Guantanamo Bay

What should be done with Omar Khadr? Twenty years old, Khadr has been held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba since 2002 for a crime he is alleged to have committed when he was 15, an age at which under international law he is considered to have been a child soldier. On Monday, two U.S. military commissions in separate decisions dismissed charges against Mr. Khadr and a second prisoner held at Guantanamo Bay, on the ground that the process the Bush administration set up does not comply with the new U.S. Military Commissions Act, passed by Congress last fall to correct the failings of a previous law. Even before Monday's trial, the U.S. said it was unlikely it would release Mr. Khadr, or any other detainee.

WASHINGTON -- In a victory for the White House, a U.S. appeals court yesterday threw out the legal claims brought on behalf of the hundreds of prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay and ruled they do not have a right to plead their innocence in an American court. In a 2-1 decision, the judges said the Constitution does not extend the right of "habeas corpus" to non-citizens who are held outside the sovereign territory of this country. "Cuba - not the United States - has sovereignty over Guantanamo Bay," wrote Judge A. Raymond Randolph.

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba -- Both the beer and popcorn were green on St. Patrick's Day at the Bayview Club, not far from a huge outdoor cinema where several dozen sailors sat under the stars watching Mel Gibson play a con man in "Payback."A few miles away, U.S. Marines, two to a watchtower, listened through the night for Fidel Castro's Frontier Brigade while watching for would-be exiles in the minefields.Over at the enlisted members' Lateral Hazard bar, an unmistakable wail lured a sailor's wife to the dance floor.

Former Navy Seaman George Frederick "Jake" Jacobs Jr., who once plucked people from the shark-infested waters of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, died Wednesday at Maryland Shock Trauma Center from injuries suffered that day when his pickup truck struck a tree.Mr. Jacobs went off the road after swerving to avoid hitting a deer on Harrisville Road near his home in Mount Airy. He was 26.Mr. Jacobs, a Baltimore native, served four years as a Navy seaman. He was stationed at the Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay from 1991 to 1993 and served in Puerto Rico from 1993 to January, when he left the Navy.

Alfredo Perez is glad to be in Baltimore, but the water-stained picture of him kneeling beside his little daughter is a constant reminder of why he's not happy yet.The picture was damaged when he set out on a flimsy raft from his native Cuba to escape the government of Fidel Castro. He held tightly to the photo when he was picked up by the Coast Guard and taken to the Guantanamo Bay refugee camp.Even now, eight months later, he becomes emotional when he talks about his 5-year-old Sheila, who remained behind with his wife in Cuba.

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba -- Jacques Belzy, a Haitian student, and Ricardo Escalon Acosta, a Cuban accountant, have this much in common: They are boat people who risked their lives at sea. They were rescued. And now they are truly adrift.Events that determine their fate take place elsewhere in confrontations between the leaders of the places they left and the United States, the latest being the prospect of a U.S. intervention in Haiti.Life in limbo at this U.S. naval base in southeastern Cuba looks like this: Shirtless refugee men in shorts bake in 90-degree heat.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- Tony Timote was walking quickly now, striding past the tin-roofed shacks along a bumpy street named Fort National, hopping over the open sewer drain, ignoring the broken bottles and scraps of decaying food, concentrating hard even as the music came roaring from radios blaring in one tiny house after another.He was looking for a 3-year-old girl with pigtails. He was looking for his daughter Joane.Suddenly, the little girl skipped out from one of the shacks and raced into her father's open arms.

WASHINGTON -- Unable to stem the flow of Cuban boat people, a frustrated Clinton administration announced yesterday that it would expand facilities at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to house up to 40,000 refugees indefinitely, perhaps until President Fidel Castro leaves office."

U.S. soldiers raid the Port-au-Prince headquarters of the pro-army militia FRAPH, seizing weapons and arresting some 40 people. Crowds of Haitians cheer them on.An American soldier was shot in the stomach Sunday in an exchange of gunfire in Les Cayes, the first an American soldier wounded in the Haiti operation.The first big wave of international peacekeepers lands to supplement the Americans and eventually replace some 6,000 of them.The U.S. Coast Guard cutter Midgett repatriates 485 Haitian refugees, all of whom apparently volunteered to return from Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

THERE is a political problem baking under the hot sun at Guantanamo Bay, a political problem ringed with razor wire, housed in wooden barracks, living amid rats and scorpions while soldiers watch from guard towers.But the truth is that all political problems turn out to be people, in one fashion or another. This one is 267 people, held in a latter-day leprosarium on a U.S. naval base, waiting for a decision about what will become of the rest of their lives.They are Haitians, mostly adults, some children, who left their homeland in boats for the succor of the United States more than year ago. Their illusions about a voyage to freedom seem pathetic now. Immigration officials determined that all of them had credible claims for asylum.

