23 July - AfPak Notes

A New York lawyer who helped a terrorism suspect smuggle messages to his followers from prison was sentenced to 10 years in prison on Thursday Jul 15 

A U.S. judge on Tuesday cleared the way for a trial against a former Guantanamo Bay prisoner by rejecting arguments that his five years of detention by American authorities before entering civilian courts had violated his right to a speedy trial 
Jul 13
Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian, is charged with conspiring in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya that killed 224 people.
Prosecutors say he worked as a bodyguard for Osama bin Laden

( Isn't the fellow he worked for the chap they couldn't show had done anything when they applied to the government in Afghanistan for extradition of a Saudi prince who had worked with the CIA ? )

The U.S. military handed over its last prison in Iraq on Thursday, ending an ignominious chapter of the 2003 U.S. invasion that saw thousands detained without charge and triggered outrage after disclosures of abuse.Jul 15
 
Nearly 90,000 people have been rounded up by U.S. forces in the last seven years as suspected Sunni Islamist insurgents or members of Shi'ite militia.
Never charged, they were held for months or years in prisons like Cropper, or Camp Bucca, a sprawling compound in the southern desert near Kuwait that was closed down last year.
Disclosures in 2004 that U.S. jailers had abused and sexually humiliated Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison on Baghdad's outskirts outraged many Iraqis and may have contributed to a growing insurgency at the time.
Several journalists, including a Reuters photographer and cameraman, have spent months in U.S. military detention without ever being told what they were suspected of.
The U.S. military lost the right to detain Iraqis under a bilateral security agreement signed in 2008 that paves the way for a full U.S. withdrawal by the end of 2011.
The U.S. military will not be out of the prison business entirely in Iraq.

At the request of the Iraqi authorities*, U.S. wardens will continue to guard around 200 of Cropper's 1,500 detainees, including al Qaeda militants and henchmen of ousted dictator Saddam Hussein. ( * Particulars of that would be nice )
Reuters
The U.S. military said it would retain custody of eight former Saddam associates at the request of the Iraqi government.
Arif said these included former Defense Minister Sultan Hashim, Saddam's half brothers Sabawi Ibrahim al-Hasan and Watban Ibrahim al-Hasan, former Army Chief of Staff Hussein Rashid and a former top Baath party official, Abdul Ghani Abdul Ghafour. All have been sentenced to death.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has approved a controversial U.S. plan for a new local defense force to help tackle the growing Taliban insurgency.
The formation of a Local Police Force is a sensitive issue for Afghans who remember the notorious militias mobilized by the Soviets during their decade-long occupation in the 1980s, and the role they played in the bloody civil war that followed.
Afghan officials say Karzai had long resisted pressure by Washington to create similar units in areas where the insurgency was strongest, but had finally agreed to the idea on Wednesday.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai plans to ask the United Nations to remove as many as 50 former Taliban members from a U.N. blacklist
The request to remove about a quarter of the 137 names on the list is aimed at advancing reconciliation talks with insurgents.At least five of those named on the sanction list are former Taliban officials who now serve in parliament or privately mediate between the Afghan government and the insurgents battling NATO-led forces and their Afghan partners.

( Judging from the particulars of the way things were handled in Iraq, one might guess Karzai has quite a bit of domestic fence-mending to do, courtesy of his 'house guests' activities )

The decayed hull of a centuries old ship was unearthed at the World Trade Center construction site in New York city, providing a glimpse into the history of Manhattan 
Jul 15