 2007 | - Detainees at Guantánamo Bay complained of “infinite tedium and loneliness.”
| Source:
AP via Yahoo!NEWS
|
| January 12, 2007 | - On a radio program for federal employees and contractors, a Department of Defense official listed the names of law firms whose lawyers have represented detainees at Guantánamo Bay. “Quite honestly,” he said, “when corporate CEOs see that those firms are representing the very terrorists who hit their bottom line back in 2001, those CEOs are going to make those law firms choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms, and I think that is going to have major play in the next few weeks. And we want to watch that play out.”
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| September 13, 2006 | - Carlos Lage, the vice-president of Cuba, said that the United States was a “morally decadent empire.”
| Source:
BBC News
|
| September 8, 2006 | -
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger apologized for saying that Cubans and Puerto Ricans were “very hot,” due to their mixed “black blood” and “Latino blood.”
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 14, 2006 | - Five Uighurs found life in Albania “better than Guantánamo” but longed to move to Toronto.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| August 13, 2006 | -
Cuban leader Fidel Castro, it was reported, looked good after surgery, and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez visited his bedside. “I ask you all to be optimistic,” said Castro in a statement, “and at the same time to be ready to face any adverse news.”
| Source:
BBC News
|
| August 4, 2006 | -
President Bush encouraged the people of Cuba to seek regime change.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| July 31, 2006 | - It was reported that detainees at the Guantánamo Bay prison have attacked their guards with spit, feces, semen, and a bloody lizard tail.
| Source:
AP via Breitbart.com
|
| July 8, 2006 | -
President Bush said that he was “willing to abide by the ruling of the Supreme Court” in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, which held that the administration's scheme to try prisoners at Guantánamo in military tribunals is illegal. “It didn't say we couldn't have done—couldn't have made that decision, see?” Bush added. “They were silent on whether or not Guantánamo—whether we should have used Guantánamo. In other words, they accepted the use of Guantánamo, the decision I made.”
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 21, 2006 | - President George W. Bush said that he wanted to release all the detainees at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Station, except for the “cold-blooded killers.”
| Source:
BBC
|
| June 12, 2006 | - Three detainees at the American prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, committed suicide using nooses made from clothing and bedsheets. “They have no regard for human life, neither ours nor their own,” said Navy Rear-Admiral Harry Harris. “I believe this was not an act of desperation but an act of asymmetric warfare against us.” All three men had been in the camp for about four years and had recently engaged in a hunger strike.
| Source:
Scotsman
|
| May 29, 2006 | - Seventy-five prisoners were on hunger strike at Guantánamo Bay prison, and a charity organization published a report claiming that 60 minors ages 14 and older have been held at the prison.
| Source 1:
ABC News
Source 2:
The Age
|
| May 20, 2006 | - There was a riot at Guantánamo Bay.
| Source:
The Toronto Star
|
| May 7, 2006 | -
President Bush said he would like to see the prison at Guantánamo Bay closed.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| April 25, 2006 | - The United States announced that it would free 141 of the 490 "enemy combatants" at the Guantánamo Bay prison in Cuba because they do not threaten U.S. security after all.
| Source:
The Los Angeles Times
|
| April 16, 2006 | - It was reported that Donald Rumsfeld was “personally involved” in the torture of Guantánamo Bay detainee Mohamed al-Qahtani, who was made to perform “dog tricks”; Rumsfeld was allegedly briefed on the progress of al-Qahtani's interrogations by phone.
| Source:
The Age
|
| March 8, 2006 | - The U.S. State Department issued a report criticizing human rights abuses in China, North Korea, Iran, and Cuba. It also criticized the rights records of Jordan and Egypt, two countries where the United States has sent detainees to be interrogated. The report noted that the United States' "own journey towards liberty and justice for all has been long and difficult," and is "far from complete."
| Source 1:
The New York Times
Source 2:
The Independent
|
| March 8, 2006 | - Details from recently released Guantánamo Bay transcripts
|
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