Andy Worthington's Blog, page 102

We Stand With Shaker: Send a Valentine’s Card for Shaker Aamer to the US Ambassador in London, to Ask for His Release from Guantánamo

Please print the Valentine’s Card for Shaker Aamer, and send it to the US Ambassador at 24 Grosvenor Square, London W1K 6AH, UK.

I wrote the following article for the “Close Guantánamo” website, which I established in January 2012 with US attorney Tom Wilner. Please join us — just an email address is required to be counted amongst those opposed to the ongoing existence of Guantánamo, and to receive updates of our activities by email.

February 14, Valentine’s Day, is the 13th anniversary of the arrival at Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison — and also the birthday of his youngest son, Faris, who he has never seen. Although Shaker was first told eight years ago, under George W. Bush, that the US no longer wanted to hold him, and was again told that the US no longer wanted to hold him five years ago — by President Obama’s high-level, inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force — he is still held.

Since launching the We Stand With Shaker campaign two and half months ago, Joanne MacInnes and I (the co-directors of the campaign) have secured significant support from within the British establishment for Shaker’s release — from the Daily Mail, from the Daily Telegraph‘s chief political commentator Peter Oborne, and from Conservative MPs including Alistair Burt and Andrew Mitchell, as well as from other Conservative MPs and other politicians from across the political spectrum — Labour, Lib Dem, Green and independents.

These supporters have stood with the giant inflatable figure of Shaker Aamer that is at the heart of the campaign — as have celebrities including actors, musicians, writers and comedians. All these supporters — over 50 to date — can be seen standing with Shaker on our website here, and they can also be found on our Facebook and Twitter accounts, where other supporters are also featured, holding signs showing their support for Shaker.

To mark the occasion of the 13th anniversary of Shaker’s arrival at Guantánamo, and Faris’s 13th birthday — as well as keeping pressure on those holding Shaker — we will be delivering a giant Valentine’s card, signed by our celebrities, to the US Ambassador, Matthew W. Barzun, which states, “We the undersigned urge you to ask President Obama to secure the immediate release from Guantánamo of British resident Shaker Aamer. Please tell the president we want Shaker returned to his loved ones in London NOW.”

Via our designer Kalina Norton/ Studio Kalinka , we have made a version of the Valentine’s card that you can print and sign and send to Ambassador Barzun , from anywhere in the world, and we hope you do so in significant numbers. Please do take part, and encourage others to do so.

We intend to deliver the giant Valentine’s card to the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square on Friday February 13, and on Valentine’s Day itself (Saturday February 14), we will be in Parliament Square at 12 noon, and we will then march to 10 Downing Street with the Save Shaker Aamer Campaign to deliver a message of solidarity with Shaker to David Cameron, and to urge him to call for Shaker’s immediate return to the UK and his family more vigorously than he has to date.

It is, to be blunt, sickening that Shaker is still held, even though David Cameron recently met President Obama in the US, and both men spoke about his case. The time for words that do nothing is over. David Cameron must tell President Obama that he needs Shaker to be returned to the UK, and President Obama must notify Congress of his intention to do so, providing 30 days’ notice as required by US law. Once that is done, there is no practical reason why Shaker cannot be home in a month’s time.

That address again:

Matthew W. Barzun

Ambassador of the United States of America to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

US Embassy

24 Grosvenor Square

London W1K 6AH

UK

You can also phone and leave a message: 020 7499 9000 in the UK, or 01144 20 7499 9000 from the US.

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer, film-maker and singer-songwriter. He is the co-founder of the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, the director of “We Stand With Shaker,” calling for the immediate release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here — or here for the US).

To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Also see the six-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, and “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” an ongoing, 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011. Also see the definitive Guantánamo habeas list, the full military commissions list, and the chronological list of all Andy’s articles.

Please also consider joining the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, and, if you appreciate Andy’s work, feel free to make a donation.

Andy Worthington Speaks at Two London Events on the CIA Torture Report and the Banned Books of Guantánamo, February 2015

I’m delighted to report that I’ve been asked to take part in two panel discussions over the next two weeks, and I hope that, if you’re in London, you’ll be able to come along.

The first is at the University of Westminster on Wednesday February 11, when I’ll be discussing the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the CIA torture programme with Philippe Sands QC, a law professor at UCL and a barrister at Matrix Chambers (and the author of Torture Team), and Carla Ferstman, the director of REDRESS, a human rights organisation that “helps torture survivors obtain justice and reparation,” and “works with survivors to help restore their dignity and to make torturers accountable.” The discussion will be chaired by Dr. Emma McClean, Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Westminster.

This is how the event is described on the university website:

In December 2014, the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released a report on the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) ‘Detention and Interrogation Program’. The complete report runs to 6000 pages and, despite calls for its release, remains classified. The 525 page declassified summary along with the executive summary of the 6,000 page report provides, amongst other [topics], a detailed account of the techniques used by the CIA in the ‘war on terror’, exposes the ineffectiveness of such techniques as a means of gathering reliable intelligence information, and raises, in the words of Dianne Feinstein, Chair of the Senate Committee, ‘critical questions about intelligence operations and oversight’.

Unsurprisingly the report prompted calls for those responsible for the programme to be held to account, while the redacted segments of the report refocused our attention on the role of the UK and other European states. This discussion will examine the implications of the Feinstein Report for the UK in terms of accountability, prevention and transparency.

The executive summary contained genuinely shocking information, and, in addition to the body of evidence about the Bush administration’s torture program that has been built up over many years, ought to lead to prosecutions, as I discussed in my response to its publication in December, “Punishment, not apology after CIA torture report.” However, there still appears to be no appetite for accountability on the part of the Obama administration, and I hope our evening will provide some indication of how this impasse — in itself illegal — can be overcome.

The second event takes place at the Mosaic Rooms, on Cromwell Road in Earl’s Court, on Thursday February 19, when I’ll be discussing ‘The Banned Books of Guantánamo‘ with Cori Crider, the Strategic Director of the legal action charity Reprieve, Ian Cobain of the Guardian, whose book Cruel Britannia: A Secret History of Torture is banned at Guantánamo, as is my book The Guantánamo Files, and Jo Glanville, the director of English PEN, who previous worked for the BBC and at Index on Censorship (where she published a feature on The Guantánamo Files when my book was first published).

This will be a fascinating event, following up on an excellent series of articles about ‘The Banned Books of Guantánamo’ that Vice published in December, even though, on that occasion, my book was overlooked, and it also complements an exhibition at the Mosaic Rooms, ‘Mouths At The Invisible Event‘ by David Birkin.

The listings for both events — and, importantly, how to register or RSVP — are below:

Wednesday February 11, 2015, 5.30 for 6pm: The US Senate Report on Torture: Prevention, Accountability and Transparency – Panel Discussion with Philippe Sands, Andy Worthington and Carla Ferstman

The Boardroom, The University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B 2HW.

At this event, journalist and Guantánamo expert Andy Worthington joins law professor and Philippe Sands and Carla Ferstman, the director of REDRESS, to discuss the CIA torture report.

If you wish to come to this event, you must register here. Admission is free, but registration is required.

For further information, please contact Emma McClean.

