Timeline – Detainee Issues

August
16/08/2001	Zacarias Moussaoui was arrested after suspicious flight lessons and charged with six counts of conspiracy connected with 9/11 Still on hold. Lawyers for Moussaoui petitioned the Supreme Court in January for permission to interview detained al-Qaeda captives they believe can help his case.
September
11/09/2001	September 11th attacks on New York’s World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania. The US government compiles and releases a list of terrorist suspects
14/09/2001	Congress authorizes President George W. Bush to use “all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.”
18/09/2001	The Justice Department publishes an interim regulation allowing non-citizens suspected of terrorism to be detained without charge for 48 hours or “an additional reasonable period of time” in the event of an “emergency or other extraordinary circumstance.” The new rule is used to hold hundreds indefinitely until the USA Patriot Act passes in October.
21/09/2001	Chief United States Immigration Judge Michael Creppy issues a directive instructing immigration judges to close cases that might be of “special interest” to the September 11 investigation to all members of the press and public.
October
05/10/2001	Mamdouh Habib, 47-years-old and a father of four, was seized by Pakistani police, while traveling from the city of Quetta to Karachi in order to fly back to Australia. With the full knowledge of Australian authorities, he was sent incommunicado to Egypt for five months and then transferred to Guantanamo Bay.
07/10/2001	War in Afghanistan begins
20/10/2001	The New York Times reports that, although 830 people have been arrested in the 9/11 investigation, there is no evidence that anyone in custody was a conspirator in the 9/11 attacks.
26/10/2001	USA Patriot Act signed into law.
31/10/2001	Ashcroft announces the creation of a Foreign Terrorist Tracking Force, which effectively institutionalizes his strategy of mass preventive detention of noncitizens in order to “enhance our ability to protect the United States from the threat of terrorist aliens.”
31/10/2001	John Walker Lindh found in Afghanistan, he was charged with conspiring to kill Americans and providing support to al-Qaeda Lindh agreed to plead guilty to aiding the Taliban and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. After Hamdi’s release, lawyers for Lindh petitioned the court to give him a shorter sentence.
31/10/2001	Yaser Esam Hamdi, a Louisiana-born Saudi captured in Afghanistan with Taliban fighters, he was labeled an enemy combatant. When his US citizenship was later established he was moved from Guantanamo and transferred to various military brigs in the US
November
08/11/2001	Justice Department announces it will no longer issue a running tally of the number of people detained around the country in 9/11-related sweeps. As of this date, the Washington Post puts the tally at 1,182.
10/11/2001	Abdurahman Khadr is arrested as a suspected member of al-Qaeda one day before the Taliban falls to the U.S.-supported Northern Alliance.
13/11/2001	President Bush authorizes a Military Order establishing military tribunals to try suspected terrorists. Anyone held under the Military Order can be detained indefinitely without charge or trial.
30/11/2001	British national Feroz Abbasi was captured by American special forces in Kunduz, north east Afghanistan. He is later moved to Guantanamo Bay where he is detained until early 2005
December
04/12/2001	Senate holds hearings on 9/11 detainees. Ashcroft testifies that those who question his policies are “aiding and abetting terrorism,” and goes largely unchallenged.
11/12/2001	In the first criminal indictments stemming from the 9/11 attacks, Zacarias Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan descent, is charged with conspiring with Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda to “murder thousands of people” in New York, the Pentagon, and Pennsylvania. A federal grand jury indicts Moussaoui on six conspiracy counts, four of which could carry a death sentence. It is the first indictment directly related to the attacks
22/12/2001	British citizen Richard Reid is arrested for allegedly trying to blow up a Miami-bound jet using explosives hidden in his shoe. He later pleads guilty to all charges, and declares himself a follower of Osama bin Laden. He received a sentence of life in prison.
22/12/2001	Djamel Ajouaou, said by David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, to pose “a continuing threat to national security”, then announced that he would exercise his right to return to Morocco.

January
02/01/2002	Moussaoui is arraigned on the six-count indictment. He declines to enter a plea, prompting U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema to enter a not guilty plea on his behalf.
03/01/2002	The Taliban’s ambassador to Pakistan, Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef is arrested and handed over to the US. He is transferred to Guantanamo Bay.
09/01/2002	The White House declares that the Guantanamo detainees are, as “enemy combatants,” not entitled to the protections accorded prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions. Justice Department lawyer John Yoo and special counsel Robert J. Delahunty advise the Pentagon that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to the Taliban or al-Qaida.
11/01/2002	First group of 20 detainees arrives at Guantanamo Bay’s Camp X-Ray from detention centres in Afghanistan. It emerges that there are Britons being held there
17/01/2002	By now 110 prisoners are detained by the U.S. Defense Department at Camp X-ray in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay, “I do not feel the slightest concern at their treatment. They are being treated vastly better than they treated anybody else.”
18/01/2002	President Bush decides that prisoners at Guantanamo are not eligible for prisoner-of-war protection under the Geneva Conventions.
21/01/2002	A DOD memorandum (PDF) prepared by the Office of the Staff Judge Advocate at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, details a meeting with Red Cross officials. The document also explains policies governing body searches and the use of female soldiers to escort male detainees to shower facilities at Camp X-Ray.
22/01/2002	A memo (PDF) from Assistant Attorney General Jay S. Bybee argues that the War Crimes Act and the Geneva Convention did not apply to al Qaeda prisoners and that President Bush had constitutional authority to “suspend our treaty obligations toward Afghanistan” because it was a “failed state.”
24/01/2002	John Walker Lindh transported to Alexandria, Virginia, to be tried in a civilian criminal court for conspiring to kill Americans. He makes his first appearance before a U.S. District Court. A criminal complaint lists four charges, including conspiracy to kill his fellow Americans in Afghanistan.
24/01/2002	A DOD memorandum (PDF) from the Pentagon’s Office of the Staff Judge Advocate explains the actions taken in response to each of the 29 concerns raised by Red Cross officials after their visit to Camp X-Ray.
25/01/2002	Gonzales writes a memo to President Bush arguing that the terrorism fight “renders obsolete Geneva’s strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions,” such as requiring that prisoners get advances on their salaries. At an appearance in Cincinnati, Vice President Dick Cheney says the treatment of Guantanamo prisoners “is probably better than they deserve.”
26/01/2002	Secretary of State Colin Powell writes to Gonzales, arguing that the United States should apply the conventions in full, even if they are not legally binding.
26/01/2002	A British man, Mohammed Kamel, jailed for three years in Yemen for plotting a bombing campaign has returned to the UK after his release from priso
27/01/2002	Vice President Dick Cheney discards the presumption of innocence, declaring the detainees at Guantanamo “the worse of a very bad lot … devoted to killing millions of Americans.”
27/01/2002	The family of Guantanamo detainee Shafiq Rasul, 24, from Tipton, in the West Midlands, plead for him to be returned to Britain for questioning. He is in the camp with fellow Britons, Asif Iqbal, 20, also from Tipton, and Feroz Abbasi, 22, from Croydon, Surrey.
29/01/2002	Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld makes his first visit to Guantanamo Bay. Bush and Rumsfeld say the prisoners there “will not be determined to be POWs.”
31/01/2002	Moazzam Begg was seized by the CIA in Pakistan and taken to Afghanistan.
February
01/02/2002	In a response to a State Department memo stating that Geneva Convention protected Taliban soldiers, Attorney General John Ashcroft summarizes Justice Department view that the conventions do not apply to al Qaeda and Taliban detainees.
02/02/2002	William H. Taft IV, the State Department’s top lawyer, writes to Gonzales arguing that the conventions do apply to the war in Afghanistan and any decision otherwise could endanger U.S. troops.
05/02/2002	A federal grand jury indicts Lindh on 10 counts, alleging he was trained by Osama bin Laden’s network and then conspired with the Taliban to kill Americans
07/02/2002	President Bush sends a memo (PDF) to members of his national security team declaring that he believes he has “the authority under the Constitution” to deny Geneva Convention protections to combatants in Afghanistan, but claims he will “decline to exercise that authority at this time.”
07/02/2002	Bush signs an order declaring he has the authority to suspend compliance with the conventions and reserving the right to do so “in this or future conflicts.” The order also says the conventions on treatment of prisoners of war do not apply to al-Qaida or “unlawful combatants” from the Taliban
08/02/2002	Australian detainee at Guantanamo Bay David Hicks abandoned by Howard government
13/02/2002	John Walker Lindh pleads not guilty to a 10-count federal indictment that charged him with conspiring to kill Americans and aiding Usama bin Laden’s terrorist network. His attorney serve notice they will try to keep the statements he made in Afghanistan from being used at his trial.
19/02/2002	A legal team representing Mr Iqbal, 20, and Mr Rasul, 24, file papers at a court in Washington DC calling on the US government to either justify their detention of the two men by bringing charges against them, or free them.
21/02/2002	A federal judge dismisses a challenge to the Guantanamo detentions.
26/02/2002	Bybee, who later became a federal appeals court judge, writes to the Pentagon’s top lawyer, arguing that the constitutional protections against self-incrimination do not apply to detainees at Guantanamo Bay because they are not being tried in U.S. criminal courts.
March
06/03/2002	Lawyers for Mr Abbasi begin proceedings at the High Court seeking a judicial review of the government’s co-operation with the US. The team seek an order forcing Foreign Secretary Jack Straw to arrange legal representation for Mr Abbasi.
15/03/2002	Mr Abbasi loses his High Court battle against the government over the conditions of his detention by the US at Camp X-Ray.
21/03/2002	The Bush administration announces new military tribunal regulations.
31/03/2002	Mentally ill detainee in Guantanamo transferred to Afghanistan.
April
03/04/2002	The Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel issues an opinion that local law enforcement agencies have authority to enforce immigration laws.
05/04/2002	Yasser Esam Hamdi (Saudi) captured in Afghanistan and detained in Guantanamo is transferred from Guantanamo to a naval brig in Norfolk, Virginia when it is discovered that he holds American citizenship
22/04/2002	Moussaoui fires his court-appointed lawyers, claiming they are part of a conspiracy to execute him, and demands the right to represent himself with the help of a Muslim legal adviser.
26/04/2002	Howard government complicit in detention of Australian citizen by US military
May
03/05/2002	A University of Michigan poll finds that a majority of Americans, post-9/11, would give up some civil liberties in the name of greater security
08/05/2002	Jose Padilla, a United States citizen arrived in the United States via a regular scheduled commercial airliner, is detained at Chicago’s O’Hare airport as a material witness for the 9/11 investigations. President Bush subsequently declared Padilla an “enemy combatant.” Accused of training with al-Qaeda and plotting to detonate a dirty bomb, he is being held as an enemy combatant Padilla continues to challenge his status.
June
13/06/2002	Judge Brinkema grants Moussaoui the right to represent himself, keeping lawyers on standby to assist with his defense.
25/06/2002	During arraignment on the revised indictment, Moussaoui again refuses to enter a plea, then chooses a plea of “no contest.” Judge Brinkema, suspecting Moussaoui’s grasp of the law is shaky, refuses to accept the plea and enters a not guilty plea. She also denies Moussaoui’s request to move the trial from Alexandria, near the damaged Pentagon.
26/06/2002	Bush declares two U.S. citizens, Jose Padilla and Yassar Hamdi, “enemy combatants” who can be held until the end of the war on terrorism, without access to an attorney or to challenge their detention in federal court.
28/06/2002	Two high court judges yesterday quashed an extradition order signed by the home secretary, which would have sent Rachid Ramda back to France for trial over the 1995 Paris Metro bombs which killed 10 people.
July
01/07/2002	Three senior judges give permission for a full hearing of Mr Abbasi’s claims that the government is not protecting his rights while he is held by the US at Camp X-Ray.
02/07/2002	Florida becomes the first state to sign an agreement with the DOJ to allow state law enforcement officials to enforce immigration laws.
15/07/2002	John Walker Lindh pleads guilty to two charges in a deal with prosecutors in which he would serve two 10-year prison sentences and cooperate fully with U.S. authorities in the investigation of the Al Qaeda and terrorism.
16/07/2002	Terrorism Information and Prevention System (TIPS) announced. The program is to allow volunteers, whose routines make them well-positioned to recognize suspect activities, to report what they see to the Justice Department.
16/07/2002	Moussaoui is indicted a third time to allow prosecutors to specify conduct that would warrant the death penalty.
25/07/2002	Moussaoui pleads guilty to four counts of the indictment, then abruptly withdraws the plea after arguing with the judge.
27/07/2002	A 15-year-old Canadian (Omar Khadr) had been captured after being badly wounded in a firefight in eastern Afghanistan. Canada’s prime minister, Jean Chrétien said he was seeking consular access to the boy.
31/07/2002	A federal judge in Washington ruled that the 600 suspected terrorists being held at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have no right to bring their cases to U.S. courts.
August
01/08/2002	Jay Bybee, of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, sends a memo to White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales that concludes that techniques used to interrogate al Qaeda operatives would not violate anti-torture treaties and might be legally defensible. Famously, the memo says that “certain acts may be cruel, unusual or degrading, but still not produce pain and suffering of the requisite intensity” to be considered torture. To be considered torture, the physical pain must be equivalent to “organ failure, impairment of bodily function or death.” This memo would later be repudiated in 2004 by the White House.
01/08/2002	The 600 suspected terrorists being held at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have no right to bring their cases to U.S. courts, a federal judge in Washington ruled
26/08/2002	The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit rules that the press and public must be allowed to witness immigration hearings for suspects detained in the Sept. 11 investigation, strongly rebuking the Bush administration for its policy of maximum secrecy in the war on terrorism. “Democracies die behind closed doors,” wrote the senior judge in the court’s opinion.
October
04/10/2002	Six suspected members of al Qaeda operating near Buffalo are charged with trying to go to Afghanistan to fight U.S. troops; an ex-wife was accused of helping One reached Afghanistan and died fighting. Afraid of being designated enemy combatants, the other six pleaded guilty and were given sentences ranging from three to 18 years, on the basis of how much they cooperated.
04/10/2002	IslamOnline received a list of the names of 57 members of Al-Qaeda, detained in Guantanamo, Cuba, most of them Arab nationals, especially Saudi and Yemeni. The list, written in English, was distributed by Al-Qaeda, or supporters of Al-Qaeda, in the city of Khost, south east Afghanistan and IslamOnline received a copy. The names include 17 Yemeni, 14 Saudi, 7 Moroccans, 4 Kuwaitis and 2 from each of the following nationalities: Bahraini, Algerian, Afghani, French and one from each of the following nationalities: Sudanese, Egyptian, Iraqi, Bangladeshi, African, Spanish and Pakistani.
