During about five years of detention at Guantánamo, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani says he was confined in harsh conditions, abused during interrogation and denied a lawyer.

Benjamin Weiser
The New York Times

Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, suspected of being a Qaeda terrorist, was captured in Pakistan in 2004, held in secret prisons run by the C.I.A. and then moved to the naval base at Guantánamo Bay. During about five years of detention, he says, he was confined in harsh conditions, abused during interrogation and denied a lawyer.

Since the spring, Mr. Ghailani has also been a defendant in federal court in Manhattan, the first Guantánamo detainee to be moved to the civilian courts.

From the moment the Obama administration announced that it would seek to try Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the professed planner of 9/11, and other Guantánamo detainees in the same federal court, the wisdom of the decision has been debated. Critics of the move have worried that government secrets will leak, that evidence won through harsh tactics could lead to dismissals, or that a trial would be used as a platform to spew hate.

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The trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is 'perhaps the biggest challenge in the history of federal law enforcement'

Jeffrey Toobin | Bio
CNN Senior Legal Analyst
New Yorker Columnist

The federal courts face an unprecedented challenge in trying accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other Guantanamo detainees for the terrorist attacks that took 3,000 lives, says CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin.

Mohammed, Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, Walid bin Attash, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali and Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi and four other Guantanamo detainees are being transferred to New York to face trial in a civilian court for the September 11 attacks, Attorney General Eric Holder announced Friday.

They will face trial in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York - a short distance from the World Trade Center towers that were destroyed in the September 11 attacks. Holder said he expects the government to seek the death penalty in the cases.

Mohammed is the confessed organizer of the attacks on New York and the Pentagon. But his confession could be called into question during trial. A 2005 Justice Department memo - released by the Obama administration - revealed he had been waterboarded 183 times in March 2003, a technique that President Obama has called torture.

CNN spoke with Toobin on Friday morning. A former assistant U.S. attorney, Toobin is a senior analyst for CNN and author of "The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court."

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Editor's Note: Five Guantanamo Bay detainees with alleged ties to the 9/11 conspiracy, including accused mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, will be transferred to New York to go on trial in civilian court, Attorney General Eric Holder announced Friday.

Jill Dougherty and Elise Labott
CNN

A senior administration official spoke with CNN’s Jill Dougherty and Elise Labott about the resettlement of detainees at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility.

Here are some stats about Gitmo detainees and their transfers.

1. When President Obama took office there were 242 detainees at Guantanamo. Now there are 215. Of those, 115 have been approved for transfer.

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White House Counsel Greg Craig is reportedly leaving his post over his handling of plans to close Guantanamo Bay.

Ed Henry
CNN White House Correspondent

In the first major shakeup among President Obama's senior staff, White House Counsel Greg Craig announced his resignation Friday.

The resignation will take effect on January 3, according to a letter Craig sent to Obama.

Craig is being pushed out in favor of veteran Democratic lawyer Bob Bauer because of a dispute over plans to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, CNN learned Thursday.

"I want to tell you how proud I am of all that your legal team has accomplished on your behalf," Craig wrote in the letter. "It has been a busy first year (for the administration), and I feel very lucky to have been part of it."

Obama, in a written statement, called Craig a "close friend and trusted adviser who tackled many tough challenges."

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Candy Crowley | BIO
CNN Senior Political Correspondent

On that unusually balmy Chicago night a year ago, the candidate who campaigned on what he called the "fierce urgency of now" became the president-elect who needed time.

"The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even in one term," Barack Obama told the crowd in Grant Park. And he still needs time to turn a myriad of campaign promises into policy.

The list of the undones is long, varied and mostly difficult - immigration reform, new financial market regulations and a game-changing energy bill.

And compounding problems on the president's lengthy to-do list is that 2010 is an election year, generally an inefficient time for lawmaking.

Obama can put down several major campaign promises as "in the works."

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Ruhal Ahmed, left, shown at a 2007 news conference, says he had to listen to hours of music at Guantanamo.

Arsalan Iftikhar, creator of themuslimguy.com
CNN

In addition to the mighty Pearl Jam (led by legendary front-man Eddie Vedder) and the uber-hipster timeless classics known as REM (led by equally-legendary Michael Stipe), several prominent musicians from around are rallying together to ensure that their music is not being used to torture at Gitmo’s Camp X-Ray and that our American government lives up to its promise of closing the infamous lawless prison known around the world simply as ‘Guantanamo Bay’.

Additionally, Trent Reznor (of Nine Inch Nails) and Tom Morello (Grammy-winning musiciain formerly of Rage Against The Machine and Audioslave) whose music with the bands Nine Inch Nails and Rage Against The Machine have “already been linked to interrogations at the prison”, according to previously released government records.

“Guantanamo is known around the world as one of the places where human beings have been tortured — from waterboarding to stripping, hooding and forcing detainees into humiliating sexual acts — playing music for 72 hours in a row at volumes just below that to shatter the eardrums,” said Tom Morello, formerly of Audioslave and Rage Against The Machine.

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A U.S. miliary guard stands inside the Camp V area at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba

Michael V. Hayden
Special to CNN

I know that the story has moved on, that the outline of the journalistic narrative has been set, and that the "first draft" of history has been just about finalized. Before the ink dries though, I would like to offer at least a footnote.

And this footnote has to do with President Obama's decision in April to release opinions drafted by the Department of Justice that detailed the CIA's interrogation program for high-value al Qaeda detainees.

Specifically, it has to do with the argument made publicly and privately by the administration that its hand was being forced by a pending decision in a Freedom of Information Act case by the American Civil Liberties Union before Judge Alvin Hellerstein in New York.

Indeed, when Obama visited the CIA the Monday after the release of the documents, he specifically cited this argument in his remarks to the work force.

He said that he released "... the Justice Department Office of Legal Council (OLC) memos as a consequence of a court case that was pending and to which it was very difficult for us to mount an effective legal defense. ..."

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CNN

Interrogation or Torture?

The U.S. Justice Department released former top secret documents that outline interrogration tactics the Bush administration allowed to be used on al Qaeda operatives. Click below to learn about three of the tactics.

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Bobby Ghosh
TIME

Former Vice President Dick Cheney and other members of the Bush Administration might have had a tense weekend. After months of delay and controversy, the Obama Administration is expected on Monday to declassify the 2004 CIA inspector general's report into the agency's interrogation program. Cheney, the most prominent of several Bush-era officials who have vociferously defended the program, faces either vindication or more vilification.

Over the past two days news reports have quoted unnamed officials as saying the IG's findings include instances where CIA interrogators used power drills and even a gun to threaten a detainee; on another occasion, as first reported by Newsweek, they allegedly staged a mock execution. If true, these tactics would go well beyond the coercive techniques permitted by the Bush Administration's legal counsel.

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Program Note: Peter Bergen will be on tonight talking about the situation in Afghanistan. Tune in AC360° 10p ET.

Peter Bergen says it's crucial to know how many ex-Guantanamo prisoners have gone back to the fight.

Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann
Special to CNN

As President Obama awaits formal recommendations this month on issues surrounding the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, it is crucial that policymakers and the public have an accurate picture of the threat to the United States posed by those detainees already released.

Contrary to recent assertions that one in seven, or 14 percent, of the former prisoners had "returned to the battlefield," our analysis of Pentagon reports, news stories and other public records indicates that the number who were confirmed or suspected to be involved in anti-U.S. violence is closer to one in 25, or 4 percent.

During his first week in office, Obama signed an executive order directing that the Guantanamo prison be closed by January 22, 2010, and suspending the system of military commissions that existed to deal with detainees in what the Bush administration termed the war on terror.

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