Thursday February 19, 2015, 7pm: The Banned Books of Guantánamo – Panel discussion with Ian Cobain, Cori Crider, Andy Worthington and Jo Glanville

The Mosaic Rooms, A.M.Qattan Foundation, 226 Cromwell Road, London SW5 0SW.

At this event, journalist and Guantánamo expert Andy Worthington joins Ian Cobain of the Guardian, Cori Crider of Reprieve and Jo Glanville, the director of English PEN to discuss censorship at Guantánamo, and the books that, in the prison’s long and repressive history, have been banned.

This event is free, but you must RSVP.

For further information, please contact Angelina Radakovic.

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer, film-maker and singer-songwriter. He is the co-founder of the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, the director of “We Stand With Shaker,” calling for the immediate release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here — or here for the US).

To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Also see the six-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, and “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” an ongoing, 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011. Also see the definitive Guantánamo habeas list, the full military commissions list, and the chronological list of all Andy’s articles.

Please also consider joining the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, and, if you appreciate Andy’s work, feel free to make a donation.

Video: Andy Worthington Speaks at “Guantánamo At 13: How Obama Can Close the Illegal Prison” in Northampton, Massachusetts

Since my return from my US tour nearly three weeks ago — after nearly two weeks traveling around the East Coast talking about Guantánamo and campaigning for the prison’s closure on and around the 13th anniversary of its opening — I’ve been steadily making available videos of the various events I took part in (in New York, outside the White House, at New America in Washington D.C., and at Western New England School of Law), links to the various radio interviews I undertook (see here and here), and photos of some of the events I was involved in — in particular, the invasion of Dick Cheney’s house and a protest outside CIA headquarters on January 10, and the annual protest outside the White House on January 11.

Unless video surfaces of my last event, in Chicago, on January 15, the video below — at the Friends Meeting House in Northampton, Massachusetts on January 14 — will be the last video I can provide from this particular tour. It was filmed by Ari Hayes, and made available through the AmherstMedia.org website, and it was a great event — with friends old and new; including many Witness Against Torture activists, who I’d been with in Washington D.C., the lawyer and radio host Bill Newman, and the lawyer Buz Eisenberg, who had been presented with a human rights award before my talk and yet insisted on lavishing such praise on me that I thought “This Is Your Life” had been revived and I was the star of the show.

Nancy Talanian of No More Guantánamos, who I stayed with while I was in western Massachusetts, introduce the event, and then Debra Sweet, the national director of the World Can’t Wait, who organized my tour (as she has been doing every January since 2011) introduced me. My talk starts at eight minutes in and for the first ten minutes I spoke about how I had started researching and writing about Guantánamo, and had come to write my book The Guantánamo Files.

I then began speaking about the high-level, inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force that President Obama established shortly after taking office in January 2009, and the significance of its decisions about what to do with the prisoners, which were embraced by the president. The task force made recommendations about who to release, who to prosecute and — alarmingly — who to continue holding without charge or trial, on the basis that they were considered too dangerous to release but insufficient evidence existed to put them on trial.

I then spent some time explaining why this is so alarming, because, of course, this means that the supposed evidence is no such thing, and unfortunately, the history of Guantánamo and the “war on terror” is such that the information that fills the prisoners’ files (as revealed in WikiLeaks’ release of classified files in 2011) largely consists of profoundly unreliable statements made by the prisoners, about themselves or their fellow prisoners, as a result of torture, other forms of coercion, bribery or an exhaustion with the whole process of never-ending interrogations.

Just before the 27-minute mark, I started speaking about the 122 men still held, and what will happen to them, thanking the Obama administration for its recent releases, promoting the We Stand With Shaker campaign that I launched (with the activist Joanne MacInnes) in November, to try to secure the release of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, and discussing the plight of the Yemenis, who make up the majority of the 54 men approved for release who are still held. I explained how it is reassuring that 12 Yemenis, long cleared for release, have been given new homes in third countries in recent months, finally breaking through the refusal, across the entire US establishment, to repatriate any of the Yemenis, because of apparently insuperable fears about the security situation in Yemen.

I expressed my hope that these men will continue to be released, and that, of the 68 others, those not facing trials — 58 men in total — will have their cases reviewed as swiftly as possible, through the Periodic Review Boards established in 2013, and that the review boards will take into account quite how worthless most of the supposed evidence is, so that, perhaps, before the end of the Obama presidency, the last men held can be brought to the US mainland so that the facility at Guantánamo can be closed — and, I would hope, the small number of trials still underway will be moved to federal court, and everyone else will have to be freed, because there is no precedent for holding foreign citizens indefinitely without charge or trial on the US mainland (although I understand that this is a source of profound worry for some people, who believe that Republicans — and possibly some Democrats — will use it as an opportunity to establish indefinite imprisonment without charge or trial on the US mainland).

My talk ended at 38 minutes, but there was then a fascinating Q&A session, following up on many of the topics I’d discussed in my talk, and introducing new angles, which lasted for a further 40 minutes, and was very professionally recorded, as members of the audience asking questions were given a microphone.

I do hope you have time to watch the video, and that you’ll share it if you find it useful.

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer and film-maker. He is the co-founder of the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, the director of “We Stand With Shaker,” calling for the immediate release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here — or here for the US).

To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Also see the six-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, and “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” an ongoing, 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011. Also see the definitive Guantánamo habeas list, the full military commissions list, and the chronological list of all Andy’s articles.

Please also consider joining the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, and, if you appreciate Andy’s work, feel free to make a donation.

Please Write to the Prisoners in Guantánamo, Let Them Know They Have Not Been Forgotten

Every six months, I ask people to write to the prisoners in Guantánamo, to let them — and the US authorities — know that they have not been forgotten.

The letter-writing campaign was started four and a half years ago by two Facebook friends, Shahrina J. Ahmed and Mahfuja Bint Ammu, and it has been repeated every six months (see here, here, here, here, here, here and here). This latest campaign is a month late, for which I apologize, but I forgot over the Christmas and New Year period because I had been so busy with the We Stand With Shaker campaign, calling for the release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison.

Since last July, when I last encouraged opponents of Guantánamo to write to the prisoners, there has been significant progress, with 27 men released. 149 men were held at the time, and that number has now been reduced to 122. 25 of those freed in the last seven months were cleared for release in January 2010 by the high-level, inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force established by President Obama when he took office in 2009, and 50 of those still held were also cleared for release by the task force. Four others were cleared for release in recent months by a new review process, the Periodic Review Boards, which started in 2013, and which led to the release of the other two men freed since the last letter-writing appeal.

In the list below, I have divided the remaining 122 prisoners into those cleared for release (54), those listed as being eligible for Periodic Review Boards (58) and those charged or tried in the military commissions system (10). Please note that I have kept the spelling used by the US authorities in the “Final Dispositions” of the Guantánamo Review Task Force, which was released through FOIA legislation in June 2013.

Writing to the prisoners

If you are an Arabic speaker, or speak any other languages spoken by the prisoners besides English, feel free to write in those languages. Do please note that any messages that can be construed as political should be avoided, as they may lead to the letters not making it past the Pentagon’s censors, but be aware that your messages may not get through anyway — although please don’t let that put you off.