09/10/2002	Brigadier-General Rick Baccus has also lost his job at the Rhode Island National Guard, amid reports he was too hard on troops while being soft on the prisoners suspected of fighting for the Taleban in Afghanistan.
10/10/2002	US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announces that “a relatively small number” of men will be freed from Camp X-Ray.
11/10/2002	Officers at the Guantanamo prison camp ask their superiors for permission to use harsher interrogation methods against inmates.
16/10/2002	General Baccus is said to have clashed with colleagues. The head of military police at the US detention centre for Taleban prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has been removed from his command
25/10/2002	Gen. James T. Hill, head of U.S. Southern Command, writes to Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Richard Myers, asking for approval to use harsh interrogation techniques against Guantanamo prisoners.
27/10/2002	The United States releases four prisoners — three Afghans – Haji Faiz Mohammed, Mohammed Sadiq and Jan Mohammed – and a Pakistani, Mohammed Sagheer — from Guantanamo.
November
03/11/2002	Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller takes command of the prison camp with a mandate to get more and better information from prisoners.
06/11/2002	The British Court of Appeal rules that Mr Straw cannot be compelled to intervene over the detention by the US of Mr Abbasi
25/11/2002	Bush signs the Homeland Security Act of 2002, establishing the Department of Homeland Security.
27/11/2002	Rumsfeld issues an order allowing harsh interrogation techniques at Guantanamo. They include forcing prisoners into “stress positions,” interrogating them for 20 hours at a time, removing their clothing, intimidating them with dogs, forcing them to wear hoods during transportation and interrogation and forcibly shaving their heads and beards.
December
02/12/2002	Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approves a memo, written earlier by the Pentagon’s general counsel, William J. Haynes II, approving specific interrogation techniques that could be used on detainees at Guantanamo Bay.
04/12/2002	U.S. District Judge Michael Mukasey rules that although the president could hold those deemed enemy combatants until the end of the hostilities, Padilla did have the right to meet with counsel and offer evidence contesting the government’s allegations. The government, however, has refused to comply with the decision and has claimed that allowing Padilla to meet with his attorneys would be too great a security risk.
04/12/2002	US authorities reported that one of the detainees being held by the military for interrogation at the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan had died. Almost nothing is known about who he was, why he was detained or the circumstances surrounding his death.The man was in his 30s and had been captured in Afghanistan during the previous week. He died, allegedly from natural causes, at around 1 pm after being taken to the base hospital.
22/12/2002	The Los Angeles Times reported that Washington was holding dozens of prisoners at Guantanamo with no meaningful connection to Al-Qaeda or the Taliban.

January
05/01/2003	UK police find 22 castor oil beans – the raw material for the poison ricin – in a flat at 352B High Road, Wood Green, in north London. They also find equipment needed to produce ricin and recipes for ricin, cyanide and several other poisons. Seven people are arrested, including Sidali Feddag. Bourgass flees to Manchester, via Bournemouth and Weymouth.
07/01/2003	Mustapha Taleb is arrested as he visits a bank in Wood Green, London, as part of the ricin plot.
08/01/2003	A federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., ends a public defender’s attempt to represent Yaser Hamdi.
13/01/2003	Six people are arrested in Bournemouth, in connection with a ricin plot.
14/01/2003	Four people, including Feddag and Taleb, are charged with “possession of articles of value to a terrorist” in relation to a ricin plot.
15/01/2003	Donald Rumsfeld rescinds his approval for some interrogation techniques at Guantanamo Bay. The new memo allows commanders to seek Rumsfeld’s direct approval to use the tougher techniques if they are “warranted in an individual case” but would require a “thorough justification.”
16/01/2003	U.S. troops saved a prisoner from killing himself in the most serious case so far in a series of suicide attempts at the U.S. compound at Guant?namo Bay
20/01/2003	Seven people are arrested at the Finsbury Park mosque, north London. Police find weapons, forged passports and ID cards. They also take away a photocopier for examination.
22/01/2003	Eight people are charged with offences related to developing or producing a chemical weapon contrary to section one of the Criminal Law Act 1977. Police also arrest Mouloud Bouhrama at an address in London.
23/01/2003	A former Guantanamo Bay translator accused of taking secret documents from the US military prison in Cuba was ordered held without bail until his trial begins in federal court.
February
03/02/2003	A mission from the Belgian Embassy mission in Washington comprising one diplomat and one representative of the federal police force was authorised to visit the Belgian national being held at the American base in Guantanamo.
07/02/2003	News breaks of Patriot Act II.
26/02/2003	It emerges that 35-year-old Moazzam Begg, from Birmingham, is now a detainee at Guantanamo Bay. He is reported to have been seized in Pakistan and held in Bagram for a year.
28/02/2003	18 detainees including Afghanis and Pakistanis Alif Khan, Sayed Abassin, Ehsanullah, Sarajudim, Merza Khan are released.
28/02/2003	An Ohio truck driver, he was accused of training with Osama bin Laden and plotting to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge Arrested after being named by captured al-Qaeda leader Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Faris pleaded guilty in May 2003 and agreed to cooperate. He was sentenced to 20 years in jail.
March
11/03/2003	A federal appeals court rules that the 650 Guantanamo detainees have no legal rights in the United States and may not ask courts to review their detentions.
14/03/2003	U.N. human rights chief Sergio Viera de Mello criticizes the United States for keeping the Guantanamo detainees in a “legal black hole.” Viera de Mello later became a special U.N. envoy to Iraq and was killed in a Baghdad car bombing that August.
18/03/2003	DHS chief Tom Ridge announces “Operation Liberty Shield,” requiring automatic detention of asylum seekers from 34 countries where terrorist groups have been active.
19/03/2003	Iraq war begins
29/03/2003	The trial of three UK men accused of promoting an illegal Islamic group in Egypt was opened after long delays
April
01/04/2003	A Pakistani woman who was on the FBI list for having suspected links to the Al Qaida network, Aafia Siddiqui, has been taken into custody by an intelligence agency
04/04/2003	The Pentagon’s review panel issues a report to Rumsfeld adopting the arguments of Bybee’s August 2002 memo, with a narrow definition of torture
16/04/2003	Defense Department officials approve 24 new controversial interrogation techniques for Gitmo detainees – 17 of which were taken directly from the U.S. military field manual and four required notice to Rumsfeld when they were used. The four were the use of rewards or removal of privileges from detainees; attacking or insulting the ego of a detainee; alternating the use of friendly and harsh interrogators; and isolation. This action is reported a year later in the Washington Post.
30/04/2003	Five Saudis transferred from Guantanamo to Saudi Arabia for continued detention
May
07/05/2003	13 detainees transferred for release from Guantanamo. They are detained on arrival in their home countries
08/05/2003	Jehan Wali Sahibzada, former Guantanamo detainee, is released from Pakistan
19/05/2003	Former Guantanamo detainees Rustam Shah, Sulaiman Shah, Shah Mohammed are released from custody in Pakistan
27/05/2003	The U.S. Supreme Court declines to review a 2-1 decision of the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in North Jersey Media Group v. Creppy and Ashcroft leaving intact the right of the government to conduct secret immigration hearings in this case.
31/05/2003	Eleven men were indicted for training-sometimes with paintball sessions in Virginia–to fight with Islamists in Kashmir Six of the men pleaded guilty; three were convicted; two were acquitted on all charges. The guilty received sentences ranging from four years to life in prison.
June
17/06/2003	Freed Guantanamo Bay prisoners say they had tried to commit suicide to escape harsh conditions at the detention camp. Several of the 35 Afghans and Pakistanis released from the US naval base say that while they were physically unharmed they were driven to despair by their confinement in tiny cells and the uncertainty of their fate.
22/06/2003	The Justice Department announces it is withdrawing 2002 memos giving a narrow definition of torture, providing legal arguments for U.S. personnel to escape prosecution under anti-torture laws and arguing that the president’s wartime authority supersedes laws and treaties.
July
03/07/2003	President Bush announces that six of the 650 prisoners at Guantanamo are eligible to be tried by military tribunal. It emerges that two Britons, Begg and Abbasi, could be amongst these.
14/07/2003	A suspected longtime aide to Osama bin Laden, Adil Al Jazeeri, has been handed over to American authorities and flown out of Pakistan
18/07/2003	The US agrees to suspend the threat of secret military hearings against the nine Britons being held at Guantanamo Bay pending pending talks between the two nations.
18/07/2003	27 detainees (16 Afghans, including Muhammad Naim Farooq; 11 Pakistanis) are released from Guantanamo
21/07/2003	American officials release Abdurahman Khadr, who had acted as a CIA mole in Guantanamo. He is sent to Bosnia to spy on Islamists. His brother, Omar, remains in Guantanamo to this day.
31/07/2003	5 Malawi residents returned (Khalifah Abdi Hassan, Muhammad Sardar Isa, Arif Ulsam, Ibrahim Habbak, Fahd al-Bahili) – not mentioned in the official DoD list of transfers, are released.
August
06/08/2003	News breaks that John Ashcroft will start promoting the Victory Act.
17/08/2003	Thai authorities have handed the wife of alleged terror mastermind Hambali to Malaysian police, who want to interrogate her about her husband’s activities
31/08/2003	Pakistanis – Muhammad Ishaq, Ejaz Ahmad Khan, Hafiz Liaqat Manzoor, Abdul Maula, Majid Mehmood, Abdul-Razaq, Talha Mehmood are released from Guantanamo
September
30/09/2003	Kamel Merzoug is arrested after his fingerprints are found on the poison recipes.
October
02/10/2003	After reports that senior members of al-Qaeda are hiding in Waziristan, Pakistan, armed forces in Pakistan stage an attack on their hideout. After a firefight lasting several hours, the Pakistan army takes 18 prisoners and pulls eight bodies, including that of Ahmed Said Khadr – father of Guantanamo detainee Omar Khadr and ghost detainee Abdullah Khadr – from the safehouse. Their younger brother, Abdul Karim is believed dead. It is later confirmed that he survived although sustained serious injuries.
08/10/2003	Uzair Paracha, a 23-year-old Pakistani national was indicted on federal charges of terrorism conspiracy, providing material support to al Qaeda, and using false documents to facilitate an act of terrorism
09/10/2003	A DOD memorandum outlines a meeting where Red Cross officials noted improvements at Camp X-Ray but expressed additional concerns regarding due process rights, the use of caged cells, detainee isolation and detainee repatriation rates.
09/10/2003	A public statement by The Red Cross notes “deteriotation in the psychological health of a large number” of Guantanamo detainees.
20/10/2003	Tariq Mahmud, a dual Pakistani and British Citizen, was is kidnapped in a joint Pakistani/US/UK operation. His whereabouts remain unknown at the time of writing.
24/10/2003	Aljazeera correspondent Taysir Alluni has been released on bail from a Spanish prison
November
03/11/2003	Abbas Boutrab, 25, from Algeria, was arrested. He was arrested by police in Northern Ireland investigating alleged al-Qaeda links. Mr Boutrab was charged with receiving instruction in the use of explosives, possession of items of use to terrorists and possession of documents likely to be of use to terrorists. He was arrested in Maghaberry prison, County Antrim
04/11/2003	Mohammad Sagheer, a man who was imprisoned by the US military at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is suing the Pakistani and US governments for damages worth over $10m
09/11/2003	US Human rights activists demanded the U.S. Supreme Court to show “where it stands” on civil liberties, asking it either to weigh in soon on the legality of holding hundreds of people in the notorious U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, or to remain silent. The plaintiffs, including human rights organizations, diplomats, former judges and retired military officers, believe the high court should step in and declare that President George W. Bush’s administration is denying justice to approximately 650 men from 42 countries held prisoners by the United States at the military camp, reported Agence France-Presse
10/11/2003	The U.S. Supreme Court said on Monday it would decide whether foreign nationals can use American courts to challenge their incarceration at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the first cases it will hear on the Bush administration’s war on terror.
17/11/2003	Germany has extradited two Yemenis to the United States on charges that they supported the al-Qaeda network.
20/11/2003	The immediate fate of the British detainees at Guantanamo Bay will be resolved “soon”, Prime Minister Tony Blair says following Downing Street talks with US President George Bush.
25/11/2003	One of Britain’s most senior judges, Lord Steyn, condemns the US for a “monstrous failure of justice” over the holding of detainees at Guantanamo Bay and that they are being held in conditions of “utter lawlessness”.
25/11/2003	A Muslim chaplain who served at the United States prison camp for terror suspects in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba has been charged with sex offences
26/11/2003	A senior British judge has trashed the continuing detention of suspects by the United States in Guantanamo Bay as a “monstrous failure of justice”.
27/11/2003	Explosives have been found at the home of a 24-year-old man linked with al-Qaeda who was arrested in Gloucester on suspicion of planning a suicide bombing
30/11/2003	Abdurahman Khadr arrives in Toronto. He claims that he was released from Guantanamo and transferred to Afghanistan. He says that he made his way via Iran and Turkey to Bosnia where he contacted the Canadian embassy and requested a new passport.
December
02/12/2003	Babar Ahmad is arrested and assaulted in a dawn raid in London, UK. He is held for six days and then released without charge
02/12/2003	Four men have been arrested under Section 41 of the Terrorism Act 2000 after dawn raids in London. One, later identified as Babar Ahmad, is subject to a brutal beating and suffers over 50 injuries, 2 of which were potentially life threatening. They are released without charge within a week.
02/12/2003	A 36-year-old man has been charged by Sussex Police under Section 57 of the Terrorism Act.
02/12/2003	Kurdish forces in Iraq have arrested a UK student suspected of trying to join a radical Islamic guerrilla group linked to al-Qaeda
03/12/2003	A Gloucester man, Saajid Badat, has been charged with conspiring with “shoe bomber” Richard Reid, who tried to blow up a plane.
04/12/2003	Abdurahman Khadr’s lawyer, Rocco Galati, announces he is stepping down from all national security cases because of a death threat.
08/12/2003	Turks: Ibrahim Jan, Yuksel Celikgogus, and an unknown no. of Afghan and Pakistanis are released.
11/12/2003	A German court released a Moroccan man after the judge in his trial said there was new evidence which “clearly exonerates” him of suspicions he helped the September 11 plotters.
