Despite US policy banning federal officials from doing business with kidnappers, particularly terrorists, a government source told the Associated Press the FBI has for years negotiated and paid ransoms to kidnappers both domestically and internationally. The government source said the FBI used a secret exemption begun under the Bush Administration which allowed the bureau to use money to engage [...]

Journalist Glenn Greenwald said Dick Cheney is able to brag about the success of torture on weekend news shows because the Obama administration has decided to shield torturers rather than prosecute them. In a wide ranging interview about the CIA torture report, prospects for the 2016 presidential race, US-Cuba relations and the Sony hack, Greenwald told HuffPost Live that the discussion about t [...]

A UN report has condemned the United States for violating the terms of an international anti-torture treaty. The panel took Washington to task for police brutality, military interrogations, and capital punishment protocols. Released by the UN Committee Against Torture, the report took issue with the excessive use of force by law enforcement and accused the US police force of racial profiling. T [...]

Video footage of American officials force feeding inmates at the Guantanamo Bay prison complex in Cuba cannot be kept secret and must be released to the public, a federal judge ruled on Friday. Specifically, US District Court Judge Gladys Kessler said the US government must release 28 videos that show hunger-striking inmate Abu Wa’el Dhiab – a Syrian man who has been in custody since 2002 � [...]

Camp XRAYFew realize how expensive it is to keep Guantanamo Bay prison operational. The Joint Task Force (JTF) detention center, which opened in 2002, costs US taxpayers $140 million a year, breaking down to about $800,000 per detainee. The JTF was never meant to be permanent, yet twelve long years after the first round of prisoners arrived, 149 prisoners remain detained there indefinitely. [...]

Last week, a US military lawyer on the defense team for self-proclaimed 9/11-attacks mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed resigned from the Army in protest of the "show trial" conducted by the US at Guantanamo Bay. Maj. Jason Wright resigned on Aug. 26, according to NPR. He accused the US government of “abhorrent leadership” on human rights and due process at the military detention center at G [...]

Records published under Britain's Freedom of Information (FOI) Act have compounded concerns that the UK government lobbied US officials to keep Britain's role in CIA torture and rendition out of a soon-to-be published Senate report. Newly-released data reveals Britain’s ambassador to the US, Peter Westmacott, engaged in at least 21 separate meetings with members of the US Senate’s Select Co [...]

A Navy nurse is making waves for refusing to force-feed inmates participating in hunger strikes at the prison complex in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The unidentified nurse – described by one inmate as a 40-year-old Latino – is believed to be the first conscientious objector to Guantanamo’s controversial tube feeding policy. [...]

The US House of Representatives approved an annual defense spending bill early Thursday after rejecting a proposed amendment that would have prevented the United States government from indefinitely detaining American citizens. [...]

A Senate report found that CIA officials lied to the government and public about its post-9/11 torture program, most notably by distorting intelligence gleaned from traditional interrogations as that attained by far more brutal methods. [...]

A UN report hammers the United States'€™ human rights record, denouncing vast surveillance, ongoing unaccountability for torture, deadly drone strikes, one of the world's highest death penalty counts, and mass incarceration, among other black marks. [...]

California Governor Jerry Brown has signed a law barring state cooperation with any attempt by the federal government to indefinitely detain people. The legislation targets the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Brown signed into law AB351, which goes beyond any other state in rejecting federal indefinite detention power, according to the Tenth Amendment Center. [...]

A US military request for funding to renovate the prison base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba was denied by Pentagon officials in the Obama administration who, while pledging to close the prison, have been consistently prevented from doing so by Congress. General John F. Kelly, the chief of US Southern Command and the officer in charge of Guantanamo Bay, requested $195.7 million to update and modify the p [...]