When writing to the prisoners please ensure you include their full name and ISN (internment serial number) below (these are the numbers before their names, i.e. Shaker Aamer is ISN 239).

Please address all letters to:

Detainee Name

Detainee ISN

U.S. Naval Station

Guantánamo Bay

Washington, D.C. 20355

United States of America

Please also include a return address on the envelope.

The 54 prisoners cleared for release

Below are the names of the 54 prisoners in Guantánamo — out of the remaining 122 — who have been cleared for release. The phrase used by the task force to describe the recommendations for 20 of these men was “Transfer to a country outside the United States that will implement appropriate security measures.” Their identities were first revealed in September 2012. See below for the 30 other Yemenis recommended for “conditional detention,” and also for the four men recommended for release last year by Periodic Review Boards.

The 7 non-Yemeni prisoners cleared for release

ISN 038 Ridah Bin Saleh al Yazidi (Tunisia)

ISN 189 Salem Abdu Salam Ghereby (Libya)

ISN 197 Younis Abdurrahman Chekkouri (Morocco)

ISN 239 Shaker Aamer (UK-Saudi Arabia)

ISN 257 Imar Hamzayavich Abdulayev (Tajikistan)

ISN 309 Mjuayn Al-Din Jamal Al-Din Abd Al Fadhil Abd Al-Sattar (UAE)

ISN 757 Ahmed Abdel Aziz (Mauritania)

The 13 Yemeni prisoners cleared for release

ISN 035 Idris Ahmad Abd Al Qadir Idris (Yemen)

ISN 153 Fayiz Ahmad Yahia Suleiman (Yemen)

ISN 163 Khalid Abd Al Jabbar Muhammad Uthman Al Qadasi (Yemen)

ISN 170 Sharaf Ahmad Muhammad Mas’ud (Yemen)

ISN 249 Muhammed Abdullah Al Hamiri (Yemen)

ISN 255 Said Muhammad Salih Hatim (Yemen)

ISN 511 Sulaiman Awath Silaiman Bin Agell Al Nahdi (Yemen)

ISN 554 Fahmi Salem Said Al-Asani (Yemen)

ISN 564 Jalal Salam Awad Awad (Yemen)

ISN 566 Mansour Mohamed Mutaya Ali (Yemen)

ISN 575 Saa’d Nasser Moqbil al-Azani (Yemen)

ISN 680 Emad Abdallah Hassan (Yemen)

ISN 691 Muhammad Ali Salem Al Zarnuki (Yemen)

The 30 Yemeni prisoners cleared for release but designated for “conditional detention”

These men were cleared for release by the task force, although the task force members conjured up a new category for them, “conditional detention,” which it described as being “based on the current security environment in that country.” The task force added, “They are not approved for repatriation to Yemen at this time, but may be transferred to third countries, or repatriated to Yemen in the future if the current moratorium on transfers to Yemen is lifted and other security conditions are met.”

ISN 026 Fahed Abdullah Ahmad Ghazi (Yemen)

ISN 030 Ahmed Umar Abdullah al-Hikimi (Yemen)

ISN 033 Mohammed Al-Adahi (Yemen)

ISN 040 Abdel Qadir Al-Mudafari (Yemen)

ISN 043 Samir Naji Al Hasan Moqbil (Yemen)

ISN 088 Adham Mohamed Ali Awad (Yemen)

ISN 091 Abdel Al Saleh (Yemen)

ISN 115 Abdul Rahman Mohammed Saleh (Yemen)

ISN 117 Mukhtar Anaje (Yemen)

ISN 165 Adil Said Haj Ubayd (Yemen)

ISN 167 Ali Yahya Mahdi (Yemen)

ISN 171 Abu Bakr ibn Ali Muhammad al Ahdal (Yemen)

ISN 178 Tariq Ali Abdullah Ba Odah (Yemen)

ISN 202 Mahmoud Omar Muhammad Bin Atef (Yemen)

ISN 223 Abd al-Rahman Sulayman (Yemen)

ISN 233 Abd al-Razaq Muhammed Salih (Yemen)

ISN 240 Abdallah Yahya Yusif Al Shibli (Yemen)

ISN 251 Muhammad Said Salim Bin Salman (Yemen)

ISN 321 Ahmed Yaslam Said Kuman (Yemen)

ISN 440 Muhammad Ali Abdallah Muhammad Bwazir (Yemen)

ISN 461 Abd al Rahman al-Qyati (Yemen)

ISN 498 Mohammed Ahmen Said Haider (Yemen)

ISN 506 Mohammed Khalid Salih al-Dhuby (Yemen)

ISN 509 Mohammed Nasir Yahi Khussrof (Yemen)

ISN 549 Umar Said Salim Al-Dini (Yemen)

ISN 550 Walid Said bin Said Zaid (Yemen)

ISN 578 Abdul al-Aziz Abduh Abdullah Ali Al Suwaydi (Yemen)

ISN 688 Fahmi Abdullah Ahmed al-Tawlaqi (Yemen)

ISN 728 Abdul Muhammad Nassir al-Muhajari (Yemen)

ISN 893 Tawfiq Nasir Awad Al-Bihani (Yemen)

The four Yemeni prisoners cleared for release by Periodic Review Boards

ISN 031 Mahmud Abd Al Aziz Al Mujahid (Yemen)

ISN 037 Abdel Malik Ahmed Abdel Wahab al Rahabi (Yemen)

ISN 045 Ali Ahmad al-Rahizi (Yemen)

ISN 128 Ghaleb Nassar al Bihani (Yemen)

The 58 prisoners eligible for Periodic Review Boards

Of the 58 remaining prisoners notified that they were eligible for Periodic Review Boards in April 2013, the first 35 were recommended for continued imprisonment without charge or trial in January 2010 by President Obama’s Guantánamo Review Task Force, and the 23 others were recommended for prosecution in the military commissions, but those intended prosecutions were dropped after judges dismissed the convictions against two prisoners on the basis that the war crimes for which they has been tried had actually been invented by Congress and were not legally recognized.

The 23 prisoners recommended in January 2010 for continued detention (without possible transfer to imprisonment in the US), but determined to be eligible for a Periodic Review Board in April 2013

ISN 028 Moath Hamza Ahmed al-Alwi (Yemen)

ISN 041 Majid Mahmud Abdu Ahmed (Yemen)

ISN 042 Abd al Rahman Shalbi Isa Uwaydah (Saudi Arabia)

ISN 044 Muhammed Rajab Sadiq Abu Ghanim (Yemen)

ISN 131 Salem Ahmad Hadi Bin Kanad (Yemen)

ISN 195 Mohammed Abd al Rahman al Shumrant (Saudi Arabia)

ISN 242 Khalid Ahmed Qasim (Yemen)

ISN 244 Abdul Latif Nasir (Morocco)

ISN 324 Mashur Abdullah Muqbil Ahmed al-Sabri (Yemen)

ISN 434 Mustafa Abd al-Qawi Abd al-Aziz al-Shamiri (Yemen)

ISN 441 Abdul Rahman Ahmed (Yemen)

ISN 508 Salman Yahya Hassan Mohammad Rabei’i (Yemen)

ISN 552 Faez Mohammed Ahmed al-Kandari (Kuwait)

ISN 695 Omar Khalif Mohammed Abu Baker Mahjour Umar (Libya)

ISN 708 Ismael Ali Faraj Ali Bakush (Libya)

ISN 836 Ayub Murshid Ali Salih (Yemen)

ISN 837 Bashir Nasir Ali al-Marwalah (Yemen)

ISN 838 Shawqi Awad Balzuhair (Yemen)

ISN 839 Musab Omar Ali al-Mudwani (Yemen)

ISN 840 Hail Aziz Ahmed al-Maythali (Yemen)

ISN 841 Said Salih Said Nashir (Yemen)

ISN 1045 Mohammed Kamin (Afghanistan)

ISN 10025 Mohammed Abdul Malik Bajabu (Kenya)

Note: 131, 195 and 552 had their ongoing imprisonment approved by Periodic Review Boards in 2014.