11/12/2003	David Hicks is the first detainee in Guantanamo to receive a lawyer
18/12/2003	Padilla wins a court victory. The court orders that Padilla-who has been held since June of 2002 on his suspected connection to a “dirty bomb” plot-must either be charged, be declared a material witness or be released within thirty days
18/12/2003	The three-judge panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the President had no authority under the Constitution to imprison an American citizen as an enemy combatant without any charge and without judicial review when he was arrested on U.S. soil, unarmed, and far from any field of combat. The government appealed the decision to the Supreme Court, which granted review
25/12/2003	Two Britons convicted on terrorism charges in Yemen, Shahid Butt and Sarmad Ahmed, have flown home following their release from prison
30/12/2003	A new Justice Department memo provides an expanded definition of torture and omits the legal liability and presidential authority issues

January
05/01/2004	The ACLU warns that a new immigrant tracking program, known as US VISIT, would increase confusion among immigrants coming to America, and would primarily target Arabs and Muslims.
08/01/2004	A detainee attempted suicide at the U.S. detention center for suspected terrorists at the military base and he was recovering at a hospital,
13/01/2004	A Yemeni man, Salim Ahman Hamdan, the second of hundreds of detainees at the U.S. military prison in Guantanomo, Cuba, was provided defense counsel and military lawyer
14/01/2004	U.S. authorities filed criminal charges yesterday against a Saudi student who ran a Montreal-based Internet site that was allegedly used to recruit and raise money for Islamic terrorists.
22/01/2004	Maher Arar, a dual citizen of Canada and Syria, files a lawsuit against Attorney General John Ashcroft. Earlier, the Justice Department had seized Arar in 2002 while he was changing planes and deported him to Syria. Arar avows that he was tortured during his year there. The CIA claims that it had received assurances that Syria would not torture Arar.
24/01/2004	Pakistani officials use DNA testing to confirm that Ahmed Said Khadr was killed in the raid the past October. Abdul Karim Khadr is reportedly paralysed in the shootout. The Khadr family demands that Abdul Karim and the body of Ahmed Said Khadr be returned to Canada.
26/01/2004	A federal judge declares a portion of the USA Patriot Act unconstitutional. The section in question bars anyone from giving advice or assistance to groups designated as terrorist organizations. It is the first time a court has declared part of the Act unconstitutional.
29/01/2004	Three Afghan juveniles held in Guantanamo Asadullah Rahman, Muhammad Ismail Agha, Naqibullah are released.
29/01/2004	A second law lord is to question US policy over the detention of 660 terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay
29/01/2004	Pakistani authorities are likely to hand over a key suspect in the September 11 terrorist attacks, Ramzi Binalshibh
29/01/2004	Four members of an alleged Virginia jihad network have waived their right to a jury trial because they contend that a Northern Virginia jury cannot be fair to Muslim men facing allegations of terrorism.
30/01/2004	A French government mission visiting detainees at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has turned up a seventh French national in American custody
30/01/2004	The U.S. military on Thursday released three teenage boys, believed to be between the ages of 13 and 15, who had been accused of supporting the Taliban and had been held at the prison for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba
February
02/02/2004	A DOD memorandum describes a meeting between military and Red Cross officials at Guantanamo Bay. Red Cross officials visited Camp X-Ray in early February to oversee the departure of juvenile detainees and to visit new prisoners. The discussion references changes in security at Camp X-Ray.
04/02/2004	David Hicks has met his defence lawyers at Guantanamo Bay for the second time since being detained more than two years ag
05/02/2004	Abdel Ghani Mzoudi, a Moroccan man accused of assisting the September 11 hijackers, is cleared by a court in Hamburg due to a lack of evidence. Prosecutors have appealed the decision.
09/02/2004	The final members of a group of Muslim men with Portland ties who tried, but failed, to enter Afghanistan as Taliban foot soldiers were each sentenced to prison time
09/02/2004	An Indonesian court jailed an Islamic militant for life for preparing explosives for the Bali nightclub bombings which killed 202 people.
10/02/2004	Prosecutors opened their case Monday against four U.S. citizens accused of conspiring to aid the Taliban in its fight against the United States, saying the case is not about Islam but instead about the defendants’ intentions and actions
11/02/2004	Shortly after the Supreme Court agreed to review the case, Yasser Hamdi is finally allowed to see his lawyer, Frank Dunham, albeit with military officials recording the meeting and with a ban on any discussion of Hamdi’s prison conditions.
12/02/2004	An American citizen held incommunicado by the military for more than a year as an alleged al-Qaida supporter will be allowed to see a lawyer, the Pentagon said
13/02/2004	Spanish national: Hamad AbdurRahman Ahmad is transferred from Guantanamo to Spain for continued detention
14/02/2004	A former Seattle community activist, James Ujaama, who pleaded guilty to trying to help al Qaeda Islamic militants was sentenced to two years in prison
16/02/2004	The US frees two Sudanese detainees from Guantanamo
17/02/2004	Hamed Abderrahman Ahmed, a Spanish prisoner is extradited from Guantanamo to Spain where he is held without bail. He is later released on bail after several months.
19/02/2004	The British Foreign Office announces that five of the nine British prisoners being held in Guantanamo Bay are to be released. The men to be released are named as Ruhal Ahmed, Tarek Dergoul, Jamal Al Harith, Asif Iqbal and Shafiq Rasul.
20/02/2004	The British Foreign Office announces that five of the nine British prisoners being held in Guantanamo Bay are due to be released
21/02/2004	A judge on Friday acquitted one of four men charged in an alleged conspiracy to aid the Taliban in its fight against the United States and tossed some charges against some of the other defendants.
21/02/2004	The US Supreme Court has agreed to decide if the president can order the indefinite detention of US citizens in the administration’s war on terror.
24/02/2004	Two detainees held at Guantanamo Bay-Ali Hamza Ahmed Sulayman al Bahlul of Yemen and Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al Qosi of Sudan-are finally charged with conspiracy to commit war crimes. The two are currently being tried by a military commission under procedures that include: the legal presumption of innocence; a requirement for proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt; representation by a military defense counsel free of charge, with the option to retain a civilian defense counsel at no expense to the U.S. government; an opportunity to present evidence and call witnesses; and a prohibition against drawing an adverse inference if an accused chooses not to testify.
24/02/2004	Danish national Sulaiman Hadj Abdul-Rahman is released from Guantanamo. He is not detained on arrival and faces no charges.
25/02/2004	The Pentagon has announced the first charges against foreign detainees at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Two men, alleged to have been key al-Qaeda members, have been charged with conspiracy to commit war crimes
26/02/2004	The United States turned over a Danish national who was imprisoned at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to the government of Denmark
29/02/2004	Jordanian Wesam AbdulRahman released from Guantanamo. He is held in custody on arrival in Jordan
March
01/03/2004	7 Russians – Airat Vakhitov, Rasul Kudayev, Ravil Gumarov, Ruslan Odigov, Rustam Akhmerov, Shamil Khazhiyev, Timur Ishmuradov – are released from Guantanamo and transferred to Russia for continued detention.
01/03/2004	US handed seven Russians previously imprisoned in Guantanamo, to Russian authorities.
03/03/2004	Former Guantanamo detainee, Abdurahman Khadr, whose younger brother Omar remains in Guantanamo, reveals that he worked for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency to identify Al Qaeda members at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and in Afghanistan and Bosnia-Herzegovina
03/03/2004	Families of British, German and French prisoners held at the US Guantanamo Bay detention camp will travel to the United States this week to appeal to the president for their release
04/03/2004	Jose Padilla, the American arrested in an alleged Al Qaeda plot to set off a radioactive dirty bomb, was allowed to meet with lawyers for the first time in nearly two years.
04/03/2004	An Islamic militant who shielded a key Bali bomber has been jailed for nine years in the last in a series of trials over the attack, which killed 202 people.
05/03/2004	A jury in Alexandria, Va., Thursday convicted three men on charges of conspiring to wage war against the United States and support terror groups.
07/03/2004	Home Secretary David Blunkett criticises the treatment by the US authorities of the remaining detainees
09/03/2004	Mr Blunkett confirms that the five Britons will be released by the US government later in the day: Asif Iqbal, Jamal al-Harith, Ruhal Ahmad, Shafiq Rasul, Tarek Dergoul.
09/03/2004	Judges ordered the release yesterday of Detainee M, a Libyan man who has been detained for 16 months without charge under the Government’s anti-terrorism powers
09/03/2004	Five Britons held in Guantanamo Bay as terrorism suspects for two years are released without charge
15/03/2004	23 Afghans and 3 Pakistanis are released from Guantanamo. Afghans include: Lal Gul, Mohammed, Haji Osman, Muhammad Sidiq, Wazir Mohammed, Aziz Khan The three Pakistanis were detained on their arrival in Islamabad.
16/03/2004	Twenty-three Afghans and three Pakistanis are on their way home after being freed from American custody in Guantanamo Bay
16/03/2004	A member of the special tribunal that judges cases involving terrorist suspects detained without charge or trial has told the Guardian he has resigned because the body had become “virtually powerless
19/03/2004	Captain James Yee, who could have faced the death penalty on false accusations of spying at the Guantanamo Bay prison, was cleared of all criminal charges
19/03/2004	Lord Woolf upholds the judgement of SIAC in spite of protests from the Home Secretary David Blunkett and orders him to release Detainee M from Belmarsh without charge
20/03/2004	Fahd al-Qusaa and Jamal al-Badawi are indicted by the US Yemen has re-arrested two militants, suspected of masterminding the bombing of a US warship in October 2000. Jamal al-Badawi and Fahd al-Qusaa are accused of planning the attack which killed 17 on the USS Cole
25/03/2004	Three Britons accused of promoting a banned Islamic group have been jailed for five years each in Egypt
26/03/2004	An Australian terror suspect will be able to challenge his detention at a U.S. military base in eastern Cuba before the U.S. Supreme Court in April
27/03/2004	The Army general in charge of the prisoner operation at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has been reassigned to oversee prisoner detention operations in Iraq
31/03/2004	15 detainees are released from Guantanamo including: 2 Turks – Nuri Mert , 2 Sudanese – al-Rashid Hasan and Muhammad BaBikr 4 Tajiks.The US Department of Defense also mentions detainees from Afghanistan, Iraq, Jordan and Yemen – names and numbers unknown.
April
01/04/2004	Police in Vancouver have charged Momin Khawaja, a Canadian man with helping a “terrorist group” in Canada and Britain
03/04/2004	The United States government has released two Sudanese citizens who had been detained in Guantanamo Bay
03/04/2004	A Turkish man returned home yesterday from Guantanamo Bay
05/04/2004	A Muslim Army chaplain embroiled in a case involving a suspected espionage ring at the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba was scheduled to return home to Fort Lewis
08/04/2004	Mounir Motassadeq, the only man ever convicted of aiding the September 11 hijackers, is released from jail. Back in March, an appeals court had ruled that his original trial had been compromised, because the judges hadn’t considered the U.S. government’s refusal to provide evidence from al Qaeda operatives in secret custody. German courts are currently retrying Motassadeq’s case.
20/04/2004	The Supreme Court begins hearing oral arguments on the status of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The court gets ready to consider whether the United States government can hold foreign nationals as “enemy combatants” without hearings and without charges.
22/04/2004	Rafil Dhafir, a Muslim doctor already accused of illegally sending money to Iraq through an unlicensed charity he founded has been charged with defrauding donors.
23/04/2004	Detainee G, an Algerian suspected of being a terrorist with links to al Qaida was released on bail tonight and effectively placed under house arrest
28/04/2004	The Supreme Court begins hearing oral arguments in both the Yaser Hamdi and Jose Padilla cases.
28/04/2004	First pictures of US soldiers brutalising Iraqi detainees in Abu Ghraib are published
29/04/2004	The town of Tisbury, Massachusetts becomes the 300th local or state government to pass a resolution denouncing the USA Patriot Act.
29/04/2004	CBS shows US troops abusing Iraqi detainees in Abu Ghraib. It says the pictures it obtained show a wide range of abuses, including: Prisoners with wires attached to their genitals; A dog attacking a prisoner; Prisoners being forced to simulate having sex with each other; A detainee with an abusive word written on his body
30/04/2004	Seymour Hersh breaks the Abu Ghraib story in The New Yorker
May
01/05/2004	The American newspaper, the Washington Post, published the first detailed compilation of detainees into one list in English, much of the research of which came from Cageprisoners.com and Alasra.org.
03/05/2004	The Council on American-Islamic Relations announces that alleged harassment attacks on Muslims in the United States reached a record high in 2003.
06/05/2004	Brandon Mayfield, a lawyer living in Oregon, is arrested after the FBI reportedly finds his fingerprints on a bag containing detonating devices in Madrid. Mayfield is held for two weeks as a material witness, without access to his family. Two weeks later, on May 21, Spanish authorities announce that the fingerprinting ID was incorrect.
06/05/2004	Another 350 suspected Taleban prisoners have been moved from a notorious jail in northern Afghanistan to Kabul.
06/05/2004	Promising a broader investigation, the U.S. military acknowledged Wednesday that two guards at the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had been disciplined over allegations of prisoner abuse
09/05/2004	The Bush administration was bracing itself last night for the release of new pictures and video footage from Abu Ghraib which show US soldiers having sex with an Iraqi woman prisoner, troops almost beating a prisoner to death, and the rape of young boys by Iraqi guards at the jail.
13/05/2004	The ACLU files a lawsuit challenging a provision in the USA Patriot Act that requires telephone companies and Internet Service Providers to hand over a customer’s records to the FBI without the consent of the customer. Judge Victor Marrero eventually ruled the provision unconstitutional.
14/05/2004	Two British men who were held at Guant?namo Bay claimed that their US guards subjected them to abuse similar to that perpetrated at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
16/05/2004	US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has been accused of personally authorising a secret programme that encouraged abuse of Iraqi prisoners
18/05/2004	434 alleged Taliban and al-Qaida fighters shuffled out of Afghanistan’s most notorious prison, winning transfer to a Kabul jail after a weeklong hunger strike to protest being held without charges for nearly 2 1/2 years.
19/05/2004	The United States is to hold a “top-to-bottom” review of its detention centres in Afghanistan following allegations of prisoner abuse.
20/05/2004	American guards are accused of torturing and abusing Sydney man Mamdouh Habib in Guantanamo Bay Jail.
20/05/2004	It emerged that US troops in Afghanistan have written permission to use threats, dogs and the firing of mortars near prisoners to help extract information during interrogations
21/05/2004	US plans to allow Guantanamo Bay detainees captured in the “Afghan theater” to petition for their release in an annual review, but without a counselor’s help, were received coldly by a lawyer for detainees held at the US naval base
25/05/2004	Offering a rare public apology, the FBI admitted mistakenly linking Brandon Mayfield, an American lawyer’s fingerprint to one found near the scene of a terrorist bombing in Spain, a blunder that led to his imprisonment for two weeks
27/05/2004	Muslim cleric Abu Hamza was today arrested at his London home on a US extradition warrant
27/05/2004	A Paris court has sentenced a French convert to Islam to four years in jail for his association with a militant Islamic network
31/05/2004	Ex-Guantanamo Detainee Mulla Shahzada Killed in Afghanistan
June
03/06/2004	Federal agents have raided the Alexandria headquarters of WAMY, a Saudi-based charity founded by a nephew of Osama bin Laden
04/06/2004	Bourgass is convicted at the Old Bailey of the murder of DC Oake. He is sentenced to life imprisonment. The verdict remains secret due to reporting restrictions designed to give him a fair trial on the ricin charges.
