Legal issues related to the September 11 attacks

These include: Soon after the attacks of September 11, 2001, the United States government began detaining people who fit the profile of the suspected hijackers: mostly male, Arabic or Muslim noncitizens.

[2][3] After the Justice Department advised that the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp could be considered outside U.S. legal jurisdiction, prisoners captured in Afghanistan were moved there beginning in early 2002.

[4] Following this, on July 7, 2006, the Department of Defense issued an internal memo stating that prisoners would in the future be entitled to protection under Common Article 3.

On January 22, 2009, the White House announced that President Barack Obama had signed an order to suspend the proceedings of the Guantanamo military commission for 120 days and that the detention facility would be shut down within the year.

[12] Broadly speaking, the United States has two parallel justice systems, with laws, statutes, precedents, rules of evidence, and paths for appeal.

Furthermore, the Security Council may only authorise the use of force against an "aggressor"[21] in the interests of preserving peace, whereas the 2003 invasion of Iraq was not provoked by any aggressive military action.

The Government of the United States believes that the invasion was explicitly authorized by Security Council Resolution 678 and thus complies with international law.

In 2004 articles describing the abuse, including pictures showing military personnel abusing prisoners, came to public attention, when a 60 Minutes II news report (April 28) and an article by Seymour M. Hersh in The New Yorker magazine (posted online on April 30 and published days later in the May 10 issue) reported the story.

[30] Janis Karpinski, the commander of Abu Ghraib, demoted for her lack of oversight regarding the abuse, estimated later that 90% of detainees in the prison were innocent.