Yes, after nearly nine years of detention in Guantanamo, Noor Uthan Muhammed has pleaded guilty to two non-existent war crimes. As the ACLU notes in its post on the plea, although the court reporter faithfully translated each time he said "yes" to whether he understood what he was doing, the reporter did not translate the only full sentence Muhammed uttered:...
According to the Jerusalem Post, five purchasers of Jimmy Carter's new book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid have filed a $5 million lawsuit in federal court in New York against Carter and Simon & Schuster, the book's publisher. The lawsuit alleges that the book violates New York consumer-protection laws by claiming to be a work of non-fiction (my emphasis): The five...
Pennumbra, the on-line companion to the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, is hosting the debate. John's opening statement and my reply -- which is something of a misnomer, because the reply doesn't directly address John's arguments -- are currently available. Both focus on Judge Bates' opinion dismissing the ACLU/CCR lawsuit; I argue that, contrary to the Judge's claim, his opinion...
It's been a while since I checked in on the WikiLeaks kerfuffle, so now that the HILJ symposium is over -- and I thought it was great -- I wanted to flag this recent article in the Wall Street Journal, which reports that the government has found no evidence that WikiLeaks or Julian Assange solicited or conspired with Bradley Manning...
Today the Second Circuit denied panel rehearing and rehearing en banc in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum. My colleague Trey Childress has details here....
This must be that vibrant democracy Richard Cohen recently extolled in defense of denying democracy to Egyptians: The Knesset House Committee on Wednesday approved the composition of two parliamentary panels to investigate the funding sources of human rights organizations. Most of the opposition parties have decided to boycott the committees. The motion passed at the House Committee by a...
As Bobby Chesney noted at Lawfare a few days ago, the Court of Military Commission Review (CMCR) has issued the following order in al-Bahlul: Upon consideration of the record of trial and pleadings of the parties and amicus curiae, the following issues are specified and oral argument is ordered: I. Assuming that Charges I, II, and III allege underlying ...
I blogged a year ago about the ridiculous criminal-libel suit that an academic named Karin Calvo-Goller filed against NYU's Joseph Weiler. Today Weiler blogs (no permanent link for some reason) about the trial at EJIL: Talk!. It's a remarkable account that should be read in full. But here's a taste: Three months later I was summoned to appear before an...
An important update from NBC News: U.S. military officials tell NBC News that investigators have been unable to make any direct connection between a jailed army private suspected with leaking secret documents and Julian Assange, founder of the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks. The officials say that while investigators have determined that Manning had allegedly unlawfully downloaded tens of thousands...
The New York Times has the story today: Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates is expected to soon lift an order blocking the initiation of new cases against detainees, which he imposed on the day of President Obama’s inauguration. That would clear the way for tribunal officials, for the first time under the Obama administration, to initiate new charges ...
As the U.S. government continues to try to shut down WikiLeaks -- preferably, it seems, without having to actually charge Assange or the website with an actual crime -- it's important not to forget how much we've learned through WikiLeaks' efforts. Here is a (partial) list created by Greg Mitchell, who has been keeping a daily log of all things...
Last week I noted the remarkable spectacle of the Guardian publishing an editorial that blamed WikiLeaks for releasing a State Department cable that had, in fact, been initially released by the Guardian itself. At the time, my evidence of that fact was circumstantial, based on the time-dates provided by the Guardian and WikiLeaks websites. But no longer -- eight days...