04/06/2004	Bourgass is convicted at the Old Bailey of the murder of DC Oake. He is sentenced to life imprisonment. The verdict remains secret due to reporting restrictions designed to give him a fair trial on the ricin charges.
10/06/2004	Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks was charged today with conspiracy to commit war crimes, attempted murder and aiding the enemy
10/06/2004	Military interrogators at the US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have been given access to the medical records of individual prisoners, a breach of patient confidentiality that ethicists describe as a violation of international medical standards designed to protect captives from inhumane treatment
11/06/2004	A Saudi graduate student, Sami Omar Al Hussayen, was acquitted Thursday of charges that he used his computer expertise to foster terrorism
14/06/2004	It emerges that US military officials are holding a bodyguard of Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden at the naval base prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba
14/06/2004	A Somali immigrant has been arrested in the US charged with plotting with al-Qaeda to attack American targets.
17/06/2004	The FBI announces that it will share its databases with British intelligence.
17/06/2004	Jack Roche has sought leave to appeal his nine-year jail sentence for plotting to blow up the Israeli embassy in Canberra on behalf of al-Qaeda.
17/06/2004	An Air Force judge refused to dismiss the troubled espionage case against a Syrian-American airman Wednesday, ruling that investigators were not acting with malice, even if they made mistakes in their probe
22/06/2004	The Justice Department announces that it will review all legal advice from the department’s Office of Legal Counsel on the subject of interrogations.
22/06/2004	Six MPs are to visit London’s high-security Belmarsh jail to inspect conditions in which suspected Islamist militants are held without charge.
22/06/2004	The brother of an alleged South East Asian militant leader has been found guilty of helping to finance a bomb attack in Jakarta last year.
23/06/2004	An Australian court granted terror suspect Bilal Khazal bail Tuesday despite an appeal from the director of public prosecutions (DPP) against another court’s decision to allow him bail
24/06/2004	U.N. human rights investigators, citing “persistent and credible” reports of torture at the U.S. base in Guantanamo Bay, urged the United States on Thursday to allow them to check conditions there. They believe the US is stalling on visits.
25/06/2004	Seven former Guantanamo detainees are released from a Russian detention centre without trial or charge, much to the consternation of the US.
25/06/2004	Seven Russian citizens and former Guantanamo prisoners have been released from a detention south Russian center where they were kept after being handed over by the United States
27/06/2004	A lawsuit challenging the US government’s detention and prolonged incarceration of a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay’s Camp Echo encountered a delay this week when the Department of Defense moved to classify key documents which describe his treatment at the island prison.
28/06/2004	The Supreme Court decides three landmark cases in the war on terror: Of the three decisions, that of Hamdi et al v. Rumsfeld turned out to be the most significant. The case concerned the fate of Esam Hamdi, an American citizen captured in Afghanistan and held in a Navy brig in South Carolina. The administration had argued that the president had the right to designate any American an “enemy combatant” without first consulting the courts. The Supreme Court’s 8 to 1 majority opinion concluded that while the president could keep Hamdi away from the battlefield, that detention could last only until the end of “active combat operations in Afghanistan.” After that time, Hamdi must be granted a trial and legal counsel in order to contest his status as an “enemy combatant.”
28/06/2004	In Rasul v. Bush, the Supreme Court granted foreign nationals detained at Guantanamo the right to file lawsuits to contest both their detentions and conditions at the base.
28/06/2004	In Rumsfeld v. Padilla et al, the court essentially punted, arguing that Jose Padilla should have brought his case before South Carolina, where he is being held indefinitely. Nevertheless, Padilla’s case will likely resolve itself along the lines of Hamdi, meaning that Padilla will get to contest his status as an “enemy combatant” before civilian courts.
29/06/2004	Supreme Court rules that Yaser Esam Hamdi, the American citizen captured on an Afghanistan battlefield, will finally get his day in Norfolk’s federal court
29/06/2004	In its first review of the White House’s post-Sept. 11 legal strategy to fight terrorism, the Supreme Court sharply rebuked President Bush’s claim that he has unfettered power to lock up people without giving them hearings
30/06/2004	Former Guantanamo detainee, Wesam AbdulRahman is released from Jordanian custody.
July
04/07/2004	The U.S. government says it will allow lawyers representing 12 Kuwaiti inmates at the U.S. military prison in Cuba to visit their clients
08/07/2004	President Bush vows to veto a Congressional spending bill if it includes an amendment to curb features of the Patriot Act. The amendment eventually fails on a 210-210 vote, with the Republican leadership holding the floor open for longer than the traditional 15 minutes in order to get the votes it needed. The amendment would have limited the Justice Department’s ability to force book dealers, librarians, and others to surrender records.
09/07/2004	Guantanamo detainee Mehdi Ghezali is released. He is not detained or charged on arrival in Sweden.
09/07/2004	A Swedish man held for more than two years by the United States in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, returned home after he was released to the Swedish government by the Pentagon
09/07/2004	Tahira Tabassum, the widow of a British suicide bomber has been cleared of terrorist offences – but his brother and sister are to be retried.
14/07/2004	Spaniard Hamed Abdurrahman Ahmed released on bail.
14/07/2004	A Spaniard held for two years in the U.S. military camp at Guantanamo Bay before being handed over to Spain has walked out of prison on bail
14/07/2004	A disabled wanted Saudi militant and suspected al-Qaeda leader has turned himself in to authorities under a royal amnesty
17/07/2004	A former Russian prisoner at Guantanamo Bay, who was released recently from a Russian detention center, says he plans to sue the U.S. authorities for the health problems he has developed while in custody
17/07/2004	A Swede released from the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay last week wants to sue the U.S. government for being held captive without charges for 2 1/2-years
21/07/2004	A spokesman for Afghanistan’s president says security forces in the country have detained a brother-in-law of the fugitive Taleban leader, Mullah Omar.
22/07/2004	Ibrahim Eidarous, 42, has been released from Broadmoor hospital where he was held without charge, as he is dying of cancer
23/07/2004	Muslim cleric Abu Hamza is at a high-security court hearing to decide whether he should be extradited to the US to stand trial on terrorism charges
23/07/2004	Sami Omar Al Hussayen is released and deported to Saudi Arabia, five weeks after his acquittal
27/07/2004	4 French detainees are repatriated – Imad Kanouni, Ibrahim Yadel, Mourad Benchellali, Nizar Sassi. They remain in custody, as an investigation is launched, pending charges
27/07/2004	The United States has turned over four Guantanamo Bay suspects to France
28/07/2004	Affidavit for extradition warrant for British citizen Babar Ahmad is signed and released in Connecticut, US
28/07/2004	Former Guantanamo detainee Spaniard Hamed Abderrahmane is to sue US President George W. Bush and his administration after spending two years in US detention in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay on Cuba
28/07/2004	A Muslim charity and seven of its senior leaders were charged today with conspiracy, dealing with terrorists and money laundering — almost three years after the federal government shut down the Texas-based organization, alleging it was a front for the terrorist group Hamas.
28/07/2004	The parents of an American jailed without charges in Saudi Arabia are suing the United States in what lawyers say is the first lawsuit filed on behalf of a U.S. citizen detained in a third country at the U.S. government’s request
30/07/2004	Judge gives the U.S. until Tuesday to explain why a Libyan man, Al Gheribi, is being held at Guantanamo, or he’ll order him freed
31/07/2004	Jordanian Hussain Yousuf Mustafa Azzam released from Guantanamo. On returning to Jordan he discovers that his son died of a heart condition six months before.
August
01/08/2004	Five Moroccans are repatriated from Guantanamo – Mohamed Ouzar, Mohamed Mazouz, Radouane Chekkouri, Abdellah Tabarak, and Brahim Benchakroun. The US alleges that Abdellah Tabarak was a former bodyguard of Osama Bin Laden, a charge he strongly denies
01/08/2004	A judge ordered four Frenchmen who spent more than two years at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay to remain behind bars now that they are back home
02/08/2004	Five Moroccans detained in the U.S. military camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba for more than two years after their arrest in Afghanistan have been handed to Moroccan authorities
03/08/2004	Thirteen men have been arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000 after raids in London and three English counties
05/08/2004	British citizen Babar Ahmad is re-arrested under a US extradition warrant. He is remanded in custody at HMP Woodhill prison
05/08/2004	An imam and a pizza-shop owner were nabbed for allegedly laundering cash they thought was from a terrorist plot Free on bail. Justice said, based on a note found in Iraq, that Imam Yassin Aref, left, was an al-Qaeda leader but later said it had misread brother in Kurdish as commander in Arabic.
05/08/2004	Babar Ahmad, a British citizen wanted on terrorism charges in the US has been arrested in the UK under anti-terror laws
08/08/2004	A senior Pakistani al-Qaida operative who used to run one of the terror group’s training camps in Afghanistan has been arrested in the United Arab Emirates and handed over to Pakistani officials
12/08/2004	Two top al Qaeda operatives in US custody-Ramzi Binalshibh and Khalid Sheik Mohammed-tell the U.S. that a Moroccan man on trial in Hamburg, Mounir Motassadq, knew nothing about plans for the September 11 attacks. (The U.S. government had earlier refused to admit Binalshibh as evidence in Motassadeq’s first trial; as a result, Motassadeq’s conviction was overturned, and he is currently awaiting the verdict from a retrial.)
14/08/2004	A Jordanian prisoner, Hussain Mustafa Azzam, held by U.S. forces at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba since 2002 was released last week
18/08/2004	The father of an alleged al-Qaida computer expert Muhammad Naeem Khan filed a lawsuit in a Pakistani court challenging what he called the illegal detention of his son, who was captured last month, a
20/08/2004	A federal judge orders the government to bring Yaser Esam Hamdi to a federal court if prosecutors fail to reach a deal to free him.
20/08/2004	The Justice Department introduces secret evidence not available to the public in its legal battle with the ACLU over portions of the USA Patriot Act.
25/08/2004	Osama bin Laden’s chauffeur was formally charged at the first U.S. military tribunal to convene since World War II, and the defendant’s lawyer quickly challenged the process as unfair and questioned the panel’s impartiality
26/08/2004	The first military tribunal since World War II opens in Guant?namo Bay as Salim Ahmed Hamdan is charged with conspiring with Osama bin Laden.
26/08/2004	David Hicks-a former Australian cowboy who allegedly attended an al Qaeda training camp and fought alongside the Taliban-pleaded not guilty as his military trial opened in Guantanamo Bay. Hicks is the only defendant from outside the Middle East to be formally charged and brought before the military commissions thus far.
26/08/2004	It is announced US lawyers will be allowed to visit the British detainees in Guantanamo
26/08/2004	David Hicks pleads innocent to all charges at the first military tribunal hearings to take place in Guantanamo. He is reunited with his father for the first time in an emotional reunion in Guantanamo Bay.
27/08/2004	Abu Hamza was arrested on suspicion of terrorism offences by British police, while in a London jail awaiting extradition to the United States
31/08/2004	Father of Guantanamo detainee David Hicks reveals that his son was abused in US custody and received 20 hour beatings.
31/08/2004	An American-based lawyer, Gita Gutierrez, visited Feroz Abbasi, 23, of London, and Moazzam Begg, 36, from Birmingham, at the US naval base, Camp Delta, where they have been held as suspected terrorists without charge or trial.
September
01/09/2004	The trial begins at the Old Bailey of Bourgass, Mouloud Sihali, David Aissa Khalef, Sidali Feddag and Mustapha Taleb. Reporting restrictions remain in place to ensure a fair trial for four defendants in a separate trial.
03/09/2004	A federal judge threw out the terrorism convictions of two Arab immigrants on Thursday, undoing what the Justice Department once proclaimed was its first major courtroom victory in the war on terror. The ruling means that John Ashcroft has not successfully prosecuted a single terrorist case thus far.
11/09/2004	A US court martial in Baghdad has sentenced a soldier to eight months in jail for maltreating and conspiring to maltreat Iraqi detainees.
13/09/2004	The Fourth Circuit Court rules that alleged 9-11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui cannot have access to key al Qaeda detainees to build his defense. The Court also rules that Moussaoui is eligible for the death penalty, and clears the way for a trial in the spring of 2005.
14/09/2004	The only Iranian to be held in Guantanamo Bakhtiar Bameri is released.
15/09/2004	Three British Muslim women yesterday told of their anger after Israeli police burst into their room in the middle of the night, strip-searched them and arrested them under terrorism laws
15/09/2004	An Iranian captured in Afghanistan and sent to the Guantanamo detention center in Cuba before being returned to Aghanistan was repatriated.
16/09/2004	The Combatant Status Review tribunals review the case of Ali Hamza Ahmed Sulayman al Bahlul. It is the first time an independent panel has reviewed the case of a detainee who has already been charged by the military.
17/09/2004	The Army drops charges against Col. Jackie Duane Farr, who was charged in 2003, along with Muslim chaplain James Yee, with trying to take classified material from Guantanamo prison. Farr had allegedly disobeyed orders by transporting classified materials without a proper security container. A Guantanamo spokesman said the charges were dropped “to more quickly resolve the matter.”
17/09/2004	Two men-Adham Amin Hassoun and Mohamed Hesham Youssef-are indicted in Florida for allegedly providing financial support and recruitment for al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. The men are also charged with helping suspected “dirty bomber” Jose Padilla attend training camps in Afghanistan.
18/09/2004	Pakistani officials say most of the remaining Pakistani prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay have been released and have returned to Pakistan.
21/09/2004	Yusef Islam, the peace activist and singer known as Cat Stevens, is removed from a flight from London to the United States. Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge accuses Islam of having an “unspecified relationship with terrorist activity.”
21/09/2004	Detainee D is released from HMP Woodhill after 3 years of detention without trial
21/09/2004	A military judge denied a motion to dismiss spy charges against a Syrian-American airman despite defense arguments the government had failed to make a case over the past year.
