The U.S. has spent $500 million upgrading Guantanamo since 2001, according to the first published report on the prison's spending.

Here's some of where the money went:

• $188,000 for a marquee sign that says "Welcome Aboard"
• $249,000 for an abandoned volleyball court
• $296,000 for an unused go-cart track
• $3.5 million for 27 playgrounds, mostly unused
• $683,000 to renovate a cafe that sells ice cream and Starbucks coffee
• $773,000 to remodel a cinder-block building to house a KFC/Taco Bell restaurant.

The point of these expenditures: "[T]o comfort the military personnel and contractors who run detainee operations." Despite the decline in number of detainees (now at 181), the spending continues:

Next up is an expansion of one of the most popular spots on the base: O'Kelly's, an Irish pub. [More...]

Via the Miami Herald, a federal judge yesterday granted the Habeas petition of Yemeni Mohammed Hassan, finding he was was illegally detained at Guantanamo.

Hassen argued at a 2004 status hearing at Guantanamo that the first time he heard of al Qaida was "in this prison.'' He claimed that he had been unjustly rounded up in a March 2002 dragnet by Pakistani security forces in the city of Faisalabad that targeted Arabs, including himself a student of Islam.

The number of detainees determined to be unlawfully held at Guantanamo by federal judges is now 36.

The win-loss scorecard was 14-36 on Wednesday. Civilian judges have upheld the military detentions of 14 other foreign men among the 181 war on terror captives at the U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba.

As Glenn Greenwald writes today in A Disgrace of Historic Proportions, 72% of the 50 detainees who have brought habeas petitions since the Supreme Court ruling allowing them, have won.

The Obama Administration opposed Hassan's petition even though he had been cleared for release by the Bush Administration.

The House Armed Services Committee defense bill that will soon be considered by the full House contains a provision to investigate lawyers for detainees for misconduct:

The provision would require the Pentagon inspector general to investigate instances in which there was “reasonable suspicion” that lawyers for detainees violated a Pentagon policy, generated “any material risk” to a member of the armed forces, violated a law under the inspector general’s exclusive jurisdiction, or otherwise “interfered with the operations” of the military prison at Guantánamo.

The inspector general would be required to report back to Congress within 90 days after the provision became law about any steps the Pentagon had taken in response to such conduct by either civilian or military lawyers.

Would the Democrats be so knuckle-headed as to pass it? Would Obama sign the bill into law if it passed or veto it? [More...]

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia today reversed a trial court decision by Judge John Bates, a Bush appointee, and ruled that three detainees who have been held at Bagram AFB in Afghanistan without charges since 2002-2003, are not allowed to bring a habeas corpus action seeking release in U.S. courts. The opinion is here.

Judge Bates ruled in April, 2009 that there was no difference between those held at Bagram and those held at Guantanamo. His decision applied only to about a dozen detainees who were non-Afghans captured outside Afghanistan.

The three men in the case are a Tunisian man who says he was captured in Pakistan in 2002, and two from Yemen. One says he was captured in Thailand in 2002, and the other says he was detained in 2003 also outside Afghanistan.

The Appeals court based its ruling on the fact that "Bagram was on the sovereign territory of another government" and “pragmatic obstacles” of giving hearings to detainees “in an active theater of war.” [More....]

The House Armed Services Committee has unanimously passed H.R. 5136, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2011. Among it's provisions: There can be no money expended on buying Thomson Correctional Center (or any other prison in the U.S.) to house detainees from Guantanamo:

PROHIBITION ON FUNDS TO MODIFY OR CONSTRUCT U.S. FACILITIES FOR DETAINEES

The Committee firmly believes that the construction or modification of any facility in the U.S. to detain or imprison individuals currently being held at Guantanamo must be accompanied by a thorough and comprehensive plan that outlines the merits, costs, and risks associated with utilizing such a facility. No such plan has been presented to date. The bill prohibits the use of any funds for this purpose. Additionally, the bill requires the Secretary of Defense to present Congress with a report that adequately justifies any proposal to build or modify such a facility in the future.

[More...]

Five Chinese Uighur detainees remain at Guantanamo. They have been cleared for release. A hearing will be held today in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals over whether they can remain free in the U.S. The case is Kiyemba v. Obama.

They can't go back to China where they may be tortured. They don't want to go to Paulau. Why can't they stay here? The trial court judge originally said they could (the ruling is here .) That got appealed and reversed by the D.C. Court of Appeals.

