A federal immigration judge in Los Angeles has ordered Islamic charity fundraiser Abdel Jabber Hamdan deported. Hamdan has lived in Southern California for more than 20 years.

Hamden was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Jordan. The Judge considerately didn't order him back there:

Judge Sitgraves said he could not be sent to Jordan, where he was born in a Palestinian refugee camp, because he would be at risk of torture by the Jordanian government because he has been accused by the American authorities of terror-related activities.

So where will we deport him to? This is one of the worst parts of our immigration system. People without a country end up in indefinite detention. The Supreme Court said in Zadvydas v. Davis in 2001 that if a person is not deported within 6 months after the order, the Government cannot continue to hold them. It issued a similar ruling a few months ago in a case involving Mariel Cubans.

by TChris

Six human rights investigators for the United Nations released a joint statement today criticizing the United States for failing to take more effective action to curb prisoner abuses at Guantanamo. The investigators "voiced fresh concern at reports of inhuman and degrading treatment of inmates at Guantanamo, saying the global fight against terrorism would be weakened if countries failed to uphold basic legal protections."

Recent moves, including the "Combatant Status Review Tribunals" created by the Pentagon last year following a Supreme Court rebuke and the release of four Britons and an Australian held as terrorism suspects, were "insufficient to dispel the serious concerns" over conditions, the inspectors added.

by TChris

Sgt. Javal S. Davis entered guilty pleas yesterday to several charges surrounding his abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

Sergeant Davis ... admitted Tuesday that he had stepped on the hands and feet of some of the seven detainees brought into his prison section for punishment after a disturbance in November 2003. He said he also fell with full weight on top of them.

Although Davis entered into a plea agreement, it isn't yet clear whether he obtained the deal he was seeking: a cap on his possible sentence at 18 months.

Also on Tuesday, Specialist Roman Krol was sentenced to 10 months after admitting to "pouring water on the naked detainees in October 2003, forcing them to crawl around the prison and throwing a foam football at the prisoners while they were handcuffed on the floor."

Bump and Update: This is still a big story:

• New York Times
• Washington Post
• Analysis from CBS's Andrew Cohen
• Text of Opinion (pdf)

by TChris

Federal Judge Joyce Hens Green is unimpressed with the tribunals devised by the Bush administration to decide whether prisoners at Guantanamo should continue to be held as enemy combatants. Judge Green rejected the administration's claim that the tribunals satisfied last year's Supreme Court decisions permitting Guantanamo detainees to challenge their detentions. (TalkLeft background on the tribunals can be found here and here. TalkLeft background on the proceeding before Judge Green is here.)

CrimProfBlog reports that the Pakistani man who videotaped U.S. skyscrapers has been sentenced to six months in jail:

Kamran Akhtar, 36, from Pakistan, was arrested in July after the police found him videotaping the FBI headquarters in Charlotte. When the police reviewed the tape in his camera, they found it full of other shots of skyscrapers and other American landmarks across the country. He has been jailed since July, but after the government was unable to prove that he had any connection to terrorists, he was charged with five immigration offenses, including false possessing identification cards. This week he was sentenced to six months impisonment on those charges, in effect time served, and will be deported shortly.

News article here.

Democracy Now reports:

The Toronto Star is reporting the U.S. government is attempting to dismiss a lawsuit brought by Canadian citizen Maher Arar, claiming the litigation would jeopardize national security. Two years ago the Syrian-born software engineer was detained by US official while on a stopover in New York. He was then jailed and secretly deported to Syria. He was held for almost a year in an underground cell not much larger than a grave where he was reportedly tortured. Time Magazine in Canada recently named him the country's newswmaker of the year.

Now the U.S. government is attempting to have a lawsuit filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights dismissed. Invoking the rarely used "state secrets privilege" the Justice Department claims that any release of information on Arar could jeopardize "intelligence, foreign policy and national security interests of the United States." Arar's attorney Maria LaHood said "They're asking the court to sanction their cover-up basically."

The New York Times reports on an "extraordinary army" of secret Commandos working in the U.S..

The special-missions units belong to the Joint Special Operations Command, a secretive command based at Fort Bragg, N.C., whose elements include the Army unit Delta Force.

This is the group that was put into play for security at the Inauguration. They are part of a program called "Power Geyser." The first mention of the group is on a website for a book just released by former Army intelligence analyst William Arkin.

In a nutshell, the problem with this is the Posse Commitatus Act of 1878, which prevents the U.S. Military from acting as law enforcement officers inside the U.S. Amazingly, the article quotes a single, unnamed civil liberties advocate who says that "as described" by the reporter, he had no problem with it.

Patrick at the Samuel Coleridge Foundation outlines the problems, here's just a snippet, read is whole post:

It's an uncorroborated tip....but we're following the details. The hunt is on for 14 Chinese nationals and 2 Iraqis. The tip emanated from a California Highway patrolman. Boston has rev'ed up its security.

You can post any updates here. (don't forget to put your links in html format.)

The F.B.I. is searching for four Chinese nationals in Boston in connection with a possible terror threat.

State, federal and local authorities were seeking four Chinese nationals wanted for questioning in connection with a possible terrorist threat to the Boston, Massachusetts, area Wednesday, but they said the source of the information was "unknown and uncorroborated....The FBI and the U.S. attorney's office identified the subjects of the search as Zengrong Lin, Guozhi Lin, Wen Quin Zheng and Xiujin Chen. None have appeared on government "watch lists," according to a joint statement.

by TChris

Abuse allegations at Guantanamo -- revealed in FBI emails made public last month -- will be investigated by two military officers attached to the Southern Command.

The FBI e-mails described Guantanamo prisoners being shackled hand and foot in a fetal position on the floor for 18 to 24 hours, and left to urinate and defecate on themselves. One FBI agent reported seeing a barely conscious prisoner who had torn out his hair after being left overnight in a sweltering room. Another told of an interrogation in which a prisoner was wrapped in an Israeli flag and bombarded with loud music and strobe lights.

The investigators are to issue a report by February 1, but may seek more time so that they can interview individuals who are no longer assigned to Guantanamo.

Drudge is reporting that Arab news is reporting that Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi has been arrested. There has been no official confirmation as of yet.

The F.B.I. and the Department of Homeland Security are having a tiff about fingerprints. The critical issue, according to a new report by the Inspector General's Office: Should two fingers or ten be fingerprinted?

The core of the problem, the report said, was that the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department disagree on two basic issues: whether 2 or 10 fingers should be printed and what agencies should have access to those prints.

The F.B.I. has for years used prints of all 10 fingers to identify criminals. But the Department of Homeland Security relies on prints of only the two index fingers to keep track of illegal aliens. Similarly, both the Homeland Security and State Departments have since September relied on digital prints of the two index fingers to keep records of visitors to the United States from 27 specified nations.

The net result of the dispute is that 99% of visitors to the U.S. from foreign countries do not get their fingerprints checked against the FBI database that has 47 million prints and which includes some suspected non-American terrorists. Homeland Securiy's database is much smaller.