21/09/2004	The leader of Ohio’s largest mosque was sentenced yesterday to two months in federal prison and four months of house arrest for lying about his connections to terrorist groups when he applied for US citizenship
23/09/2004	The House Leadership introduces its intelligence reform bill which includes provisions for “extraordinary rendition”-sending detainees to other countries to be tortured-along with measures that require states to provide the federal government with a wide range of personal information. The bill also requires states to set up a central database for driver license records that would be available to federal investigators.
23/09/2004	A Danish man who was held at the US military base in Guantanamo Bay for two years plans to sue the US government for unlawful detention and will demand financial compensation
24/09/2004	Ali Al Timimi, an Islamic spiritual leader was indicted yesterday on charges that his preaching inspired a group of Northern Virginia men to train for violent jihad overseas and prepare for war against the United States.
25/09/2004	Ali Al Timimi, an Islamic lecturer charged with aiding the Taliban and urging local Muslims to fight U.S. troops in Afghanistan was granted bond at a pretrial hearing.
29/09/2004	A Yemeni judge sentenced two men to death and four others to prison terms ranging from five to 10 years for orchestrating the 2000 suicide bombing of the USS Cole
30/09/2004	A federal judge in New York rules unconstitutional a portion of the USA Patriot Act that allows the FBI to demand information from Internet service providers without judicial oversight or public review. (Most of Judge Victor Marrero’s ruling, however, did not focus on the Patriot Act, but rather earlier statutes upon which the Patriot Act expanded.) John Ashcroft promises to appeal the decision.
30/09/2004	British detainee Moazzam Begg claims he is victim of“vindictive torture”
30/09/2004	Court rules that a key portion of the Bush administration’s security policy is unconstitutional
October
02/10/2004	A British citizen being held at Guant?namo Bay was subjected to “vindictive torture” and death threats, and witnessed two deaths while in US custody, he claims in a letter published today
05/10/2004	U.S. authorities charge Saajid Badat, 25, with attempted murder, trying to destroy an aircraft, and other crimes. Badat is accused of conspiring with Richard Reid, a British member of al Qaeda who tried to ignite shoe bombs to blow up planes.
05/10/2004	The Supreme Court declined yesterday to consider another issue related to terrorism suspects’ rights in the case of Ali Al Marri
06/10/2004	Babar Ahmad is formally indicted by the US on four counts
11/10/2004	Both the House and the Senate approve an anti-torture amendment to the Defense Authorization Bill, sponsored by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL). The amendment affirms the United States’ commitment not to engage in torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.
11/10/2004	Yasser Essam Hamdi is released by the U.S. and sent to Saudi Arabia. Part of the conditions of his release are that he revokes his US citizenship and agrees not to travel outside Saudi Arabia for ten years. He also agrees not to enter the US or a number of listed countries.
12/10/2004	Human Rights Watch reports that 11 al-Qaeda suspects have “disappeared” in U.S. custody, and may have been tortured. The prisoners are being held without access to their families, lawyers, or the Red Cross, and are possibly being held outside the United States.
12/10/2004	Yaser Esam Hamdi , the U.S. citizen who was captured on the Afghanistan battlefield and held without charges for nearly three years, has been freed and returned to Saudi Arabia
14/10/2004	A federal appeals court upholds the Fourth Circuit court’s ruling that Zacarias Moussaoui cannot interview al Qaeda detainees to build his defense. The government had objected on national security grounds.
14/10/2004	Three months after the Supreme Court ruled that hundreds of detainees in Guant?namo have the right to challenge their imprisonment in courts, the Washington Post reports that none has appeared in the courtroom. Most detainees have not yet spoken to lawyers, and have not yet been given a reason for being held. Defense attorneys are currently engaged in negotiations with the Justice Department over security clearances for detainees
14/10/2004	Disturbing findings by a group of doctors show that serious damage to the health of all the detainees they have examined has occurred and is inevitable under a regime which consists of indefinite detention.
15/10/2004	An Edmonton lawyer has won the right to sue the federal government on behalf of a Canadian teenager accused of having ties to al-Qaida.
15/10/2004	Indonesian prosecutors formally charged militant cleric Abu Bakar Bashir with ordering his followers to launch a suicide attack on the J.W. Marriott hotel in Jakarta last year.
16/10/2004	A prominent Muslim activist who admitted participating in a Libyan plot to assassinate Saudi Arabia’s crown prince was sentenced Friday to the maximum 23 years in prison for illegal business dealings with Libya
17/10/2004	The New York Times reports that detainess at Guant?namo Bay were regularly subjected to harsh and coercive treatment.
17/10/2004	The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit rules unanimously that authorities may not search people at a protest simply because they fear a terrorist attack. The court declared that September 11 “cannot be the day liberty perished
17/10/2004	A lawyer for a German-born Turkish man held at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp was able to visit his client for the first time last week and found him to be in good condition
17/10/2004	Diplomat Craig Murray who was withdrawn as ambassador to Uzbekistan has been suspended on full pay.
20/10/2004	A U.S. district judge ruled that Guantanamo detainees can meet alone with their lawyers, rejecting a government proposal to monitor the meetings.
20/10/2004	Islamic cleric Abu Hamza appears at the Old Bailey charged with 16 offences including soliciting murder
21/10/2004	In a defeat for the government, a federal judge ruled that three prisoners held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba can meet with their attorneys in private.
21/10/2004	Pakistan government has amended the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) bringing in its ambit culprits behind suicide attacks on mosques and laying out stringent guidelines for the judicial officials for speedy disposal of terrorism cases.
25/10/2004	A new legal opinion by the Bush administration declares that some non-Iraqi prisoners captured by American forces in Iraq are not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions.
25/10/2004	Omar Khadr, the only Canadian citizen imprisoned by the United States at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has been granted permission to talk to a lawyer for the first time
26/10/2004	The US government offered to send British detainees held as suspected terrorists in Guant?namo Bay back to the UK during secret talks with the government
27/10/2004	Indonesian court sentenced a brother of alleged militant leader Hambali to four years in jail for helping transfer money used in the bombing of a Jakarta luxury hotel last year.
28/10/2004	Four British men detained at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp for nearly three years are suing the US government
28/10/2004	Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir has gone on trial in Indonesia on charges of leading Jemaah Islamiah, a militant network seen as the Southeast Asian arm of al Qaeda.
November
01/11/2004	A letter is released from Australian Guantanamo detainee David Hicks, saying that he is on the brink of insanity, suffering severe mood swings and not able to comprehend reality
02/11/2004	The first exclusively U.S. war crimes court since World War II is holding its first trial at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba
04/11/2004	Guantanamo detainee David Hicks has been visited by his sister and appeared to be in fine health and good spirits, according to Australian government officials in Guantanamo Bay
06/11/2004	The investigating judge of the court of appeal of Rabat decided, after an in-depth investigation, to refer five Moroccans who were detained in the American base of Guantanamo, to the criminal chamber of the same court
09/11/2004	The US attorney general John Ashcroft, a right-wing evangelical who has been a lightning rod for critics of the Bush administration, announced his resignation
09/11/2004	A U.S. federal court halted proceedings ahead of the military trial of Osama bin Laden’s driver, saying his status as an enemy combatant had to be determined by a competent tribunal.
09/11/2004	Australian terror suspect David Hicks has been removed from solitary confinement ahead of his pending trial.
16/11/2004	Tony Blair repeatedly intervened in a bid to deport asylum seekers to Egypt despite being told that they might be tortured and sentenced to death
17/11/2004	The Department of Homeland security requires that its 180,000 employees and contractors sign a secrecy pledge, covering sensitive but unclassified information
18/11/2004	A US Court of Appeals has granted a US Government request that it expedite an appeal against a ruling which threw into doubt the legality of military trials of “war on terror” detainees being held in Guantanamo Bay
19/11/2004	Jack Thomas, a former Melbourne taxi driver – who’s the first Australian to be charged with being on al-Qaeda’s payroll – was arrested and transferred last night to Victoria’s maximum security Barwon Prison to spend his first night in an Australian jail
20/11/2004	Taysir Alluni, the Aljazeera journalist who is charged in Spain over alleged links to the al-Qaida network has been formally remanded in custody
27/11/2004	The Justice Department urged the Supreme Court not to take on immediately the range of major constitutional issues being raised in an appeal by an “enemy combatant” challenging his war crimes trial before a U.S. military commission. Instead, the government argued, the Court should await a ruling by the D.C. Circuit on an expedited appeal there
29/11/2004	Feroz Abassi is to remain imprisoned after an American tribunal labelled him an al-Qa’eda terrorist on a martyr’s mission against the US.
30/11/2004	Lawyers Against the War filed torture charges against George W. Bush under the Canadian Criminal Code
December
03/12/2004	A US federal judge handling petitions from nine Guantanamo Bay detainees challenging their confinement has signalled his reluctance to intervene in the military system for imprisoning enemy combatants.
07/12/2004	FBI agents witnessed “highly aggressive” interrogations and mistreatment of terror suspects at the U.S. prison camp in Cuba starting in 2002 – more than a year before the prison abuse scandal broke in Iraq – according to a letter a senior Justice Department official sent to the Army’s top criminal investigator
07/12/2004	The Supreme Court refused Monday to speed up consideration of a challenge to the government’s plans to try foreign terror suspects before military tribunals.
09/12/2004	The US Government has appealed a federal court ruling stating that Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden’s imprisoned driver. Salim Ahmad Hamdan, should be given prisoner-of-war protection under the Geneva Convention.
09/12/2004	An American soldier partly blinded in a firefight in Afghanistan has asked a federal judge to extend the time limit for his lawsuit against Guantanamo detainee, Omar Khadr
09/12/2004	Early in the Bush administration’s detention of foreign terrorism suspects, FBI agents told Pentagon officials that the military’s harsh interrogation tactics in Cuba would produce “unreliable results,” according to documents released
10/12/2004	Ahmed Zaoui was freed on bail after two years of imprisonment without charge
11/12/2004	Detention without trial of foreign terrorist suspects is not necessary and alternative legal methods should be employed, the Council of Europe’s commissioner for human rights told the British government
12/12/2004	Two more Belmarsh terror detainees have been moved to Broadmoor hospital because deteriorating mental illness has led to a “life-threatening condition”
16/12/2004	A U.S. district judge begins an investigation into whether the United States was involved with the detention of a 23-year-old America, Abu Ali, who is currently being held in Saudi Arabia. Ali has been interrogated repeatedly by the FBI while in Saudi custody.
17/12/2004	The Law Lords in Britain rule that the detention without trial of the Belmarsh detainees is unlawful and discriminatory.
19/12/2004	Two British detainees in Guantanamo Bay, Moazzam Begg and Feroz Abbasi, have been moved out of solitary confinement after Foreign Office protests about their declining health.
19/12/2004	Ian Mcdonald, a leading QC appointed by ministers to act in secret court hearings for terror suspects is quitting in disgust, describing the law allowing foreigners to be detained indefinitely as “an odious blot on our legal landscape”.
20/12/2004	Charles Clarke defends his decision not to release the foreign nationals detained without trial for 3 years under emergency post 9-11 legislation and describes the need to balance national security and human rights during awkward parliamentary questions.
20/12/2004	A Libyan oil worker questioned over a security alert which shut down Durham Tees Valley Airport, near Darlington, has been released without charge.
21/12/2004	The trial resumes on Monday of Abdullah Tabarak, a Moroccan man suspected of being Osama bin Laden’s former bodyguard.
21/12/2004	Fresh allegations have emerged of serious mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by US military personnel
23/12/2004	A London-based Saudi dissident who has been declared a “specially designated global terrorist” by the US is expected to have all his assets frozen today by the UN security council.
26/12/2004	At least ten current and former detainees at Guantanamo Bay lodge new allegations of prisoner abuse, most of which corroborate recently released FBI descriptions of those incidents. The detainees allege, among other things, that “military personnel beat and kicked them while they had hoods on their heads and tight shackles on their legs, left them in freezing temperatures and stifling heat, subjected them to repeated, prolonged rectal exams and paraded them naked around the prison as military police snapped pictures.”
29/12/2004	A Cambodian court has sentenced the Indonesian Islamist known as Hambali and three others to life in jail for planning bomb attacks in Phnom Penh.
30/12/2004	U.S. Navy documents released today by the American Civil Liberties Union reveal that abuse and even torture of detainees by U.S. Marines in Iraq was widespread.
30/12/2004	U.S. Rep. Edward J. Markey, D-Malden, a senior Democratic member of the House Homeland Security Committee, called for the Justice Department to fully disclose its role in the detention of an American, Ahmed Abu Ali, in Saudi Arabia.
31/12/2004	The Justice Department revises its definition of torture. The new guidelines retreat from an August 2002 definition that asserted that mistreatment amounted to torture only if it produced pain on the level associated with organ failure or death. However, the guidelines stay silent on the question of whether the president has the legal right to override anti-torture laws

December
31/12/2004	Kuwaiti Nasser Al Mutairi released from Guantanamo. He is detained on arrival in Kuwait
January
01/01/2005	The Washington Post reports that the administration is preparing long-range plans to hold indefinitely those detainees whom it does not want to set free or turn over to the courts.
01/01/2005	The US military on Saturday released 260 detainees from the notorious Abu Ghraib prison west of Baghdad and Camp Bucca in southern Iraq.
02/01/2005	Fresh details emerge of harsh tactics used on Guantanamo detainees, citing the case of Mohammed Al Qahtani, believed to have been the 20th Hijacker in the September 11th attacks
02/01/2005	US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has named a former army general to oversee military tribunals for foreign terror suspects held at Guantanamo Bay.
03/01/2005	In a motion hearing on December 30, 2004 at Alexandria Federal Court, Judge Brinkema agreed to drop Count 1 of the indictment against Ali Al Timimi
05/01/2005	Court denies bail to former Guantanamo detainees in Morocco, Mazouz, Benchekroun for failing to report crimes that could have undermined state security.
05/01/2005	A Briton accused of attempting to smuggle anti-aircraft missiles into the US trial begins
05/01/2005	Newly released documents show that in late 2002, more than a year before a whistle-blower slipped military investigators the graphic photographs that would set off the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, an F.B.I. agent at the American detention center in Guant?namo Bay, Cuba, sent a colleague an e-mail message complaining about the military’s “coercive tactics” with detainees.
06/01/2005	Nominated for Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales is sharply questioned by Democratic lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Committee during his confirmation hearings. Gonzales claims he does not view the Geneva Conventions as either “obsolete” or “quaint,” and says that “torture and abuse will not be tolerated by this administration.” However, he defends his decision arguing that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to the war against al Qaeda.
06/01/2005	An Egyptian detainee at Guantanamo Bay, Mamdouh Habib, files a petition to prevent his transfer back to Egypt. Habib claims that before he came to the U.S. in 2001, he was tortured for nearly six months by the Egyptian government.
