Andy Worthington's Blog, page 107

We Stand With Shaker: Send Us Your Photos In Solidarity with Shaker Aamer, the Last British Resident in Guantánamo

[image error] Please like and share “We Stand With Shaker” on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, and send us your photos holding a sign reading “I Stand With Shaker” now!

On Sunday I announced the launch of “We Stand With Shaker,” a new campaign to secure the release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, and his return to his family — his British wife and four British children — in south London. Shamefully, for both the US and the UK governments, Shaker is still held despite being approved for release under President Bush in 2007, and under President Obama in 2009. This is an intolerable situation, and every day that he remains held ought to be a source of profound shame for the UK and US governments.

The “We Stand With Shaker” campaign will be officially launched on Monday November 24, the 13th anniversary of Shaker’s capture, at 12.30pm, in Old Palace Yard opposite the House of Parliament (by the statue of King George V), when some of the campaign’s high-profile supporters — including lawyers, politicians, journalists and comedians — will stand with a giant inflatable figure of Shaker Aamer, the centrepiece of the campaign, and the “elephant in the room” when it comes to the UK’s dealings with the US, and will call for his immediate release.

Tomorrow we will be issuing a press release providing full details about the launch, and on Monday our website will go live. As well as featuring photos of celebrities standing with the inflatable figure of Shaker, the website will also feature a promotional video for the campaign, focused on my band The Four Fathers performing “Song for Shaker Aamer,” the campaign song that I wrote.

Another key aspect of the campaign involves you — supporters from all around the world, including the UK — expressing solidarity with Shaker by taking photos of yourselves with hand-made signs that read “I Stand With Shaker” — or “We Stand With Shaker” if there are more than one of you, or indeed any other message you think is appropriate, and sending the photos to us. Please also feel free to include a message with your photo, and, if you wish, to tell us a little about yourself. We’ll put all the photos on the website when it launches on Monday, and we’ll make some available on our Facebook and Twitter pages.

I look forward to seeing you standing with Shaker and holding up a placard showing your support.

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer and film-maker. He is the co-founder of the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, 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 Parliamentary Meeting Calling for the Release of Shaker Aamer from Guantánamo, November 25, 2014

Next Tuesday, November 25 — the day after the launch of the We Stand With Shaker campaign that I’m working on with my colleague Jo MacInnes, and support from numerous groups including Reprieve and the Save Shaker Aamer Campaign — I’ll be speaking at a Parliamentary meeting organised by John McDonnell, the indefatigable Labour MP for Hayes and Harlington, calling for Shaker Aamer’s immediate release from Guantánamo and his safe return to his family in London. [Click on the image to the left to enlarge it].

Shaker Aamer, 47, is the last British resident in Guantánamo, with a British wife and four British children who live in south London. November 24 is the 13th anniversary of Shaker’s capture by bounty hunters in Afghanistan, where he had travelled with his family to provide humanitarian aid.

The details of the event are as follows, and I should stress that everyone is welcome, although if you do come along please allow plenty of time before the 7pm start to clear the House of Commons security.

Tuesday November 25, 2014, 7-9pm: Parliamentary Meeting – Release Shaker Aamer Now!

Committee Room 9, House of Commons, London WC1A 0AA.

With John McDonnell MP, Louise Christian (solicitor), Shaykh Sulaiman Ghani (imam, Tooting Islamic Centre), Kate Hudson (chair, CND), Joy Hurcombe (chair, SSAC), Bruce Kent, Victoria Brittain, Andy Worthington and (tbc) Clive Stafford Smith, the founder and director of Reprieve.

Please, if you’re in the UK, contact your MP and ask them to come along to show their support — or to explain why they are not interested.

This meeting follows Parliamentary meetings arranged by John McDonnell last December, and in June this year, to keep pressure on the government, and to encourage other MPs to take an interest in the plight of Shaker Aamer, who is still held despite being approved for release under President Bush in 2007, and under President Obama in 2009, following the deliberations of the high-level, inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force that the president established shortly after taking office for the first time in January 2009.

As I explained in an article two days ago, promoting the We Stand With Shaker campaign:

After [Shaker's] capture in Afghanistan on November 24, 2001, he ended up in US custody at Bagram prison in Afghanistan, where, he says, British agents were present when he was abused by US personnel. He arrived in Guantánamo on February 14, 2002, which is, of course, Valentine’s Day — and is also the day his youngest son was born.

Throughout his imprisonment, Shaker has stood up for the rights of all the prisoners seized in the “war on terror,” and in Guantánamo, as his lawyers at Reprieve have explained, he “has often gone on hunger strike to peacefully protest the appalling conditions and brutal treatment to which he and other [prisoners] are subjected. As a result of what the prison sees as his ‘non-compliance’, [he] is confined to a 6 by 8 foot windowless cell and is frequently forced to undergo extended periods in solitary confinement.”

His treatment has also had a devastating effect on his health, both physically and mentally. In December 2013, Dr. Emily A. Keram, an independent psychiatrist, visited Guantánamo for five days to evaluate Shaker, concluding that he has Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and “additional psychiatric symptoms related to his current confinement that are not included in the diagnostic criteria for PTSD but which also gravely diminish his mental health,” as described in a US court submission in April.