Military should end missions, not restore draft In his thought-provoking article, "Asking 'someone else's son' to fight" (May17), Dan Rodricks points out the cultural/class dichotomy between those who serve, i.e., those who may be maimed and killed, or psychologically damaged in the defense of our country, while the rest of the American people go about their business, oblivious to the sacrifices being made on their behalf. I would add that what is left out of Rodricks' article is the nature of wars being fought by the U.S. in the last 50 years.

Goucher isn't judging scholar from Rwanda It is outrageous and obscene for Alexander E. Hooke to compare the circumstances of Leopold Munyakazi to those of prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay ("Goucher unfair to accused professor," Viewpoint, Feb. 17). Allow me to set the record straight. When presented with eyewitness accounts claiming that Mr. Munyakazi, a visiting professor at Goucher, had been an active participant in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, we at Goucher College needed to consider the effect these accusations could have on our entire community.

WASHINGTON - Moving to claim what he described as "the moral high ground," President Barack Obama took a series of steps yesterday to dismantle the most widely condemned components of the Bush administration's war on terror. Obama issued a trio of executive orders to shutter the Guantanamo Bay detention camp within a year, permanently close the CIA's network of secret overseas prisons and end the agency's use of interrogation techniques that critics describe as torture. But on a day meant to demonstrate a clean break with the policies of his predecessor, Obama put off many of the most difficult decisions on what the United States now will do with detainees, and left room to revisit whether the CIA should still have permission to use coercive methods when questioning captives.

WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney said yesterday that he was directly involved in approving severe interrogation methods used by the CIA and that the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, should remain open indefinitely. Cheney's remarks on Guantanamo appear to put him at odds with President George W. Bush, who has expressed a desire to close the prison, though the decision is expected to be left to the administration of President-elect Barack Obama. Cheney's comments also mark the first time that he has acknowledged playing a central role in clearing the CIA's use of an array of controversial interrogation tactics, including a simulated drowning method known as "waterboarding."

Episcopalians forming rival denomination WHEATON, Ill.: Conservatives alienated from the Episcopal Church said yesterday that they were founding a rival church denomination, the biggest challenge yet to the authority of the Episcopal Church since it ordained an openly gay bishop five years ago. The move threatens the fragile unity of the Anglican Communion, the world's third-largest Christian body, made up of 38 provinces around the world that trace their...

Guantanamo prison violates basic rights Thank you for printing "U.S. judge orders 5 detainees freed" (Nov. 21), which highlights the atrocities our government has allowed at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. As an American and a high school student studying law, it is difficult for me to understand how our government has been able to get away with this terrible scheme for so long. In America, you are innocent until proven guilty. And as a human being, you are entitled to certain inalienable human rights.

We are a stalwart and stouthearted people, and never more so than in hard times. People weep in the dark and arise in the morning and go to work. The waves crash on your nest egg and a chunk is swept away, and you put your salami sandwich in the brown bag and get on the bus. In Philly, a woman earns $10.30 an hour to care for a man brought down by cystic fibrosis. She bathes and dresses him in the morning, brings him meals, puts him to bed at night. It's hard work lifting him, and she has suffered a painful hernia that, because she can't afford health insurance, she can't get fixed, but she still goes to work because he'd be helpless without her. There are a lot of people like her. I know, because I'm related to some of them.

WASHINGTON - In 2002, as evidence of prisoner mistreatment at Guantanamo Bay began to mount, FBI agents at the base created a "war crimes file" to document accusations against American military personnel but were eventually ordered to close down the file, a Justice Department report disclosed yesterday. The report, an exhaustive, 437-page review prepared by the Justice Department inspector general, provides the fullest account to date of internal dissent and confusion within the Bush administration over the use of harsh interrogation tactics by the military and the Central Intelligence Agency.

Greasy, hazy good fun, Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle got by on a 4 a.m. mixture of explosive-emission toilet jokes, gratuitous nudity and Neil Patrick Harris as himself. Everything took place in one night, hinging on a single quest rife with detours. Crass? Yes. But there was a merry spirit to it all. A far more strident sort of crassness pervades Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay. The sequel picks up and tokes up where the original left off. New Jersey roommates Harold and Kumar set off for Amsterdam, the Netherlands, so that Harold can chase the woman of his dreams (Paula Garces)

Let's be honest. These are not your average criminals. I think I speak for a lot of people in town when I say that we don't want hundreds of terrorists brought in here."