06/01/2005	A Bangladeshi man who allegedly produced a fake passport for Hambali, one of the suspected leaders of the Jemaah Islamiyah terrorist group, has been arrested by immigration police.
06/01/2005	The Pentagon is sending investigators to Guantanamo Bay to look into allegations of prisoner abuse described in recently released FBI documents, authorities said Wednesday, as a new batch of FBI memos was released.
07/01/2005	The White House refused Thursday to provide senators additional documents on attorney general nominee Alberto Gonzales’ involvement in the decision to allow aggressive interrogations of terrorism detainees, setting up a confrontation with Democrats looking into his role in the now-repudiated policies.
08/01/2005	An American lawyer who has just visited 12 Kuwaiti detainees in Guantanamo Bay said Thursday that “the most hardened convicted criminals in the U.S.have better conditions” than the prisoners who have been in Cuba for almost three years.
08/01/2005	A British Muslim arrested by US forces in the rebel Iraqi town of Ramadi was named as Mobeen Muneef, 25, of Tooting, south London. He claims he was involved in humanitarian aid.
08/01/2005	The Department of Defense can legally withhold its correspondence with the International Committee of the Red Cross on the United States’ treatment of detainees in Guantanamo Bay, despite widespread reporting by world news media, a federal judge has ruled.
09/01/2005	A US military court has cleared an army sergeant of killing an Iraqi civilian by ordering him into the River Tigris.
09/01/2005	A former Arabic translator, Ahmed Melhaba, at the federal prison camp at Guantanamo Bay has agreed to plead guilty Monday to taking classified material from the base and lying to investigators, under a deal with prosecutors that would make him a free man in a few months.
09/01/2005	American forces have announced the arrest of a key member of an al-Qaeda-linked group in Iraq.
10/01/2005	A British soldier accused of mistreating Iraqi detainees near Basra faces a court martial on Monday.
11/01/2005	It is announced that the four remaining British citizens in Guantanamo will be sent home.
11/01/2005	Two suspected members of the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) international terrorist group who were also believed to be behind the twin bombings that struck Davao City early in 2003, were released from jail here following a local court order dismissing their case for lack of evidence.
11/01/2005	Lawyers for Zacarias Moussaoui petitioned the Supreme Court on Monday, challenging the government’s right to put the terrorism suspect on trial while the defense had no access to potentially favorable al-Qaida witnesses.
11/01/2005	A Pentagon spokesman says only about 25 per cent of the 550 terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba are still of intelligence value, as the controversial jail nears its third year.
12/01/2005	The four remaining Britons detained in Guantanamo Bay are to be returned in the next few weeks, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw announced today.
12/01/2005	The US will not charge Australian man Mamdouh Habib and he will be released from Guantanamo Bay and flown home as soon as possible, the federal government said.
13/01/2005	A passenger who caused a British Airways jet to return to the UK after US authorities objected to the man landing in New York was questioned and released by police.
13/01/2005	A New York law group has filed suit seeking release of Guantanamo captive Mohammed al-Qahtani – the Saudi man who was subjected to some of the most intensive, Pentagon-approved interrogation tactics as a suspected 20th hijacker in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
14/01/2005	The Justice Department has opened a wide-ranging investigation into reports from the Federal Bureau of Investigation about the military’s use of coercive and abusive tactics against prisoners held in American custody at Guant?namo Bay and in Iraq, officials said on Thursday.
14/01/2005	A court today rejected a bid by a British Muslim convert Jack Roche to reduce his nine-year jail sentence for plotting with al-Qaida to blow up the Israeli embassy in Canberra.
15/01/2005	The army reservist labelled the “primary torturer” of Abu Ghraib was convicted by a military jury yesterday of abusing Iraqi prisoners after a trial the Pentagon hopes will cleanse the reputation of the US military.
16/01/2005	Some 80 Afghan prisoners held as terrorism suspects have been released from the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan’s Supreme Court says.
16/01/2005	Algerian Fouad Lasnami has won his test case on Human Rights grounds to remain in Scotland
17/01/2005	A second lawyer representing terror suspects held without charge in British jails has resigned.
18/01/2005	White House counsel Alberto Gonzales says that the CIA and other nonmilitary personnel are not bound by a 2002 presidential directive that pledged the humane treatment of prisoners in American custody. Gonzales also claims that a Congressional ban on cruel, unusual treatment had a “limited reach” and did not apply in all cases to “aliens overseas.”
18/01/2005	A police officer is facing misconduct charges over the arrest of Babar Ahmad.
18/01/2005	Kuwaiti detainee Nasser Al Mutairi is released from Guantanamo. He is detained on arrival in Kuwait.
20/01/2005	Around 300 demonstrators gather outside Downing Street to protest against the detention without trial of terror suspects.
21/01/2005	A federal judge in Washington has rejected a lawsuit by foreign-born terror suspects challenging their detention in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
21/01/2005	The Supreme Court prolonged the legal limbo of hundreds of terror suspects in a U.S. military prison in Cuba, refusing on Tuesday to consider whether the government’s plan for military trials unfairly denies them basic legal rights.
25/01/2005	The last four Britons are released – Feroz Abbasi, Martin Mubanga, Moazzam Begg, and Richard Belmar. They are detained and questioned for 24 hours in police custody before being release without charge. At least 7 British residents remain in Guantanamo Bay with the British government refusing to act on their behalf
25/01/2005	The four remaining Britons detained Guantanamo Bay are released and return to the UK. They are detained and questioned for 24 hours before being released without charge
25/01/2005	Twenty-three terror suspects tried to hang or strangle themselves at the US military base in Guantanamo Bay during a mass protest in 2003, the military confirmed today
25/01/2005	Pakistan has handed over to the United States Ahmad Khalfan Ghailani, a key suspect in the bombings of two US embassies in East Africa in 1998
27/01/2005	Charles Clarke outlines plans for tough restrictions on British citizens suspected of terrorist activities including curfews, house arrest and tagging.
28/01/2005	A Guantanamo translator confirms the use of sexual tactics used by female interrogators to break Muslim detainees at the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay by sexual touching, wearing a miniskirt and thong underwear and in one case smearing a Saudi man’s face with fake menstrual blood
28/01/2005	Australian Guantanamo detainee, Mamdouh Habib, is released without charge and reunited with his family.
29/01/2005	Australian Mamdouh Habib is released from Guantanamo and faces no charges in Australia
31/01/2005	Three terror prisoners being held without charge are granted bail at a Special Immigration Appeal Commission hearing in London.
February
01/02/2005	Four prisoners have been shot dead by US guards during a riot at an Iraqi jail
02/02/2005	Detention order for Detainee C is revoked after 3 years in HMP Woodhill
03/02/2005	A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the CIA to comply with the Freedom of Information Act and turn over to watchdog groups records concerning the treatment of prisoners in Iraq.
04/02/2005	The Indonesian wife of a Malaysian terror suspect has gone on trial, charged with concealing her husband from police and falsifying his name on their marriage licence.
04/02/2005	Suspected terrorists challenging their detention in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, should have access to limited classified government material while the Bush administration seeks to stop their lawsuits in federal appeals court
05/02/2005	Several Russian citizens who alleged they were tortured while being held at the U.S. navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, said they plan to sue the U.S. government
05/02/2005	Pakistani police and intelligence agencies have arrested a Tunisian national suspected of links with Al Qaeda
05/02/2005	A US soldier who stomped on Iraqi prisoners at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison has been sentenced to six months in jail and discharged from the army.
05/02/2005	Dr. Al-Timimi was arraigned at 11 AM today Friday, February 3rd, 2005, Alexandria Federal Court. He was indicted last night on ten counts
06/02/2005	Martin Mubanga, who had been held captive in Guantanamo Bay for 33 months plans to sue the government
08/02/2005	The home secretary has lost his bid to send G, an Algerian terror suspect under house arrest back to jail
10/02/2005	Attorneys representing an 18-year-old Canadian detainee at Guantanamo Bay Omar Khadr claimed he was tortured by U.S. interrogators
10/02/2005	A federal court jury Thursday found Rafil Dhafir, a Muslim doctor guilty of running an illegal charity that defrauded donors and conspiring to violate U.S. sanctions by sending money to Iraq.
11/02/2005	An American civil rights lawyer was convicted of aiding terrorism by smuggling secret messages from an Islamist client, who was jailed for plotting to destroy several New York landmarks, to his followers outside.
13/02/2005	A man has been charged with conspiring to cause an explosion with intent to endanger life after being arrested at Heathrow airport.
14/02/2005	Australian former Guantanamo Bay detainee Mamdouh Habib says he was beaten and subjected to electric shock torture in Pakistan and Egypt and degraded by U.S. forces in Cuba during his almost three years in detention
16/02/2005	The government has refused to issue the British men freed from Guantanamo Bay with passports
17/02/2005	Omar Deghayes, a British resident held by the US in Guant?namo Bay, was directly threatened with murder by Libyan secret services while in captivity and subject to torture and abuse by the US authorities
18/02/2005	Adil Charkaoui, Moroccan detained in Canada since 2003, is released on bail
18/02/2005	New evidence has emerged that US forces in Afghanistan engaged in widespread Abu Ghraib-style abuse, taking “trophy photographs” of detainees and carrying out rape and sexual
19/02/2005	New allegations of prisoner abuse by US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan have been revealed in documents released by the US Army.
22/02/2005	Charles Clarke unveils the Bill to the House of Commons featuring travel bans and bars on access to phones and the internet – but house arrest proposals were kept in “reserve”.
22/02/2005	An American detained in Saudi Arabia for 20 months without being charged is being sent back to the United States
23/02/2005	A combined Conservative, Liberal Democrat and backbench Labour move to defeat the Bill is lost in the Commons by 316 votes to 216.
23/02/2005	An alleged al-Qaida plot to assassinate George Bush was revealed yesterday when Ahmad Abu Ali who spent 20 months in a Saudi jail on suspicion of terrorism was charged with conspiring to kill the president
24/02/2005	Two soldiers were yesterday convicted of the abuse of Iraqi prisoners in a case that has seriously undermined the standing of the British army and been dubbed the country’s Abu Ghraib
26/02/2005	Yemeni appeals court has upheld a death sentence, and commuted another, over the bomb attack on the USS Cole, which killed 17 US sailors in 2000.
26/02/2005	Three British soldiers who abused Iraqi civilians have been jailed and dismissed from the Army in disgrace by a military tribunal in Germany.
27/02/2005	Zaynab Khadr Returns To Canada
28/02/2005	Saajid Badat, the British man accused of conspiring with “shoe bomber” Richard Reid pleaded guilty Monday to conspiring to blow up a U.S.-bound aircraft in 2001
March
01/03/2005	A federal judge ordered the Bush administration Monday to either charge terrorism suspect Jose Padilla with a crime or release him after more than 2 years in custody
02/03/2005	Maher Arar has lost his bid to seek compensation in Canadian courts for his alleged harsh detainment in Jordan
03/03/2005	Two Yemenis who were detained on the U.S. military base in Guatanamo Bay, Cuba, have been repatriated.
03/03/2005	An Indonesian court has found the radical cleric Abu Bakar Ba’asyir guilty of conspiracy over the 2002 Bali bombings, in which 202 people died.
04/03/2005	Two men and a woman from Coventry have been arrested by Scotland Yard’s anti-terrorist branch as part of an investigation into international terrorism. They are charged with providing material support to the Kashmiri group, Lashkar E Taiba
08/03/2005	Mushtaq Ali Patel, Ridouane Khalid and Khalid ibn Mustafa, the last three French citizens held by U.S. authorities at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, have arrived back in France. Rudouane and Khalid are detained as part of an investigation into terrorist activity.
08/03/2005	The American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights First have sued US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in federal court for putting into practice interrogation methods resulting in torture
09/03/2005	The latest Pentagon review of military detainee mistreatment criticizes U.S. officials for failing to set clear interrogation guidelines but concludes that Pentagon officials and senior commanders were not directly responsible for the widespread abuses, according to Defense Department and congressional sources.
10/03/2005	The first Kuwaiti to be repatriated from the US Guantanamo prison has been charged with undermining the emirate’s political position
10/03/2005	Former Guantanamo detainee Mushtaq Ali Patel is released without charge in France
10/03/2005	A comprehensive U.S. military review of prisoner interrogation policies and techniques for the global war on terrorism concluded that no civilian or uniformed leaders directed or encouraged the prisoner abuse documented in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
11/03/2005	Detainee A, who was held for 3 years in HMP Woodhill, Britain, is released on bail
11/03/2005	Fresh charges may be laid relating to the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Camp Bread Basket
11/03/2005	Five men held without charge under anti-terror powers due to lapse have been released from Belmarsh prison.
12/03/2005	Ten foreign terror suspects have been subjected to interim control orders under new anti-terrorism powers.
12/03/2005	The self-confessed organiser of the abduction of Armagh aid worker, Annetta Flanigan, has been handed over to US authorities for interrogation in Afghanistan, the Pentagon has said.
12/03/2005	The marathon debate over new British anti-terror proposals has finally ended after more than 30 hours with the government’s Prevention of Terrorism bill being passed
13/03/2005	Unreleased U.S. Army reports detailing the deaths of two Afghan men who were beaten to death by American soldiers show that military prison abuses began in Afghanistan in 2002, and were part of a systematic pattern of mistreatment
14/03/2005	U.S. citizen Ahmed Abu Ali, man accused of plotting with al Qaeda to kill President George W. Bush, pleaded not guilty and the judge set an Aug. 22 trial date
15/03/2005	An anti-terrorism court yesterday jailed two Pakistani doctors for seven years for helping injured Al-Qaeda militants and local extremists
15/03/2005	Two former detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Moazzam Begg and Martin Mubanga, have delivered a petition to the Home Office demanding the release of five UK residents still being held in the U.S prison camp.
15/03/2005	Taysir Alluni, a journalist with the Arab television station Al Jazeera charged with belonging to al Qaeda will be freed from jail on medical grounds but will remain under house arrest pending trial
16/03/2005	A US army lieutenant has been sentenced to 45 days in jail for his part in assaults against three Iraqi civilians forced into the River Tigris
17/03/2005	At least 108 people have died in US custody in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to figures compiled by the Associated Press news agency
17/03/2005	Three men have been arrested under the Terrorism Act in Manchester.
18/03/2005	Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) introduced a bill Thursday that would address the outsourcing of torture (or “extraordinary rendition”) problem in a straightforward way by prohibiting the transfer of individuals in United States custody or control to countries known to engage in torture.