The 12 prisoners recommended in January 2010 for continued detention (with possible transfer to imprisonment in the US), but determined to be eligible for a Periodic Review Board in April 2013

ISN 027 Uthman Abd al-Rahim Muhammad Uthman (Yemen)

ISN 029 Mohammed al-Ansi (Yemen)

ISN 235 Saeed Ahmed Mohammed Abdullah Sarem Jarabh (Yemen)

ISN 522 Yassim Qasim Mohammed Ismail Qasim (Yemen)

ISN 560 Haji Wali Muhammed (Afghanistan)

ISN 576 Zahar Omar Hamis bin Hamdoun (Yemen)

ISN 975 Karim Bostan (Afghanistan)

ISN 1017 Omar Mohammed Ali al-Rammah (Yemen)

ISN 1119 Ahmid al Razak (Afghanistan)

ISN 1463 Abd al-Salam al-Hilah (Yemen)

ISN 10023 Guleed Hassan Ahmed (Somalia)

ISN 10029 Muhammad Rahim (Afghanistan)

The 23 prisoners recommended for prosecution but not charged, who were determined to be eligible for a Periodic Review Board in April 2013

ISN 063 Mohamed Mani Ahmad al Kahtani (Saudi Arabia)

ISN 535 Tariq Mahmoud Ahmed Al Sawah (Egypt)

ISN 569 Suhayl Abdul Anam al Sharabi (Yemen)

ISN 682 Abdullah Al Sharbi (Saudi Arabia)

ISN 685 Said bin Brahim bin Umran Bakush (Algeria) aka Abdelrazak Ali

ISN 694 Sufyian Barhoumi (Algeria)

ISN 696 Jabran Al Qahtani (Saudi Arabia)

ISN 702 Ravil Mingazov (Russia)

ISN 753 Abdul Sahir (Afghanistan)

ISN 760 Mohamedou Ould Slahi (Mauritania)

ISN 762 Obaidullah (Afghanistan)

ISN 1094 Saifullah Paracha (Pakistan)

ISN 1453 Sanad Al Kazimi (Yemen)

ISN 1456 Hassan Bin Attash (Saudi Arabia)

ISN 1457 Sharqawi Abdu Ali Al Hajj (Yemen)

ISN 1460 Abdul Rabbani (Pakistan)

ISN 1461 Mohammed Rabbani (Pakistan)

ISN 10016 Zayn al-Ibidin Muhammed Husayn aka Abu Zubaydah

ISN 10017 Mustafa Faraj Muhammed Masud al-Jadid al-Usaybi (Libya)

ISN 10019 Encep Nurjaman (Hambali) (Indonesia)

ISN 10021 Mohd Farik bin Amin (Malaysia)

ISN 10022 Bashir bin Lap (Malaysia)

ISN 3148 Haroon al-Afghani (Afghanistan)

The 10 prisoners charged or tried

The seven prisoners currently facing charges

ISN 10011 Mustafa Ahmad al Hawsawi (Saudi Arabia)

ISN 10013 Ramzi Bin Al Shibh (Yemen)

ISN 10014 Walid Mohammed Bin Attash (Yemen)

ISN 10015 Mohammed al Nashiri (Saudi Arabia)

ISN 10018 Ali abd al Aziz Ali (Pakistan)

ISN 10024 Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (Kuwait)

ISN 10026 Nashwan abd al-Razzaq abd al-Baqi (Hadi) (Iraq)

The two prisoners already convicted via plea deal

ISN 768 Ahmed Al-Darbi (Saudi Arabia)

ISN 10020 Majid Khan (Pakistan)

One other prisoner convicted under President Bush

ISN 039 Ali Hamza al-Bahlul (Yemen)

He was not included in the task force’s deliberations, as he had been tried and convicted in a one-sided trial by military commission in October 2008, at which he refused to mount a defense. His conviction was dismissed by an appeals court in January 2013, although the government is appealing that ruling.

Note: For further information about the prisoners, see my six-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list (Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five and Part Six).

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer and film-maker. He is the co-founder of the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, the director of “We Stand With Shaker,” calling for the immediate release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here — or here for the US).

To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Also see the six-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, and “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” an ongoing, 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011. Also see the definitive Guantánamo habeas list, the full military commissions list, and the chronological list of all Andy’s articles.

Please also consider joining the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, and, if you appreciate Andy’s work, feel free to make a donation.

Photos: On the March for Homes, Thousands Defy the Rain to Demand Secure and Affordable Housing for Ordinary Londoners

Click here to see the whole of my photo set on Flickr.

What an excellent event the ‘March for Homes‘ turned out to be.

Despite hideously inclement weather — it was bitterly cold, and the rain was almost freezing — an estimated 5,000 people marched to City Hall from the Elephant & Castle in south east London and Shoreditch in east London on Saturday to call for secure and genuinely affordable housing for all.

As I explained in the text accompanying my photo set on Flickr:

The protest had real passion and energy, which to be honest, was unsurprising, given the extent of the housing crisis in London, with mortgages unaffordable for ordinary working people, rents spiralling out of control, unscrupulous landlords unfettered by any kind of legislation to protect tenants, and developers making more and more unaffordable new properties for a marketplace swimming with foreign investors, vying with rich Britons to fleece ordinary workers and to drive the unfortunately unemployed out of London altogether.

I wrote my thoughts about the London housing crisis in detail in an article on Thursday, which I recommend for those who want know more of what I think about the single most severe problem currently facing millions of Londoners — the unacceptably disproportionate cost of their housing. It deserves to be a hot election topic, but it remains to be seen if the Labour Party will rise to the occasion — beyond their pledge to scrap the hated bedroom tax — or, if not, if campaigners for restraints on the private rental market, those in social housing and those seeking to preserve it, trade union representatives, members of the Green Party, left-wing Labour Party members and others interested in the importance of social housing can build and sustain a campaign that places housing at the heart of policy-making, where, along with jobs for all (a generally undiscussed topic), it deserves to be. Personally, I’d like to see another ‘March for Homes’ take place in the spring, before the election, when, with good weather, it could be a huge event.

