Prisoners Rights

Further tightening rules meant to prevent the abuse of detainees, the Pentagon has issued a new policy directive requiring that interrogations of prisoners be monitored, even if questioning is being carried out by another government agency. Under previous rules, non-Pentagon interrogators were required to follow strict rules in the Army Field Manual when questioning prisoners at military facilities. But the new directive adds a requirement that those sessions be observed by military officials.

A quarter-century after the slaying of Marsalee Nicholas, a college student from Malibu, voters will consider an initiative launched in her name that would give a stronger voice to crime victims and their families, and impose harsher treatment on convicted killers. Proposition 9 would alter the state Constitution to require that crime victims be notified and consulted on developments in their cases.

A federal judge questioned the motives of Justice Department lawyers for withdrawing allegations linking a detainee in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to a "dirty bomb" plot in the U.S. shortly before they were required to give the defense exculpatory evidence. "That raises serious questions in this court's mind about whether those allegations were ever true," said U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan, who is overseeing a lawsuit brought by Binyam Mohammed, 30, a resident of Britain. The government said it stood by the allegations but withdrew them to expedite proceedings.

As the clock runs down on the Bush administration, moderates within the government are mounting what may be one last drive to roll back many of the harsh detention and interrogation policies pushed through by Vice President Dick Cheney. The effort, led by officials at the State Department, represents the latest battle in a war between hard-liners and moderates that has raged though most of the Bush administration. In the early years of George W.

For the first time, defense lawyers have been allowed to see a section of the Guantanamo prison that is so restricted, even its location on the U.S. base is secret. Two military lawyers for Ramzi Binalshibh, an alleged plotter of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, were granted 90 minutes to view Camp 7, a section for "high value" detainees that has been shrouded in mystery since it opened two years ago. The attorneys are trying to determine if their client is competent to stand trial and to gauge the effects of the prison-within-a-prison on a man who, according to documents, believes that his bed shakes and that noxious odors are pumped into his cell.

President-elect Barack Obama's vow to close the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, cheered human rights organizations and civil libertarians, but could force the new administration to consider a step those groups would abhor. Some Obama advisors predict that his administration may have to decide whether to ask Congress to pass legislation allowing a number of detainees to be held indefinitely without trial.

Foes and supporters of the Guantanamo prisons and tribunal have stepped up the debate over the fate of the controversial operations by enlisting relatives of Sept. 11 victims in an ideological duel. Thirty-one family members of victims announced in a letter distributed Wednesday by the American Civil Liberties Union that they considered the Bush administration's prosecution of terrorism suspects here unconstitutional and politically motivated.

In the Bush administration's first bow to a court directive to release prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the Department of Defense flew three Algerians to their adopted homeland of Bosnia-Herzegovina on Tuesday. The Pentagon acknowledged in a tersely worded announcement that the release was in reaction to a federal judge's order last month to free five Algerians seized in Bosnia in 2001. The men were suspected of participating in a plot to bomb the U.S.

Beside a field of rolling tumbleweed in this remote Central Valley town, the state opened its newest prison in 2005 with a modern design, cutting-edge security features and a serious environmental problem. The drinking water pumped from two wells at Kern Valley State Prison contained arsenic, a known cause of cancer, in amounts far higher than a federal safety standard soon to take effect.

FBI agents documented more than two dozen incidents of possible mistreatment at the Guantanamo Bay military base in Cuba, including one detainee whose head was wrapped in duct tape for chanting the Koran. Documents released by the FBI offered new details about the harsh interrogation practices used by military officials and contractors when questioning so-called enemy combatants. The reports describe a female guard who detainees said handled their genitals.