Author name: Branden Loizides

By Jonathan Abrams, NSJ Staff Editor – Five American Muslims who were detained in Pakistan on suspicion of terrorism have alleged torture by American and Pakistani authorities.  The men, all from the Washington, DC area, were detained in December shortly after arriving in Pakistan.  The Pakistani government has accused them of plotting terrorist attacks in Pakistan and seeking to join Islamist militants fighting U.S. troops in neighboring Afghanistan. On February 2nd one of the men tossed a tissue to reporters while being led into court.  The tissue read, “Since our arrest, the U.S., F.B.I., and Pakistani police have tortured us.  […]

In September and October of 2001, an anonymous source dropped a white powder containing deadly anthrax into the mail.  The attack killed five people; threatened the safety of Congress, the media, and the public at large; and rekindled the fears still raw from the September 11th attacks.  The FBI ultimately focused on Bruce Ivins as a suspect, a biologist at the Army’s Fort Detrick biodefense lab, who had the access and knowledge necessary to carry out the plot.  Over the past nine years, the FBI has conducted a far-reaching and costly investigation, looking into Ivins’s colleagues and tracing every scientist

By John Cella — The intrusion by unidentified Chinese hackers into Google’s networks in January is likely not an isolated incident, but part of the growing trend of state-sponsored acts of cyberwarfare.  While Google is a private corporation, attacks against it and other American corporations have significant national security implications.  Beyond the private harms inflicted by corporate espionage, such cyber-attacks have the possibility of stealing government secrets or corrupting government information.  Indeed, the National Security Agency (NSA) recognized this danger when it partnered with Google shortly after the attacks to help the internet behemoth improve its cybersecurity. Despite the best

By John Thorlin, NSJ Staff Editor – Assassinating foreign leaders outside of an ongoing armed conflict is of questionable legality, even if doing so would prevent a broader war.  Humanitarian interventions such as the NATO bombings in Kosovo–acts deliberately aimed at saving lives–are prohibited by the laws of war, which do not differentiate between the motivations for acts of armed aggression across borders.   Why do the laws of war–including international humanitarian law (IHL) and international criminal law–in these and many other real and hypothetical cases forbid actions that could result in a net saving of lives?  Gabriella Blum, an

As part of the continuing war in Afghanistan, the United States has made extensive use of unmanned Predator drones to carry out reconnaissance as well as armed strikes.  On Monday The New York Times reported that a U.S. drone killed three militants in North Waziristan, and on Friday CNN reported that a Haqqani network commander was killed in a drone strike.  The use of unmanned aircraft is likely to continue expanding: The Washington Post reports that the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command continues to search for a dedicated unmanned intelligence-gathering airship.  Although drones can ensure mission capability while

By Jonathan Abrams, NSJ Staff Editor – On March 23rd, the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments concerning the power of a federal judge to compel the Executive to admit detainees into the United States.  But a two sentence order issued by the Court on Friday signaled that new developments may result in the Court never reaching the merits. The case, Kieymba v. Obama, involves a group of Uighurs, Chinese Muslims who were captured by bounty hunters in the early days of the Afghanistan war.  The Bush administration declared the group enemy combatants and they were sent to Guantanamo.