Below I’m cross-posting a powerful article in the Guardian, published on the day of the protest and written by Jasmin Stone, a representative of one of two organisations who dragged the housing crisis into the headlines last year — the Focus E15 Mothers, who occupied flats on a boarded-up council estate in Stratford in September. The other organisation was the New Era 4 All Campaign, consisting of tenants on an estate in in Hoxton who fought back successfully against a corporate takeover in November and December. I wrote about both those campaigns here and here.

Why march for homes? Because the housing crisis goes far beyond us Focus E15 mums

By Jasmin Stone, Guardian, January 31, 2015

We live in a rich country, yet London is blighted by homelessness and ordinary people being priced out of their own area; things have to change

The Focus E15 campaign began unexpectedly in August 2013 when 29 young or expectant mothers from the Focus E15 hostel – myself included – were served notices to leave. We knew that if we wanted homes we could afford, we would have to move out of London – to Manchester, Hastings or Birmingham. That’s why we started to fight, but we soon realised that our stories were not unique; they were the tip of the London housing crisis iceberg.

After Newham council cut funding for the hostel we started writing letters to the council and East Thames housing association who managed it. We were told that there was no accommodation in London, which meant that the only choice we had was to get on trains to places we’d never been, hundreds of miles away from our families and support networks, and start our lives again there.

Soon after this news, we met members of the Revolutionary Communist Group handing out leaflets about the bedroom tax and told them about our situation. They invited us to their weekly street stall on Stratford Broadway, a site which has since become the backbone of the campaign over the past 16 months. Because of our street stall, people know where to find us and support for the campaign grows each week.

For more than a year we have been battling with Newham’s Labour council, one of many Labour-led councils that continue to turn their backs on their traditional support base during the housing crisis. When we confronted Newham mayor Robin Wales with our situation, he told us: “If you can’t afford to live in Newham, you can’t afford to live in Newham.” A year after our eviction we launched a political occupation of four flats on the nearby Carpenters estate, to highlight the more than 600 homes left empty for years, at a time when people are being forced out of the borough.

Following the action, Newham agreed to repopulate 40 homes on the estate, showing that when letters and polite requests don’t work, direct action does. Since the occupation we have been helping families get housed, stay housed and stop evictions. Sometimes this means joining them in a meeting or finding them a lawyer, sometimes it means peacefully preventing bailiffs from dragging them out on to the street and demanding the council rehouse them locally and immediately. As a campaign we have been disgusted to see the breadth of social cleansing taking place across the capital. It is obvious for all to see: giant glass buildings that no working-class person could ever hope to afford are replacing council estates, sold off to the highest bidder.

Everybody deserves a decent, secure home to live in. But even for those not forced out of London we are being made to compromise, with expensive private rentals, short-term contracts and terrible living conditions. Meanwhile, even offers of “affordable housing” still charge 80% of the market rate, some as high as £2,400 a month, more than most people’s monthly wage. We are living in one of the richest countries in the world, surrounded by homelessness, hunger and cold. People can’t afford to heat their homes in the winter and never have so many relied on food banks. This has got to change.

Recently, Zineb, a mother of three employed by Newham, came to us at the street stall. She had been evicted from her home and had spent the previous night sleeping on the floor of a police station with her children when the council explained that they could not house them within reach of her work or her children’s school. After a small protest to help her share her story with the media, Newham was able to offer the family a flat in the borough.

We meet people like Zineb every week, people who are struggling with skyrocketing market rents, fuel poverty, unimaginable overcrowding and forced relocation outside of the city they’ve always called home. That’s why our campaign can’t simply start and end in Newham and we will be leading the east London leg of the citywide March for Homes today. It is important we stand together in solidarity and remind one another that our struggles are not isolated. No one will represent you but yourself, so join us and stand for decent homes for all. This is the beginning of the end of the housing crisis.

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer and film-maker. He is the co-founder of the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, the director of “We Stand With Shaker,” calling for the immediate release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here — or here for the US).

To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Also see the six-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, and “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” an ongoing, 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011. Also see the definitive Guantánamo habeas list, the full military commissions list, and the chronological list of all Andy’s articles.

Please also consider joining the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, and, if you appreciate Andy’s work, feel free to make a donation.

Radio: Two Recent Interviews with Andy Worthington About Guantánamo as the Prison Begins Its 14th Year of Operations

[image error]A week and a half ago, I posted links to three radio interviews I had undertaken while in Massachusetts on my recent US tour, highlighting the prison at Guantánamo Bay as it began its 14th year of operations, and calling for its closure. Two of those interviews were broadcast locally, and another was broadcast from Chicago, which I visited on January 15, taking part in a lively panel discussion with Debra Sweet, the national director of the World Can’t Wait, who organized my tour, and Candace Gorman, a lawyer who has represented two Guantánamo prisoners, one released in 2010, and one still held (also see here).

I hope that a video of that panel discussion will be available soon, but in the meantime you can, if you wish, hear a radio interview I undertook by phone the day after the Chicago event, on my return to New York, with the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago (CIOGC). I spoke with CIOGC’s Communications Director Aymen Abdel Halim, who had been directed to me by an activist who had been present at the Chicago event the evening before.

The 30-minute interview is here, via SoundCloud — although, in the interests of fairness, I should point out that, for the first 16 minutes, it is a monologue, as I had been asked to run through Guantánamo’s history in detail, more or less as I had been doing during my speaking events.

17 minutes into the interview, I responded to a follow-up question about the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report into the CIA’s torture program — which I wrote about at the time in two articles, Punishment, not apology after CIA torture report (for Al-Jazeera) and “Why Guantánamo Mustn’t Be Forgotten in the Fallout from the CIA Torture Report.” During this discussion, I made a point of highlighting how the indefinite detention policy at Guantánamo is a form of torture

On January 21, shortly after my return to the UK, I spoke to Chris Cook for his Gorilla Radio show in Canada. Chris and I have spoken before — most recently in January 2014 — and it’s always a pleasure to talk to him.

Chris and I spoke for the last 18 minutes of his show, which is available here as an MP3 (beginning at 40:35). I followed the investigative journalist Dave Lindorff, and Ingmar Lee, an environmental activist in British Columbia, and Chris and I ran through the current situation at Guantánamo. I spoke about the entire US establishment’s fears about repatriating Yemenis approved for release, because of the security situation in Yemen, even though the men were only approved for release in the first place because they were no longer regarded as posing a sufficient security threat to continue holding.

We also spoke about the recently released prisoners, the hopes for the release of the remaining men approved for release (54 men in total), and what will happen to the other prisoners, 10 of who are facing, or have faced trials, and 58 others whose cases are slowly being reviewed by the Periodic Review Board process established in 2013, which I most recently wrote about here.

I also spoke about the unreliability of almost all the information masquerading as evidence agains the prisoners, and we also spoke about the shocking case of Omar Khadr, the Canadian citizen seized at the age of 15 in Afghanistan and only released from Guantánamo in 2012, to ongoing imprisonment in Canada, whose treatment ought to be an undying source of shame for both the US and Canada.

