Katherine Tiedemann

The Al Qaeda videotape shows a small white dog tied up inside a glass cage. A milky gas slowly filters in. An Arab man with an Egyptian accent says: "Start counting the time." Nervous, the dog starts barking and then moaning. After flailing about for some minutes, it succumbs to the poisonous gas and stops moving.

Abdullah Ghulam Rasoul and Said Ali al-Shihri may be the two best arguments for why releasing detainees from Guantánamo Bay poses a real risk to America. Mr. Rasoul, who was transferred to Afghanistan in 2007 and then released by the Kabul government, is now the commander of operations for the Taliban in southern Afghanistan. Mr. Shihri, sent back to his native Saudi Arabia in 2007, is now a leader of Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen.

The graphic to the right was published in The Washington Post's Outlook section on Sunday, Feb. 15, 2009. Please click on the image to view a full-sized PDF version. The image is also available from www.washingtonpost.com.

This week, as we remember the nearly 3,000 American citizens who died in the rubble of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon or in a remote field in Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, 2001, we also should think about the civilians who are still dying in Afghanistan. Consider, for instance, the recent American airstrikes on Azizabad, a village in western Afghanistan, on Aug. 22. The United Nations, Afghan government officials and independent witnesses all say that the United States killed about 90 civilians in these strikes, most… more

In 2003, Abu Omar was kidnapped by CIA agents in Italy on suspicion of being involved with al Qaeda. He was transported to Egypt, where he was tortured by Egyptian intelligence services. Abu Omar was later released, only to be recaptured after speaking about his experience in Egypt. In the latest issue of Mother Jones magazine, New America Fellow Peter Bergen uses Abu Omar's story to explore the CIA's extraordinary rendition program. Bergen also chronicles the rise… more

An extraordinary rendition may be defined as the extrajudicial transfer of an individual to a country where there is reasonable probability he will be tortured. In our research we have counted 67 known cases of extraordinary rendition by the United States since 1995. While the details are often incomplete, they help paint a more complete picture of this secretive and controversial Central Intelligence Agency program.

Our research is based on reports from Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the American Civil… more

Policy Analyst, Counterterrorism Strategy Initiative

The road between the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad and the Pakistani border is one of the busiest in the country, congested with gaily painted trucks, battered taxis, buses packed to the rafters and Afghans riding bikes. One morning in early March, a suicide bomber plowed a Toyota packed with explosives into the middle of a U.S. convoy patrolling that road, killing himself and injuring a Marine. That was bad enough, but what may be the key to Afghanistan's future… more