18/03/2005	Mehdi Ghezali has announced through his lawyer that he intends to sue US Secretary of State for Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, for damages.
18/03/2005	A man suspected of al-Qaida links has been detained after arriving at Manila airport from Saudi Arabia and may have been handed over to U.S. officials
20/03/2005	A Spanish man has been arrested in Britain for alleged involvement with the group that carried out the Madrid train bombings.
20/03/2005	Some 200,000 people from across Britain marched through the streets of central London this Saturday 19 March to mark two years since the invasion of Iraq. Tens of thousands of anti-war protesters rallied in several cities all over the world
22/03/2005	U.S. law enforcement agents at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, prison for terrorism suspects concluded that the military’s aggressive questioning yielded information that was “suspect at best,” according to newly released portions of an FBI document.
22/03/2005	The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear the appeal of terror suspect Zacarias Moussaoui, the only defendant charged in the United States in the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.
22/03/2005	British detainee Babar Ahmad is transferred from HMP Woodhill to Belmarsh prison.
23/03/2005	A Federal Court judge has upheld the use of a security certificate against Mohamed Harkat, who has been held in jail in Ottawa for more than two years after being accused of being a terrorist
29/03/2005	A Moroccan court has granted bail to two former inmates of the US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and adjourned the start of their trial on terrorism-related charges to 4 July
30/03/2005	A federal judge on March 29, 2005 barred the U.S. government from immediately transferring 13 Yemeni detainees from Guantanamo Bay to another country, where they fear they will be tortured or imprisoned indefinitely
31/03/2005	A court in Afghanistan has cut by at least half the sentences of three US citizens jailed for torturing Afghans and running a private jail in Kabul.
31/03/2005	Zain and Kashan Afzal were released without being charged.
April
01/04/2005	A former Moroccan detainee of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay has pleaded for the release of others still held in indefinite confinement.
01/04/2005	Seven suspected Islamic radicals went on trial in France yesterday – four of them for allegedly providing logistical support to the killers of Ahmed Shah Massood, the Afghan anti-Taliban military commander.
01/04/2005	“Jihad” Jack Thomas has been committed to stand trial on three terrorist related charges at the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court.
01/04/2005	U.S. forces in Iraq are holding a senior operative of terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi who has joint American-Jordanian citizenship, defense officials said Thursday.
02/04/2005	The US has charged three British men who were arrested in August 2004 with terrorism offences over alleged surveillance of major financial centres in New York, Newark and Washington. They are Qaiser Shaffi, Dhiren Barot and Nadeem Tar Mohammed.
04/04/2005	The trial of American cleric, Dr. Ali Al Timimi, begins in Virginia.
06/04/2005	Former Guantanamo Bay detainee Mamdouh Habib has sacked the Sydney lawyer who spent at least three years working to help free him, but has refused to say why. He later admits it is due to long standing disagreements and tax issues.
06/04/2005	Controversial plans to introduce a compulsory ID card scheme across the UK will not become law ahead of the election, Charles Clarke has confirmed.
06/04/2005	The Home Office inform the longest serving remand prisoner in Belmarsh, Rachid Ramda, that they intend to extradite him to France. His solicitors are given only a month to appeal.
08/04/2005	Adama and Tashnuba, two 16-year-old girls have been arrested in the US after the FBI said they planned to become suicide bombers.
08/04/2005	Sihali, Khalef, Feddag and Taleb are acquitted of conspiracy to commit murder and conspiracy to cause a public nuisance in relation to the ricin plot. Bourgass is convicted of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance. Sihali and Khalef are convicted of possessing false passports.
08/04/2005	Sihali, Khalef, Feddag and Taleb are acquitted of conspiracy to commit murder and conspiracy to cause a public nuisance in relation to the ricin plot. Bourgass is convicted of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance. Sihali and Khalef are convicted of possessing false passports.
08/04/2005	Five men arrested in a series of anti-terror raids in the South East last week have been charged with terrorist offences
09/04/2005	The U.S. military has drafted new doctrine for prison operations that aims to fix problems that contributed to abuse in Iraq, but in reality will will formalize the U.S. military’s illegal policy of holding “enemy combatants” without protections under the Geneva Conventions.
09/04/2005	Three Pakistanis, Ilyas, Sayam and Hamedullah Sheikh, released from Guantanmo Bay arrived home.
09/04/2005	Two more members of the Khadr family are returning to Canada
09/04/2005	A 39-year-old French national arrested in Ipswich has been charged under terrorism legislation
10/04/2005	British national who trained as a pilot at the same American flight school as two of the September 11 hijackers has been arrested after an international terror alert issued by the FBI.
10/04/2005	Two American Muslims were sentenced Friday to 20 and 15 years in prison, respectively, for their roles in support of a Virginia-based conspiracy to engage in holy war against nations deemed hostile to Islam,
13/04/2005	A 34 year old police officer, charged with using excessive force during the arrest of Babar Ahmad on 2nd December 2003, has been acquitted at an internal Police Misconduct Tribunal held behind closed doors over three days at Woolwich Crown Court.
13/04/2005	Kamel Bourgass has been convicted for 17 years of a plot to spread ricin and other poisons on the streets of Britain but eight other men have been cleared.
13/04/2005	The Crown Prosecution Service decides not to go ahead with a second ricin conspiracy trial, involving defendants Samir Asli, Khalid Alwerfeli, Mouloud Bouhrama and Kamel Merzoug. All are cleared. The CPS also abandons plans for a retrial of Bourgass on the conspiracy to commit murder charge.
13/04/2005	Yemen released two British Muslims convicted five years ago on charges of terrorism and plotting sabotage in the Arab country
13/04/2005	The U.S. has released four Tajik citizen who were kept at the U.S. Guantanamo naval base.
14/04/2005	27 year old Kuwaiti Nasser Najar Al Mutairi, who was arrested by the US forces in Afghanistan and detained at the US camp in Guantanamo, Cuba, for over three years for allegedly fighting the US forces in Afghanistan, is released on a KD 200 bail.
14/04/2005	A Metropolitan Police officer accused of using excessive force while arresting a terror suspect has had the misconduct case against him dropped.
14/04/2005	Three brothers have been found guilty of aiding Hamas in a US court in Dallas, Texas.
15/04/2005	Murat Kurnaz, a Turk who grew up in Germany and is now held as a terror suspect at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has won a court order blocking the US government from sending him to a prison in another country without giving his lawyers a chance to challenge the move.
16/04/2005	The Home Office has been forced to apologise to 10 men placed under controversial anti-terrorist control orders after it linked them to the ricin plot in London
17/04/2005	Four asylum seekers have been granted the right to remain in Scotland despite accusations that they were al-Qaeda terrorists.
18/04/2005	Extradition hearing for Babar Ahmad resumes. The prosecution give assurances from the US government that Babar Ahmad will not face the death penalty, nor be designated an enemy combatant or face a military tribunal.
18/04/2005	Timur Ishmuradov and Ravil Gumarov, two former Guantanamo detainees, are arrested in Russia on suspicion of involvement in a gas pipeline explosion
18/04/2005	Extradition hearing for British citizen Babar Ahmad resumes. The Prosecution provides written assurances that he will not be subject to the death penalty or military tribunals
19/04/2005	17 Afghans released from Guantanamo and one Turk, Salih Uyar. They face no further detention in their home countries.
19/04/2005	Zacarias Moussaoui tries to enter a guilty plea. Judge Brinkema
19/04/2005	Ten people have been arrested in the UK following a series of raids under the Terrorism Act 2000
20/04/2005	A suspected al Qaeda agent who divulged a ricin plot to attack Britain goes on trial on terror-related charges in Algeria
20/04/2005	Corin Redgrave announces that Babar Ahmad, facing extradition to the US on terrorism charges, will stand as a candidate for the Peace & Progress Party in the Brent North constituency in the coming UK elections.
21/04/2005	Seventeen Afghan detainees released from the American prison camp at Guant?namo Bay, Cuba, were formally handed over to Afghan authorities
21/04/2005	The U.N. Human Rights Commission rejected Cuba’s attempt Thursday to force an investigation into the treatment of detainees at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay.
22/04/2005	A British judge Friday imposed a 13-year prison sentence on Saajid Badat for conspiring with shoe-bomber Richard Reid to blow up a U.S.-bound trans-Atlantic jet in 2001.
23/04/2005	Zacarias Moussaoui pleaded guilty Friday to conspiring with the hijackers in the Sept. 11 plot and declared Osama bin Laden personally instructed him to fly an airliner into the White House in a separate assault.
23/04/2005	Former commander of US troops in Iraq Lt Gen Ricardo Sanchez has been cleared over abuses at Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq.
26/04/2005	After about a week of deliberations, a federal jury in Alexandria Virgina returned a guilty verdict in the case Dr. Al-Timimi. The jury found Al-Timimi guilty on all counts. He faces up to life in prison and will be sentenced on 13th July
26/04/2005	Lawmakers from 46 European countries asked the Bush administration “to cease torturing and mistreating detainees” at its notorious Guantanamo detention.
26/04/2005	US authorities have released two Belgian citizens from the Guantanamo detention centre for terrorist suspects. They are charged pending investigation but released on bail.
28/04/2005	British businessman Hemant Lakhani was tonight found guilty of attempting to support terrorism in the United States.
28/04/2005	A Jordanian-born terror suspect made the subject of a controversial control order was back behind bars accused of breaching the regime.
28/04/2005	Two Belgian men who were flown home from detention at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay have been released.
28/04/2005	British businessman Hemant Lakhani was tonight found guilty of attempting to support terrorism in the United States.
29/04/2005	The U.S. military staged the interrogations of terrorism suspects for members of Congress and other officials visiting the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to make it appear the government was obtaining valuable intelligence, a former Army translator who worked there claims.
29/04/2005	A British student pilot, who prompted a terror alert in the US by allegedly trying to have his rating upgraded to fly commercial planes, has been released on bail.
30/04/2005	An American Muslim army sergeant has been sentenced to death by a military court for killing two fellow soldiers and wounding 14 others in the first days of the Iraq invasion.
May
01/05/2005	A high-level military investigation into accusations of detainee abuse at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, has concluded that several prisoners were mistreated or humiliated, perhaps illegally, as a result of efforts to devise innovative methods to gain information.
02/05/2005	Pakistan captures ‘key Al Qaeda leader’ Abu Faraj Al Libbi in Peshawar.
02/05/2005	The U.S. military released 85 Afghans from its jails in Afghanistan on Sunday after deciding they posed no threat and hearing them swear loyalty to the government
03/05/2005	The U.S. military installed a new commander in Afghanistan on Tuesday, a fresh Army general who pledged to be “relentless” in combating insurgents still dogging the country more than three years after the fall of the Taliban.
03/05/2005	Private Lynndie England had agreed to a plea deal that would reduce her maximum jail sentence to 11 years. She pleaded guilty to seven charges of abuse – six counts of maltreatment and one count of committing an indecent act – at the infamous Iraqi prison in November 2003.
04/05/2005	Former Belmarsh detainee Mahmoud Abu Rideh has been accused of breaching a control order imposed under the Terrorism Act and is remanded in custody at London’s Bow St Magistrates Court.
04/05/2005	A judge was forced to send control order detainee Mahmoud Abu Rideh back to jail in spite of fears that the man would take his own life.
04/05/2005	Pakistani government announces that a senior Libyan al-Qaeda suspect Abu Faraj al-Libbi has been arrested in Pakistan.
05/05/2005	A House Democrat called yesterday for hearings to determine whether the military staged interrogations at Guantanamo Bay to deceive visiting lawmakers, an allegation contained in a new book by a former Army translator who was stationed at the base in 2003
05/05/2005	A military judge has rejected the guilty plea entered by US soldier Lynndie England in her trial over the abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
08/05/2005	Adama Bah is released from US custody
09/05/2005	Canadian Maher Ahmed Zaydan is released from a Syrian jail, having been in custody since April 21
09/05/2005	Tashnuba is deported to Bangladesh
10/05/2005	Brandon Mayfield, the Portland lawyer arrested by FBI agents after his fingerprint was incorrectly matched to one found near the Madrid train bombings filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government, claiming he was singled out because of his Muslim faith.
10/05/2005	British terror suspect Sajid Badat has been charged with conspiracy and attempted murder in a U.S. indictment that links him to admitted “shoebomber” Richard Reid.
11/05/2005	At least four people have been killed and several injured after police opened fire to break up an anti-US protest in eastern Afghanistan, following reports that U.S. troops at the American prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have desecrated copies of the Quran.
11/05/2005	Congress barred the US government from using any money in a newly passed emergency spending bill to subject anyone in American custody to torture or “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment” that is forbidden by the Constitution
12/05/2005	The Army has decided to punish the top military intelligence officer stationed at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in 2003 with a letter of reprimand and a fine amounting to half of his pay for two months for his role in the notorious abuse of Iraqis
13/05/2005	General Richard Myers, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said military investigators have not yet found any evidence that American interrogators treated the Koran with disrespect. The US secretary of state has promised prompt action if allegations of desecration of the Koran at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp prove true.
13/05/2005	16 Guantanamo prisoners sue the U.S. government acting as their own attorneys from behind the razor wire at Camp Delta in Cuba.
15/05/2005	Muslims across the world protest against the US desecration of the Quran in Guantanamo. Muslims scholars and governments issue condemnations and in some cases, issue calls for jihad. At least 16 are killed and over a 100 injured in violent anti-US protests.
16/05/2005	Cageprisoners publishes a compendium of statements from former detainees of Guantanamo Bay regarding the United States Government’s systematic, institutionalised and intentful desecration of the Qur’an and other religious abuses and manipulations to degrade and humiliate the detainees.
17/05/2005	A US military court has found Army reservist Sabrina Harman guilty of abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison.
18/05/2005	Newsweek magazine on Monday retracted a report that U.S. interrogators at Guantanamo Bay had desecrated the Koran after the story triggered protests in Afghanistan that killed 16 people and the White House criticized it.
18/05/2005	Judge Tim Workman approves the US extradition request for British citizen Babar Ahmad and sends the request to the Home Secretary for a final decision, to be made within 60 days. Mr. Ahmad can appeal the decision and appeal to the High Court.
18/05/2005	Ex Guantanamo detainee Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost confirms the Quran was desecrated in Guantanamo.
18/05/2005	Fresh allegations about the abuse of Iraqis by British soldiers, including torture and sexual humiliation, were released amid calls for an independent inquiry and the description of a recent court martial as a “farce”.
18/05/2005	The International Committee of the Red Cross documented what it called credible information about U.S. personnel disrespecting or mishandling Korans at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and pointed it out to the Pentagon in confidential reports during 2002 and early 2003.
