UK-based human rights group Reprieve issued a statement Jan. 19 suggesting that the Obama administration has suppressed information relating to the investigation of three 2006 Guantánamo Bay suicides and urging further inquiries. The statement comes in response to an article for the upcoming issue of Harper's Magazine, in which former guards at the prison indicate that the three prisoners experienced intense interrogations in a remote area of the base just hours before the deaths. According to the article, military personnel were instructed by a commanding officer that the media would be told that the deaths were suicides.

The federal trial of Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani woman with alleged ties to al-Qaeda, began Jan. 19 in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. Siddiqui is charged with assault and the attempted murder of a US officer after allegedly opening fire on agents at the Afghan detention facility where she was being held in July 2008. As soon as her trial began, Siddiqui became agitated and started screaming that she was innocent, causing her to be removed from the courtroom. Originally detained in Afghanistan because she was allegedly in possession of explosive chemicals and lists of New York City targets, Siddiqui has denied that she is part of any terrorist plot.

The US Department of Justice announced Jan. 14 that four men have been charged in connection with the November 2008 Mumbai terror attacks and an attempted attack on Denmark's Jyllands-Posten newspaper in the ongoing cartoon backlash. The superseding indictment reiterates the 12 charges against Chicago resident and US citizen David Coleman Headley filed last month and adds three defendants.

Lawyers for former Guantánamo Bay detainee Ahmed Ghailani argued Jan. 11 that the charges against their client should be dismissed. Ghailani's lawyers argued before Judge Louis Kaplan of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York that he was denied the right to a speedy trial while being detained for nearly five years in Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) secret prisons and later at Guantánamo Bay. (Jurist, Jan. 12)

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit Jan. 8 against the Library of Congress on behalf Col. Morris Davis, the former chief prosecutor for the Guantánamo Bay military commissions. Davis, who was employed at Library's Congressional Research Service (CRS), resigned as the military commissions' chief prosecutor in October 2007 and became an outspoken critic of the commissions, writing articles, giving speeches, and testifying before Congress that the system is fundamentally flawed. In the lawsuit, the ACLU alleges that Davis was terminated by the CRS last year due to opinion pieces about the commissions, in violation of his rights to free speech and due process.

The US Department of Justice has decided on a military prosecution for Afghan Guantánamo Bay detainee Obaidullah, according to court filings Jan. 6. Obaidullah was initially charged by the military in 2008 with hiding and storing anti-tank mines to be deployed against US forces in Afghanistan. He has been held at Guantánamo since 2002. The US government must now decide whether to formally try Obaidullah in a military commission.

An official from the US Department of Defense said Jan. 6 that about one in five detainees freed from the US military prison at Guantánamo Bay have returned to terrorist activities, according to a new Pentagon report. The report, which remains classified, shows an increase from the 14% recidivism rate reported last spring. That number was up from 11% in December 2008. The report was completed in late December, and officials have not released the raw numbers on which the 20% figure is based. Many human rights groups dispute the numbers, calling them inflated, and some reports have suggested that many Guantánamo detainees are innocent, never having engaged in terrorist activities in the first place. (Jurist, Jan. 7)

The US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit Jan. 4 upheld the conviction and life sentence of accused 9-11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui. Moussaoui's lawyers had requested that his guilty plea and be withdrawn and a new trial be granted, arguing that his plea was involuntary due to Fifth and Sixth Amendment violations. They also argued that his unawareness of the charges against him violated Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure and that his trial counsel did not have access to statements made by al-Qaeda members denying Moussaoui's involvement in the 9-11 conspiracy. The appeals court rejected all of those arguments and "affirm[ed] Moussaoui's convictions and sentences in their entirety."