At the end of the show, we spoke about We Stand With Shaker, the campaign to secure the release of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo, which I launched with activist Joanne MacInnes in November, and which had partly attracted Chris’s attention because Roger Waters, a friend and supporter of my work, had attended the launch of the campaign in London on November 24, and had later written an op-ed about Shaker for the Daily Mail.

It was great to speak to both Aymen and Chris. I hope you have time to listen to both shows, and that you will share them if you find them useful.

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer and film-maker. He is the co-founder of the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, the director of “We Stand With Shaker,” calling for the immediate release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here — or here for the US).

To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Also see the six-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, and “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” an ongoing, 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011. Also see the definitive Guantánamo habeas list, the full military commissions list, and the chronological list of all Andy’s articles.

Please also consider joining the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, and, if you appreciate Andy’s work, feel free to make a donation.

Video: Andy Worthington Talks About Guantánamo and the Need to Close the Prison at Western New England School of Law

Following my recent US tour, calling for the closure of Guantánamo on and around the 13th anniversary of the opening of the prison I have, to date, posted videos from an event in New York, of me speaking outside the White House, and of a panel discussion at New America in Washington D.C., but, with the exception of a very brief TV appearance (included here), I haven’t yet posted any videos from the three days I spent in Massachusetts — although I did post links to two radio shows here.

I’m pleased to be able to correct that now, with video of the talk I gave at Western New England School of Law at lunchtime on January 14, the first of my Massachusetts events to be recorded, unlike my first two talks, in Boston and at Harvard Law School. My thanks to Richie Marini of the World Can’t Wait for making it available.

All of my events in the US were rewarding, and this was no exception. I was given free rein to run through the story of Guantánamo, and took the opportunity to explain how I began working on the Guantánamo story, and then to discuss the Senate Intelligence Committee’s torture report, explaining how important it is not to forget that it was not just the CIA that used torture, and that torture has been a part of the story of Guantánamo throughout its long history. For more about my reflections on the CIA torture report, see my articles “Punishment, not apology after CIA torture report” (for Al-Jazeera) and “Why Guantánamo Mustn’t Be Forgotten in the Fallout from the CIA Torture Report.”

The video is below:

Running through Guantánamo’s history, I also spoke about the long struggle by lawyers to secure habeas corpus rights for the prisoners, the inadequate review process established by the Bush administration (the Combatant Status Review Tribunals and Administrative review Boards), which, nevertheless, provided the basis for my research into the prisoners, which continues to be relevant to this day.

I explained how my research into the documents reluctantly released by the Bush administration in 2006 enabled me to work out who was captured where, and to piece together a coherent narrative regarding the so-caled “worst of the worst,” to establish how the overwhelming majority of those seized  were no such thing, and how, once I had written my book The Guantánamo Files, I began working full-time as a journalist on Guantánamo and related issues, initially challenging the Bush administration, and, for the last six years, monitoring the Obama administration’s efforts to close the prison (as President Obama promised on his second day in office), and, of course, the political obstacles raised by Congress that, for nearly three years, led to unacceptable inaction on the part of the administration.

I also spoke about President Obama’s high-level, inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force, established in 2009 to review all the prisoners’ cases, and the profound problems with the task force’s decision to designate 48 men as too dangerous to release, even though they accepted that there was insufficient evidence to put them on trial. As I explained to the legal crowd, this should set alarm bells ringing, and I proceeded to explain how fundamentally unreliable the majority of the so-called evidence is against almost all the prisoners, because it largely consists of unreliable statements made by the prisoners themselves, about themselves and/or their fellow prisoners, through the use of torture or other forms of abuse, through bribery or simply through exhaustion.

I also spoke about the case of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, and my new campaign We Stand With Shaker, which I encourage you to look at if you haven’t already.

I also spoke about the current situation at Guantánamo, regarding the 122 men still held — the 54 approved for release, and the 68 others whose cases need resolving if Guantánamo is ever to be closed. Just ten of these men are facing — or have faced — trials, and it appears that the fate of the 58 others will decide whether or not Guantánamo will actually be closed under President Obama.

I spoke about these issues at length from around 25 minutes into the video, and my talk ended at 31 minutes with a call for us eventually to return to the same respect for the law that we had before the 9/11 attacks.

After that, there is a 20-minute Q&A session, which was generally very interesting, although it may be that those asking the questions cannot be heard clearly. I hope, however, that some of the topics discussed are of interest.

In conclusion, I hope you enjoy the video, and that you will share it if you do. More radio interviews and another videoed event will be forthcoming soon.

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer and film-maker. He is the co-founder of the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, the director of “We Stand With Shaker,” calling for the immediate release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here — or here for the US).

To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Also see the six-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, and “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” an ongoing, 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011. Also see the definitive Guantánamo habeas list, the full military commissions list, and the chronological list of all Andy’s articles.

Please also consider joining the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, and, if you appreciate Andy’s work, feel free to make a donation.

Join the ‘March for Homes’ in London This Saturday, January 31

This Saturday I’ll be joining the “March for Homes” in London, as campaigning groups and individuals calling call for controls on the private rental market and protection for social housing. One group who will be attending is People Before Profit, who, at the weekend, raised this excellent little house outside Lewisham Council’s offices. Campaigners have been sleeping in it ever since, educating passers-by about the deplorable housing situation in Lewisham — replicated across London’s 32 boroughs, of course — and calling for local housing needs to be addressed, and not the profits of developers , who are all over Lewisham like a plague. Spokesman John Hamilton said, “We want all new housing to be affordable,” and also highlighted the 600 families currently living in temporary accommodation in the borough. “We need drastic action,” he added.

On Saturday, campaigners from across London — myself included — will be marching to City Hall — that odd little lop-sided egg near Tower Bridge, part of the horribly corporate More London development — to tell London’s addled Mayor, Boris Johnson, that drastic action is indeed needed on housing. That’s at 2pm, and is preceded by two marches beginning at 12 noon — one from south London and one from the east.

The south London meeting point (see the map here and the Facebook page) is St. Maryʼs Churchyard, just south of the Elephant & Castle, London SE1 6SQ (nearest tube/rail Elephant & Castle), the protected green space next to the obscene 44-storey tower — 360 London — that Mace and Essential Living are building, which “will provide 462 units, of which 188 will be affordable” (but only once the word “affordable” has been twisted out of all shape to mean 80% of market rents; in other words, unaffordable for most ordinary working people). According to the London SE1 website, “It will contain one of the largest number of homes for long-term private rental in the country when complete.” In addition, “The Peabody Housing Trust has been appointed to manage the affordable housing element with 159 shared ownership and 29 rental units.”

The east London meeting point (see the map here and the Facebook page) is outside St. Leonard’s Church, on Shoreditch High Street, London E1 6JN (nearest tube/rail Shoreditch High Street). The organisers state that the East London march “is led by community campaigns from across the area including Focus E15. The route is from Shoreditch via Brick Lane.”

The housing crisis in London is out of control, but you wouldn’t know anything about it if you are seduced by the aspirational advertising for overpriced new builds — mostly in huge tower blocks that maximise profits for developers to an unprecedented degree — or if you took out a mortgage before the casino housing bubble madness began. That was around the turn of the millennium, under the Blair/Brown government, when houses were “earning” more than the average worker, and that bubble, insanely, was revived under the current Tory-led government after a blip following the recession that was triggered by the banker-led global crash in 2008.