18/05/2005	Sweden has been found guilty of violating the international convention against torture for deporting a terror suspect to Egypt.
19/05/2005	Mohammed Bhatti, a terror suspect in HMP Belmarsh, today won the High Court’s permission to challenge top security measures aimed at making it impossible for him to escape from prison.
20/05/2005	Two doctors who examined a Virginia man, Ahmad Abu Ali, accused of joining al-Qaida and plotting to assassinate President Bush have concluded that he was tortured while in Saudi custody.
21/05/2005	A leaked report on a military investigation into two killings of detainees at a US prison in Afghanistan has produced new evidence of connivance of senior officers in systematic prisoner abuse.
23/05/2005	Mahmoud Abu Rideh, a foreign terror suspect who was placed under a control order after his release from three years’ detention has been admitted to hospital after taking a drug overdose
26/05/2005	It emerges that an FBI agent wrote in a 2002 document made public on Wednesday that a detainee held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had accused American jailers there of flushing the Koran down a toilet.
26/05/2005	Amnesty International condemned Guantanamo as the ‘gulag of our time’ in its annual report, saying that Britain and the US are betraying the cause of human rights in pursuit of their “war on terror”.
26/05/2005	A diverse group of private lawyers, led by the Center for Constitutional Rights, who collectively represent over 500 detainees currently incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay, endorsed today’s call by a distinguished bipartisan group, including several former government officials, that was joined by several high-ranking former members of the military for an independent commission to investigate torture.
27/05/2005	The Pentagon admitted last night that it had uncovered five instances of mishandling of the Qur’an at Guantánamo Bay, but it claimed that there was “no credible evidence” that a copy had ever been flushed down the toilet.
27/05/2005	The Pentagon claims that the Guantanamo detainee who told an FBI agent in 2002 that U.S. personnel there had flushed a Koran in a toilet retracted his allegation when questioned this month by military investigators.
27/05/2005	Documents released by the FBI state that Defense Department personnel impersonated State Department officials in interrogations at Guant?namo Bay.
27/05/2005	An international day of protest is held against the desecration of the Qur’an in Guantanamo. Thousands of Muslims demonstrate in Pakistan, Morocco, Lebanon, Malaysia, Toronto, and London.
28/05/2005	Lawyers acting for a Briton detained in Iraq for eight months on suspicion of terrorism are to take the government to court and demand he be returned to the UK.
28/05/2005	A US navy officer has been acquitted on charges that he beat an Iraqi prisoner who later died in US custody.
28/05/2005	A bill moved in Congress seeks to condemn defamation of the holy Quran. The resolution introduced by Democratic congressman John Conyers Jr is aimed at opposing “religious intolerance” and would have the House of Representatives condemn “bigotry and religious intolerance, and recognising that holy books of every religion should be treated with dignity and respect.”
29/05/2005	EUROPE’S leading human rights watchdog is to launch a scathing attack on Britain’s use of terrorist control orders and its treatment of asylum seekers.
29/05/2005	Up to 11 British soldiers and officers are under investigation for alleged war crimes over the death of an Iraqi civilian in British custody.
30/05/2005	The FBI arrested a Florida doctor and a New York martial arts expert on federal terrorism charges, saying they conspired to treat and train terrorists. They are held without bail.
30/05/2005	The Israeli government yesterday approved the release of about 400 Palestinian prisoners.
30/05/2005	U.S. troops detained the head of Iraq’s largest Sunni Muslim political party during a house raid early Monday in western Baghdad.
31/05/2005	A New York Times report reveals that the CIA are expanding their practice of renditions/torture-flights, under the guide of charter flights.
31/05/2005	Vice President Dick Cheney has emphatically defended the handling of detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, saying that they have been “well treated, treated humanely and decently” and that some accusations to the contrary are lies.
June
01/06/2005	Senior al-Qaida terrorist suspect Abu Farraj al-Libbi is sent from Pakistan to the United States for prosecution.
01/06/2005	President Bush tells reporters that Amnesty International’s report about conditions at the U.S. military’s prison at Guantanamo Bay – calling it the gulag of our times – is “absurd”.
01/06/2005	The US-led coalition is going to set free 53 suspected Taliban in Afghan capital Kabul Wednesday.
01/06/2005	Two British soldiers convicted over the abuse of Iraqi civilians have had their sentences reduced.
01/06/2005	A Bangkok court on Wednesday acquitted four Thai Muslims accused of belonging to the Southeast Asian terror group Jemaah Islamiyah and plotting to bomb embassies of the U.S. and its allies and tourist destinations in Thailand, citing a lack of evidence.
02/06/2005	The U.S. military released 53 Afghans from its jails in Afghanistan.
02/06/2005	Farid Hilali, a Moroccan accused by Spain of terrorist offences linked to the Sept. 11 attacks lost his fight against extradition from Britain after deciding that they posed no threat.
03/06/2005	A British judge ruled that Hedi Boudhiba, Belmarsh detainee, can be extradited to Spain.
04/06/2005	The Pentagon reveals that American jailers at the Guantanamo prison for foreign terrorism suspects splashed a Koran with urine, kicked and stepped on the Islamic holy book and soaked it with water, amongst other abuses.
04/06/2005	The French judiciary has launched an investigation into the rights of seven French prisoners who were detained at Guantanamo Bay
06/06/2005	A leading Senate Democrat Bedin calls for the United States needs to move toward shutting down the military prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
06/06/2005	A federal judge has ordered the Defense Department to turn over dozens of photographs and four movies depicting detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq as part of an ongoing lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union.
07/06/2005	A Palestinian former university professor, Dr. Sami Al Arian, has gone on trial in Florida on charges of raising money for Palestinian suicide bombers.
08/06/2005	Former President Jimmy Carter called on the United States on Tuesday to shut down its prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to demonstrate the country’s commitment to protecting human rights.
08/06/2005	The European body responsible for human rights severely criticises the British government’s rhetoric and action on human rights and its approach to the “war on terror” in the publication of a long-awaited report.
08/06/2005	Three American Muslims convicted last year for their roles in a conspiracy to aid the Taliban in its fight against U.S. troops will receive a new sentencing hearing.
08/06/2005	FBI agents have arrested a man and his father after the son allegedly admitted attending Al Qaeda training camps in Pakistan.
09/06/2005	The Department of Foreign Affairs will investigate whether an Australian citizen has spent time in an Egyptian jail since his disappearance more than six years ago.
10/06/2005	More than 3,000 people took part in a rally in Bahrain protesting against the desecration of the Quran by US soldiers in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
10/06/2005	British government releases the scathing report of the Council of Europe on the UK Anti Terrorism laws after withholding it for 11 months. The following day a second damning report is also issued.
10/06/2005	Germany’s federal appeals court has upheld the acquittal of Abdelghani Mzoudi, a Moroccan who was accused of links to the 11 September attacks.
10/06/2005	President George W. Bush left the door open to an eventual closing of the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay amid mounting complaints and calls for it to be shut down.
11/06/2005	Sen. Mel Martinez, who served in President Bush’s first Cabinet, became the first high-profile Republican to say that the Bush administration should consider closing the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, prison camp for suspected terrorists.
11/06/2005	The mufti of Jerusalem added his voice to allegations that copies of the Koran had been abused in an Israeli prison as hundreds of Palestinians staged protests in the Occupied Territories and Lebanon.
12/06/2005	The Muslim World League (MWL) has lodged protest with the UN against the alleged desecration of the Holy Quran by Guantanamo Bay jail authorities.
13/06/2005	A British citizen, Hilal Mohammad Abdul Razaq Ali Jedda, held without charge or trial for more than eight months by UK forces in Iraq won the right to challenge the legality of his detention at the high court in London
13/06/2005	Dick Cheney stays Guantanamo is to stay for years to come. His comments are echoed in the coming days by Donald Rumsfeld and Alberto Gonzales.
13/06/2005	Lawyers representing detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, say that there still may be as many as six prisoners who were captured before their 18th birthday and that the military has sought to conceal the precise number of juveniles at the prison camp.
13/06/2005	Time magazine obtains a secret interrogation log which documents interrogation techniques used against Mohammed Al Qahtani, detaine 036, believed to be the 20th Hijacker. Amongst other aggressive interrogation techniques was stripped, forced to bark like a dog, and subjected to the music of Christina Aguilera.
13/06/2005	The US Supreme Court rejects to hear the appeal of enemy combatant, Jose Padilla.
15/06/2005	A Senate Judiciary Committee, headed by Republican Senator Arlen Specter, hears the allegations of abuses committed in the Guantanamo Bay interrogation facility in Cuba.
16/06/2005	The British government’s first report on the 11 people suspected of terrorist links and largely confined to their homes under new control orders was released by Charles Clarke, the home secretary.
16/06/2005	Ltnt Commander Charles Swift told a Senate hearing that military tribunals in Guantanamo were a “tremendous failure” and that when military authorities first asked him to represent a detainee at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, he was instructed that he could negotiate only a guilty plea.
16/06/2005	A senior Republican, Sen. Arlen Specter, urged Congress to clarify prisoners’ rights at Guantanamo Bay, decrying a “crazy quilt” of legal decisions about the military’s handling of suspected terrorists.
16/06/2005	Sen. Dick Durbin makes controversial comments on the Senate floor comparing the actions of American soldiers at Guantanamo Bay to Nazis, Soviet gulags and a “mad regime” like Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot’s in Cambodia and refused to apologise for them.
17/06/2005	Four men have been arrested in north London under terrorism laws. Officers raided three addresses in Barnet and Finchley.
17/06/2005	A Halliburton Co. unit will build a new $30 million detention facility and security fence at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where the United States is holding about 520 foreign terrorism suspects.
17/06/2005	The Defense Department’s top health affairs official this week instructed all medical personnel who treat detainees in U.S. custody to report any suspected inhumane treatment and to protect their patients as they would U.S. soldiers, a new set of guidelines after allegations of medic participation in abuse.
17/06/2005	A federal grand jury has indicted a father and son in California on charges of lying during a government probe into their suspected ties to al Qaeda training camps in Pakistan.
20/06/2005	Bill Clinton has become the most prominent figure so far to add his voice to criticisms of the US prison camp at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, saying it should be “closed or cleaned up”.
20/06/2005	Two psychiatric assessments agree that Canadian detainee in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Omar Khadr, has serious mental disorders and is at high risk for suicide.
20/06/2005	Republican Senator John McCain said that the Bush administration must establish a system to try and perhaps free suspected terrorists from Guantanamo, arguing that “even Adolf Eichmann got a trial.”
21/06/2005	A man was arrested in Manchester, UK in connection with suicide bomb attacks on coalition forces in Iraq.
21/06/2005	US President George W Bush has defended the US treatment of detainees and said the mastermind of the September 11 attacks should stay in secret custody because he could provide valuable information to help protect Americans and Europeans.
21/06/2005	A Turkish court has sentenced a Muslim radical, Metin Kaplan, to life in prison for plotting to overthrow Turkey’s secular system.
24/06/2005	Military doctors at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, have aided interrogators in conducting and refining coercive interrogations of detainees, including providing advice on how to increase stress levels and exploit fears, according to new, detailed accounts given by former interrogators.
25/06/2005	Washington has, for the first time, acknowledged to the United Nations that prisoners have been tortured at US detention centres in Guantanamo Bay, as well as Afghanistan and Iraq, a UN source said.
25/06/2005	Italian authorities have issued arrest warrants for 13 people they claim are agents “linked to the CIA”.
27/06/2005	A Kenyan judge has acquitted three men accused of conspiracy in the case of the 2002 suicide bombing of an Israeli-owned hotel in Mombasa. Nairobi Chief Magistrate Aggrey Muchelule said prosecutors had failed to connect the men to the bombing.
27/06/2005	More than 40 political and religious parties in Pakistan as well as professional groups on Sunday demanded closure of all the notorious prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay at Cuba.
28/06/2005	Seventeen Pakistani prisoners held for months by the authorities after being freed from the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba were released Monday from a jail in Lahore, capital of Punjab province. They allege that the Quran was desecrated.
28/06/2005	A Russian citizen released last year from Guantanamo Bay prison said US guards at the camp regularly threw copies of the Quran into toilets.
28/06/2005	Both Republican and Democratic senators visit the US prison at Guantanamo Bay. They laud praise on the ‘humane’ detainee operations. Two Democratic senators call on Congress set up concrete rules for handling detainees. Others still call for the camp to be closed.
28/06/2005	The U.S. military plans to expand its prisons across Iraq to hold as many as 16,000 detainees
29/06/2005	Pakistan has freed 45 nationals who have been detained for nine months in their home country after their repatriation from jails in Afghanistan.
29/06/2005	The UN has learned of “very, very serious” allegations that the United States is secretly detaining terrorism suspects in various locations around the world, notably aboard prison ships.
29/06/2005	Pakistan has freed 45 nationals who have been detained for nine months in their home country after their repatriation from jails in Afghanistan.
29/06/2005	A Kuwait court cleared Nasser Al Mutairi, Kuwaiti national once held at the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay on charges including committing an act of an aggression against a foreign nation.
July
01/07/2005	Silvio Berlusconi’s conservative government said it was summoning the American ambassador in Rome to explain the disappearance of a radical Muslim cleric, who was snatched from a Milan street two years ago.
02/07/2005	Former Qantas baggage handler Bilal Khazal will face a NSW committal hearing on a fresh terrorist charge.
03/07/2005	U.S. authorities released a Jordanian, Khaled El Asmar, recently among 10 Arab prisoners held at the U.S. base of Guantanamo in Cuba.
03/07/2005	Another 57 Afghans detained as Taliban suspects were freed from U.S. military custody under an Afghan government reconciliation programme.
03/07/2005	It emerges that British and American aid intended for Iraq’s hard-pressed police service is being diverted to paramilitary commando units accused of widespread human rights abuses, including torture and extra-judicial killings.
05/07/2005	Lawmakers from 55 countries have called for the closure of the Guantanamo prison.
06/07/2005	Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri has appeared in court at the start of his trial on terrorism charges.
06/07/2005	A Belgian lawmaker’s report calls for the United States to shut down its detention camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and send detainees to their home countries.
06/07/2005	Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri has appeared in court at the start of his trial on terrorism charges.
06/07/2005	A Belgian lawmaker’s report calls for the Unit.ed States to shut down its detention camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and send detainees to their home countries.
Copyright © 2012 freedetainees.org - All Rights Reserved Powered by WordPress & Atahualpa

freedetainees.org

Timeline – Detainee Issues