The Supreme Court originally accepted the case and set it for hearing, but in March, when a third country agreed to take the Uighurs, vacated the hearing sent it back to the Court of Appeals. The Court of Appeals ruling reversing the trial judge was vacated. Last week, the Court of Appeals ordered a new hearing today. [More...]

Update: I've uploaded the Complaint here.

The Times of London has obtained a sworn declaration of Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell when Powell was Secretary of State for the Bush Administration, stating that Bush and Cheney knowingly sent innocent detainees to Guantanamo, for political reasons. He says they knew the majority of the detainees were innocent, but they sent them anyway as a means of garnering support for the war in Iraq and war on terror.

The declaration was submitted to the court in a lawsuit filed yesterday by former Sudanese detainee Adel Hassan Hamad, who alleges he was tortured. Hamad is seeking monetary damages from the U.S. and filed his lawsuit in federal district court in Seattle, because Robert Gates, one of the defendants, resides there. It is the first time a former official in the Bush Administration has made such a claim claim.

The Times reports Colin Powell backs Wilkerson's declaration. [More...]

The sad saga of the Uighur brothers held at Guantanamo has come to an end. They arrived in Switzerland today.

The two Uyghurs were neither charged with any crime nor condemned by the US authorities; today they are free again. They have expressly undertaken to respect the law in force and to learn the language spoken in their place of residence. They are also willing to take up a gainful employment and to provide for their basic needs.

Arkin Mahmud, 45 had been accepted months ago, but refused to leave without his brother Bahtiar, 32, who had become mentally ill while at Gitmo. Props to Switzerland for agreeing to take both. Only five Uighurs remain at Gitmo.

The U.S. sent three detainees to the Republic of Georgia yesterday. It did not provide information about them, but the lawyer for one of them today said two of the three are Libyans.[More...]

Sen. Lindsey Graham has provided the White House with a draft of proposed legislation allowing for the indefinite detention of suspects against whom no charges have been filed. The ACLU responds:

The American Civil Liberties Union believes that detaining individuals indefinitely without charging them with a crime or providing them a meaningful opportunity to challenge their detention is un-American and violates our commitment to due process and the rule of law.

It has some advice for Obama:[More...]

U.S. District Court Judge James Robertson today ordered the release of Guanatanamo detainee Mohamedou Slahi,who has been held without charges since 2002.

The order is classified and has not been released. Prior investigations into Slahi's detention showed he had been subjected to severe abuse.

Those probes found Slahi had been subjected to sleep deprivation, exposed to extremes of heat and cold, moved around the base blindfolded, and at one point taken into the bay on a boat and threatened with death. Investigators also found interrogators had told him they would arrest his mother and have her jailed as the only female detainee at Guantánamo if he did not cooperate.

His abuse was so bad the military prosecutor in his case resigned. His lawyer, Nancy Hollander, says:

"He's been incarcerated, tortured and interrogated and rendered illegally," said attorney Nancy Hollander of Albuquerque, N.M., who represents Slahi free of charge. "After almost 10 years the government has not been able to meet the minimal burden to detain him that's required under habeas. He should be free."

Slahi is the 34th detainee ordered released by a federal court.[More...]

Spain, which already agreed to accept two Guantanamo detainees, has agreed to take another three who have been cleared for release.

There are 192 detainees being held at Guantanamo Bay. Approximately 110 have been cleared for resettlement in a third country or for repatriation.

So that leaves 82 detainees not cleared for release: 5 of them are the 9/11 defendants and 5 have been designated for military tribunals. 72 of them are unlikely to be charged at all. We just don't like the idea of letting them go.

For 82 detainees, we are going to spend $237 million to retrofit Thomson or $100 million a year to continue to operate Guantanamo? [More...]

Who put Linsday Graham in charge of the Justice Department? Now Graham's insisting on a law authorizing indefinite military detention as a pre-requisite to closing Guantanamo.

While Graham has long favored closing Guantanamo, he said Monday that his support for doing so is contingent on a new law to govern the detention of those the government wants to keep in custody outside the criminal justice system. He also said that, with such a statute in place, he could support Obama’s plan to convert a state prison in Illinois to a federal facility for former Guantanamo inmates.

“I think Thomson, Ill., in the hands of the military, could become a secure location,” he said. “My view is we can start to close Guantanamo only after we reform our laws.”

Marcy says Rahm Emanuel put him in charge.

Back in 2003, Lindsay Graham joined John McCain in asking then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to either try or free the detainees at Guantanamo. Per the New York Times back then: [More...]