So unless you’ve benefited from the crazed house price inflation of the last 15 years, in which houses have gone up in “value” by, I would say, at least 500% — or if you are, for example, a professional couple, each on London’s “average” salary of £35,238, enabling you to enter the market at the bottom rung of the ladder — then you’re probably someone for whom rental costs — and your treatment by your landlord — are of huge significance.

Even that professional couple highlighted above — on £70,000+ a year — wouldn’t get much for what they could reasonably expect to raise to enter the housing market — around £350,000 — as the average price of a house in London is currently £437,068.

Renters, however, are being hit even harder. With no protections against greedy landlords, the rental market is spiralling out of control. Many people are now resorting to sharing a bedroom with a friend, or even a stranger, just to be able to live in the capital, as the Guardian reported last week, and when we look at current rents — averaging, anecdotally, around £15,000 a year for a couple — it’s easy to see how, as the “March for Homes” organisers’ explain, “tenants spend an average of 40 per cent of their income on rent.”

A couple on the median income in London currently earn £33,308, slightly less than if they were each on the London Living Wage (£8.80 an hour), earning £18,300 a year, and rather more than if they were both on the minimum wage (£6.31 an hour), earning just £13,124 a year for a 40-hour week (figures from g15, representing 15 housing associations, and the Daily Telegraph).

On this basis, it’s easy to see how rents can easily consume more than 40% of income, and can actually devour up to two-thirds of a couple’s income. In addition, this is a form of very personal — almost one-on-one — exploitation that is, frankly, pretty unsavoury, as well as draining money from the economy as whole, and the local economy in particular.

Exempt from this unfettered greed are those in social housing — via councils, co-ops and housing associations — where rents (including my own) are closer to what I regard as acceptable for basic rented accommodation — £50 per adult per week. But this sector too has been infected by greed. New tenancies must now be at 80% of market rent, and housing providers are also in full-blown betrayal of their roots, either through pressure from central government, or through an ideological drift of their own, and are increasingly becoming more and more involved in new builds, with a significant proportion of flats being built for private sale, and many others in the part-buy, part-rent market that, for the most part, seems to be yet another racket for fleecing tenants.

With other problems also on the agenda — the Tory-engineered benefit cap, which is forcing people out of the capital entirely, on a scale never seen before, and with all the social damage that causes to families, and the Tories’ despised bedroom tax, which is also driving people out of their homes, even through there are no alternative properties available in the social housing market for downsizing — it is to be hoped that many thousands of people turn up on Saturday for the “March for Homes.” I certainly hope so, although I am also, sadly, aware that much of the population is paralysed by a fatalism that has been assiduously promoted by politicians and the media for far too long, or is still barking up the wrong — racist — tree, thinking that immigration and Europe are the problem (they aren’t) and that Nigel Farage can provide some sort of coherent answer (he can’t).

Personally, I think we need a massive social homebuilding programme, a structured deflation of the housing bubble (and I’d particularly like a creative debate about how we could deflate the bubble without ruinous negative equity), tight rent controls, stimulus for self-builds, both in urban and rural settings, limits on foreign ownership of UK property, and an end to unfettered foreign investment for the exploitation of British workers, but most of all I’d like to see these ideas and others being discussed widely rather than being perpetually hurled to the sidelines as the uber-capitalist orgy of greed continues, largely unchallenged.

The “March for Homes’ is organised by Defend Council Housing, the South London People’s Assembly and Unite Housing Workers Branch LE1111, with support from a variety of organisations including the two organisations who dragged the housing crisis into the headlines last year — the Focus E15 Mothers, who occupied flats on a boarded-up council estate in Stratford, and the New Era 4 All Campaign, tenants on an estate in in Hoxton who fought back successfully against a corporate takeover. I wrote about both those campaigns here and here.

Also supporting the “March for Homes” is Generation Rent, which “campaigns for professionally managed, secure, decent and affordable private rented homes in sustainable communities,” the Radical Housing Network, Digs – Hackney Renters, Tower Hamlets Renters and a number of tenants’ organisations.

I hope to see some of you on Saturday, and below I’m posting two — slightly tweaked — documents from the “March for Homes” website, which provide some more thoughts about what the housing crisis is all about — the open letter, which you can see and sign here — and a list of demands.

The March For Homes’ open letter

[image error]Government policies are stoking up the housing crisis blighting the lives of Londoners, with subsidies to lenders and developers, while tenants’ rights are undermined.

Over 344,000 are on council waiting lists. The average house price is sixteen times the average Londoner’s salary. Expensive, insecure and often poor quality private renting has become the only option for a quarter of us.

Private property developers are driving policy of Ministers and the London Mayor, building homes that few can afford, while many are forced to move out of the city. Our broken housing policy is damaging our communities.

The March for Homes is demanding change. Tenants, trade unionists and housing campaigners from all tenures and all parts of London will call on Boris Johnson and London councils to start building the thousands of new council homes we need, control private rents and stop the demolition of homes currently threatening over fifty estates.

The March for Homes will be the next step in the growing fight for decent, really-affordable, secure housing for all Londoners. We will ensure that this is an election issue in 2015.

Signed:

Diane Abbott MP, Labour, Hackney North and Stoke Newington

John McDonnell MP, Labour, Hayes and Harlington

Jeremy Corbyn MP, Labour, Islington North

Darren Johnson, Green Party London Assembly member, chair of Housing Committee

Ken Loach, film maker, director of ‘Cathy Come Home’

and others

The March for Homes’ demands

Rent control

Rents for all tenures are out of control. In the unregulated private rented sector, they’ve risen by 13 per cent a year since 2010 and tenants spend an average of 40 per cent of their income on rent.

The introduction of so-called “affordable rents” by the government will push up rents to 80 per cent of the market level for some council and housing association tenants.

Not surprisingly, the housing benefit bill is expected to reach £25 billion by 2017, but 40 per cent of claimants are in work.

Forty per cent of housing benefit ends up in the pockets of private landlords, at a cost of £9.5bn.

An end to the demolition of good-quality council homes

Across London, scores of council estates are facing profit-driven redevelopment that will reduce the number of council homes and replace them with expensive private apartments.

Established communities are in danger of being destroyed because people can’t afford to live in them.

Scrapping the bedroom tax and benefit caps

The cynical Con-Dem government has tried to blame the housing crisis on poor social housing tenants, including people with disabilities.

But the hated bedroom tax is a failed policy. It costs more to collect than it raises and has done nothing to increase the supply of homes.

A national programme of council housebuilding

The real reason we have a housing crisis is that councils have been stopped from building homes and housing associations haven’t filled the gap.

In 1970, 350,000 homes were built in the UK, split almost evenly between councils and the private sector, with a tiny number built by housing associations.

By 2014 the number of homes completed had fallen by two-thirds, almost all of them built by private developers, only a quarter by housing associations and virtually none by councils.

Secure tenancies for all

As well as pushing up rents, the government is deliberately weakening the legal rights for social housing tenants by introducing fixed-term tenancies.

