The Taliban has other ideas, however. New reports to the Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) reveal that the Taliban central leadership council has confirmed plans for limited US talks. The council added that it would have nothing to do with the “illegal and powerless” Karzai government.

This is in keeping with long-standing Taliban policy. Its leadership has argued that Karzai’s government exists only at the pleasure of 100,000+ NATO occupation forces with no real power or support of its own.

Even the US talks, according to the AIP report, will be limited  to prisoner exchanges for the time being. The US has reiterated the possibility of releasing detainees from Guantanamo Bay, saying this might provide an incentive for broadening the peace talks. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper says no decision has been made on the releases.

“It is ten years since the US Government opened the prison at Guantánamo, and now three years since 22 January 2009, when the President ordered its closure within twelve months,” the statement noted. “Yet the facility continues to exist and individuals remain arbitrarily detained – indefinitely – in clear breach of international law.”

The massive facility has seen eight detainees die in custody, including six termed “suicides” by the US government, and only six “trials” have ever been completed. President Obama has expressed the belief that many of the detainees will be held without trial for the rest of their lives.

Despite making no effort to close the facility, President Obama’s advisers insist he remains “committed” to closing Guantánamo. The new commander at the facility has also imposed strict new rules, sparking increasing unrest among the inmates, who after a decade are growing less and less confident they will ever see anything resembling a courtroom.

One might have expected at this point that we would be reflecting on a past blunder in the examination of this ten year anniversary, particularly as President Obama not only conceded that the facility is doing massive harm to America’s international image but promised, virtually the moment he took office, to close it within one year.

But even though later this month we will commemorate the third anniversary of the “close it within one year” executive order, the facility remains open and the story is as much a look forward at the next decade of extralegal detention as it is a look back at the last.

Unrest is growing as the inmates are increasingly figuring out that detention will be, for many of them, a life sentence without the possibility of ever seeing the inside of a courtroom. As they bristle at their open-ended detention, the military is moving to crack down on them even further, seizing spare blankets and clothing from prisoners as punitive measures.

Administration officials continue to give lip-service to the notion that President Obama “wants” to close the facility, but even they no longer pretend it will ever actually happen, instead trying to placate the public with dubious promises that the detainee population at the facility at the very least won’t get any larger.

The proposed rules, still in draft form, would allow a “privilege team” from the Defense Department to conduct security reviews of all communications to the prisoners and would restrict their correspondence to letters only, banning any supporting documents such as legal motions or articles about their case.

The commander of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility began imposing these new rules without issuing an order or informing the defense lawyers back in October, when he had military officials read their correspondence with the five defendants charged with involvement in the September 11th attacks.

At the time, the defense lawyers objected. “The review and censorship of legal materials will effectively grind litigation to a halt by barring legally required attorney-client communications,” the lawyers wrote in the letter to the Pentagon urging them to overturn what they said were new policies that violate attorney-client privileges.

The commander who ordered the change faced no consequences for this violation. But now the defense lawyers face an official ruling, contained in a 27-page draft memo, which would make this standard practice in their cases.

The prospect of civilian trials has already been ruled out for these accused detainees, imprisoned now for almost a decade. They have been subjected to severe torture during that time and now face impending military tribunals, where the standards of admissible evidence are much less stringent. If these proposed rules are established, their rights will be even further diminished.

The two foreign policy provisions he intends to ignore are one limiting his ability to transfer detainees out of Guantanamo Bay, and one which would limit his ability to place US troops under foreign command, both of which he said would be ignored to “avoid constitutional conflicts.”

President Obama also rejected all provisions which require him to clear spending with appropriators, saying that he will not seek congressional approval for his spending decisions.

Click here to read more from Politico

Abdul Rahim Abdul Razak al Janko, a Syrian national, was captured in 2002 and was released in 2009 after finally being granted the right to challenge his detention. The U.S. government’s contention in that case was that Janko had been a member of al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

Judge Richard Leon threw out his most recent lawsuit seeking recompense, on the grounds that the U.S. Military Commissions Act passed by Congress stripped the federal courts of jurisdiction over any allegations by foreigners of detention, treatment, or conditions of confinement.

Janko claims he was exposed to various forms of physical and psychological torture, including being urinated on, being deprived of sleep for long periods, harsh interrogations and severe beatings. H tried to commit suicide 17 times and ended up suing several members of the Bush and Obama administrations last year for overseeing his detention and treatment.

Incidentally, Judge Leon is the one that granted Janko his release in 2009, but he faced considerable pressure throughout this most recent case. The Obama administration urged the lawsuit be dismissed on various procedural grounds, including that the court lacked jurisdiction and that the U.S. government is immune from such claims.

Click here to read more from the New York Times

“The review and censorship of legal materials will effectively grind litigation to a halt by barring legally required attorney-client communications,” the lawyers wrote in the letter to the Pentagon urging them to overturn what they said were new policies that violate attorney-client privileges.

The lawyers are representing six defendants, so-called “high-value detainees,” including prisoners facing war crimes trials for the September 11 attacks, but found out only recently that mail to and from lawyers and detainees was being read by officials at the military base in Cuba.

Military personnel at Guantanamo Bay have typically opened mail in the presence of detainees to confirm there was no contraband in the envelopes, and then handed it to them without reading the contents. Last month, the new commander at the prison, Rear Adm. David B. Woods, changed the policy and insisted on reading the mail.

The lawyers threatened to litigate the issue to “the fullest extent.”

“Send them to Guantanamo where they belong,” insisted McConnell, adding that the two suspects don’t deserve civilian trials and should be sent to the notorious island prison for “the justice they deserve.”

The two Iraqis were in the country legally, but are charged with “conspiring to send weapons and money to al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI).” The attorney for one of them insisted that sending the two to Guantanamo simply wasn’t an option since they enjoy the same rights as everyone in the nation legally.

The Justice Department insisted that the two underwent “extensive interrogation” after their detention and insisted the federal courts were perfectly capable of handling the cases in the normal manner. No trial dates were set for either man.

Of course we all know the Omar Khadr case, the Canadian citizen and child soldier who was put up before a military tribunal at the detention center. But the story doesn’t begin and end with Khadr, and the leaked files released by WikiLeaks show that the facility has hosted over 60 detainees who were under the age of 18 when captured.

The stories range from the common to the absurd, with one former detainee, Saudi-born Yousef Gharani, accused of being involved in a London al-Qaeda cell before his capture in Pakistan. Gharani was presented initially in the file as 20 in 2001, but his birth certificate later showed him to be only 14. This meant that he was supposedly a top member of a London terror cell at the tender (or ridiculous) age of 11. He spent seven years at Guantanamo Bay before being released and sent to Chad, a nation in which he had never lived.

The argument over child soldiers sometimes took odd turns. Mohammed Omar was sent to Guantanamo in June 2002, at age 16. Doctors argued he was an adult on the grounds that his “long bone growth plates are fully mature” and that there he “is an adult, anatomically.” Omar was captured after the “sports camp” he thought he was joining turned out to be a terror camp, and he tried to flee the camp and return home to Pakistan. He was released in 2004.