Meanwhile, private-sector tenants face the possibility of eviction every six months.

Short-term tenancies allow slumlords to profiteer and get rid of tenants who demand repairs they’re entitled to.

High turnover also damages our communities, while the housing crisis stokes the bigotry UKIP feeds on.

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer and film-maker. He is the co-founder of the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, the director of “We Stand With Shaker,” calling for the immediate release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here — or here for the US).

To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Also see the six-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, and “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” an ongoing, 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011. Also see the definitive Guantánamo habeas list, the full military commissions list, and the chronological list of all Andy’s articles.

Please also consider joining the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, and, if you appreciate Andy’s work, feel free to make a donation.

Photos: “Close Guantánamo” Protest Outside the White House on January 11, 2015, the 13th Anniversary of Prison’s Opening

Click here to see the whole of my photo set on Flickr.

January 11, 2015 was the 13th anniversary of the opening of the Bush administration’s prison at Guantánamo Bay, which has been President Obama’s responsibility for the last six years, and for the fifth year running I attended the protest outside the White House, on behalf of two campaigns that I’m deeply involved in — Close Guantánamo and We Stand With Shaker — along with representatives of groups including Amnesty International, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Witness Against Torture and World Can’t Wait, as part of a US tour that also took in New York City, Boston and other locations in Massachusetts, and Chicago.

See the video of me speaking outside the White House here, (and see more videos here), the video of a panel discussion in Washington D.C. that I took part in here, and videos of a panel discussion in New York that I took part in here. More videos will be forthcoming soon of talks I gave at various locations in Massachusetts, as well as links to radio interviews, to augment those collected here.

The anniversary event this year was generally uplifting, in part because the sun shone for a change, but also because of recent good news regarding Guantánamo (with the release of dozens of prisoners), and also because of the energy of those involved; in part, clearly, because of the passion of the “Black Lives Matter” movement, which seemed to me to have the possibility of remaining a major force in grass-roots American politics — for the worst of reasons, of course (because of the homicidal nature of the police, especially for young black men), but with more power behind it than I recall seeing at any time since the Occupy movement (and that, of course, was not about the deadly everyday reality of racism).

I spent some time with the activists of Witness Against Torture, who occupied a church for over a week of fasting and actions, and I was particularly inspired by an event on the evening before the anniversary, at the church, entitled, “From Ferguson to Guantánamo,” when, as I mentioned in an earlier post, “a panel discussed endemic racism, the police’s impunity in killing black men, the bloated, racist and hideously punitive domestic prison system, the horrors of solitary confinement (in US prisons) and the horrors of Guantánamo.”

Videos from that evening — featuring Marsha Coleman-Adebayo (DC Hands-Up Coalition), Salim Adofo (National Black United Front — and also see here), Kathy Kelly (Voices for Creative Nonviolence), and Aliya Hana Hussain (Center for Constitutional Rights) — are available here. I was deeply impressed by the accounts of Marsha and Kathy in particular, and I ask you to think of Kathy right now, as she has just begun a three-month prison sentence.

As she explained in a recent article:

In December, 2014, Judge Matt Whitworth sentenced me to three months in federal prison after Georgia Walker and I had attempted to deliver a loaf of bread and a letter to the commander of Whiteman Air Force Base, asking him to stop his troops from piloting lethal drone flights over Afghanistan from within the base. Judge Whitworth allowed me over a month to surrender myself to prison; but whether you are a soldier or a civilian, a target or an unlucky bystander, you can’t surrender to a drone.

In the near future, I’ll post some more photos from January 11, as we marched from the White House — first of all to the Justice Department, and then to an open area above the Washington D.C. Central Holding Cells, where Shahid Buttar of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee performed “Welcome to the Terrordrome,” his excellent rap about the “war on terror.” For now, however, I hope you enjoy these photos — and also reflect that, just possibly, we may not be meeting outside the White House every January 11 for the rest of our lives.

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer and film-maker. He is the co-founder of the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, the director of “We Stand With Shaker,” calling for the immediate release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here — or here for the US).

To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Also see the six-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, and “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” an ongoing, 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011. Also see the definitive Guantánamo habeas list, the full military commissions list, and the chronological list of all Andy’s articles.

Please also consider joining the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, and, if you appreciate Andy’s work, feel free to make a donation.

Video: Andy Worthington Speaks About Guantánamo and We Stand With Shaker in New York, Plus Lawyers Ramzi Kassem and Omar Farah

I’m still catching up with some of the media from my recent US tour, and delighted that, just a few days ago, a film-maker called Edward Briody posted videos from the event I took part in in New York on January 8. Entitled, “Close the US Torture Camp at Guantánamo NOW: Stand with Shaker Aamer, Fahd Ghazy & all the Prisoners Unjustly Held,” the event was introduced by Debra Sweet, the national director of the campaigning group World Can’t Wait (who organized my tour), and, as well as me, featured two lawyers for Guantánamo prisoners — Ramzi Kassem, a law professor at City University of New York, where where he directs the Immigrant & Non-Citizen Rights Clinic, and Omar Farah of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

It was a great event, at Rutgers Presbyterian Church on West 73rd Street. Around 80 people braved the extremely inclement weather to come and listen to us talk — me speaking about We Stand With Shaker, the campaign I launched with activist Joanne MacInnes in November, to call for the release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, and in particular to put pressure on David Cameron to secure Shaker’s return as swiftly as possible.

I also spoke about Guantánamo in general, just three days before the 13th anniversary of the opening of the prison, making particular reference to the dubious information, masquerading as evidence, that, in 2009, President Obama’s high-level, inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force used to recommend that 48 of the remaining prisoners should continue to be held without charge or trial because they were “too dangerous to release,” even though the task force conceded that there was insufficient evidence to put them on trial.

The video of my talk (introduced by Debra) is below:

Ramzi actually spoke before me, and also spoke about Shaker Aamer (as well as Guantánamo in general), as he is one of Shaker’s lawyers — along with Clive Stafford Smith, the founder and director of Reprieve. The video of Ramzi’s talk (also introduced by Debra) is below:

I’m also posting below the video of Omar’s talk, in which he spoke particularly about his client Fahd Ghazy, a Yemeni who was just 17 years old when he was seized in late 2001, and is one of 43 Yemenis still held who were first approved for release by the Guantánamo Review Task Force in 2009. During the event, we also showed CCR’s film about Fahd Ghazy, “Waiting for Fahd,” as well as the short promotional video for We Stand With Shaker, featuring my band The Four Fathers playing “Song for Shaker Aamer,” the song I wrote for Shaker.

Note: For other videos, see me speaking outside the White House on January 11 (and other videos from the anniversary here), and the New America panel discussion on January 12 (with me, Tom Wilner and Morris Davis), and you can listen to various radio shows I took part in here.

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer and film-maker. He is the co-founder of the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, the director of “We Stand With Shaker,” calling for the immediate release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here — or here for the US).

To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Also see the six-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, and “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” an ongoing, 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011. Also see the definitive Guantánamo habeas list, the full military commissions list, and the chronological list of all Andy’s articles.

Please also consider joining the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, and, if you appreciate Andy’s work, feel free to make a donation.