Dr. Keram also provided a list of Shaker’s extensive physical ailments, including severe edema (swelling caused by fluid retention in the body’s tissues, and also known as dropsy), severe migraines, asthma, chronic urinary retention, otitis media (middle ear infection), tinnitus, GERD (gastroesophageal reflux disease, or acid reflux disease) and constipation.

Although the British government has repeatedly stated that they want Shaker released from Guantánamo and returned to his family in London, it can only be concluded that they have not made his release a non-negotiable priority in their dealings with President Obama.

I do hope that, if you’re in the UK, you’ll contact your MP, and, if you’re in London, that you’ll come along to the Parliamentary meeting. I also hope, if you haven’t yet joined us, that you’ll join the We Stand With Shaker campaign and follow us on Twitter here. London residents are also invited to attend the press launch at 1pm on Monday January 24 in Old Palace Yard, opposite Parliament, by the statue of King George V, which will be attended by high-profile supporters including several MPs.

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer and film-maker. He is the co-founder of the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, 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.

“We Stand With Shaker,” A New Campaign Calling for the Release of Shaker Aamer from Guantánamo, Launches Monday Nov. 24

Follow us on Twitter, and like and share us on Facebook.

Next Monday, November 24, I’m launching a new campaign, “We Stand With Shaker,” with my colleague Jo Macinnes, and the support of organisations including Reprieve and the Save Shaker Aamer Campaign, calling for the release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, born in Saudi Arabia, who has a British wife and four British children.

Please follow us on Twitter, and like and share us on Facebook. The website will follow in the next few days, and there’ll be a launch outside Parliament on Monday Nov. 24, the 13th anniversary of Shaker’s capture by bounty hunters in Afghanistan,    where he had travelled with his family to provide humanitarian aid.

November 24 will also see the release of a promotional video for the campaign, featuring my band The Four Fathers performing “Song for Shaker Aamer,” the campaign song that I wrote. Furthermore, key elements of the campaign involve celebrities and members of the public — across the world — showing support for the campaign, and I’ll be providing more details about that in the next few days.

Shamefully, for both the US and the UK governments, Shaker is still held despite being approved for release under President Bush in 2007, and under President Obama in 2009, following the deliberations of the high-level, inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force that the president established shortly after taking office for the first time in January 2009.

After his capture in Afghanistan on November 24, 2001, he ended up in US custody at Bagram prison in Afghanistan, where, he says, British agents were present when he was abused by US personnel. He arrived in Guantánamo on February 14, 2002, which is, of course, Valentine’s Day — and is also the day his youngest son was born.

Throughout his imprisonment, Shaker has stood up for the rights of all the prisoners seized in the “war on terror,” and in Guantánamo, as his lawyers at Reprieve have explained, he “has often gone on hunger strike to peacefully protest the appalling conditions and brutal treatment to which he and other [prisoners] are subjected. As a result of what the prison sees as his ‘non-compliance’, [he] is confined to a 6 by 8 foot windowless cell and is frequently forced to undergo extended periods in solitary confinement.”

His treatment has also had a devastating effect on his health, both physically and mentally. In December 2013, Dr. Emily A. Keram, an independent psychiatrist, visited Guantánamo for five days to evaluate Shaker, concluding that he has Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and “additional psychiatric symptoms related to his current confinement that are not included in the diagnostic criteria for PTSD but which also gravely diminish his mental health,” as described in a US court submission in April.

Dr. Keram also provided a list of Shaker’s extensive physical ailments, including severe edema (swelling caused by fluid retention in the body’s tissues, and also known as dropsy), severe migraines, asthma, chronic urinary retention, otitis media (middle ear infection), tinnitus, GERD (gastroesophageal reflux disease, or acid reflux disease) and constipation.

Although the British government has repeatedly stated that they want Shaker released from Guantánamo and returned to his family in London, it can only be concluded that they have not made his release a non-negotiable priority in their dealings with President Obama.

As Clive Stafford Smith, the founder and director of Reprieve, has said, “It is deeply suspicious that the UK won’t say why their friends in the US refuse to transfer Shaker home to London. The US and UK intelligence services appear to be working together to ensure Shaker stays where he is or gets shipped off to Saudi Arabia. Shaker knows too much.”

However, as he added, “National embarrassment isn’t a reason to keep a man who has been cleared for release locked away in prison. Shaker must be returned to his family in London at once.”

We agree wholeheartedly, and “We Stand With Shaker” aims to ensure that Shaker’s unjustified and unjustifiable imprisonment is brought to an end as soon as possible.

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer and film-maker. He is the co-founder of the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, 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.

UK Human Rights Groups Dismiss Rendition and Torture Inquiry as a Whitewash

Nine human rights groups in the UK are boycotting the official British inquiry into the treatment of “detainees” in the “war on terror” and the UK’s involvement in rendition, “grievously undermining the controversial inquiry,” as the Guardian described it.

The nine groups, who have written a critical letter to Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee, stating that they “do not propose to play a substantive role in the conduct of [the] inquiry,” are Amnesty International, the AIRE Centre, Cage (formerly Cageprisoners), Freedom from Torture (formerly the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture), JUSTICE, Liberty, Redress, Reprieve and Rights Watch (UK).

Britain’s treatment of prisoners and its involvement in rendition was a matter of concern to Conservative MP William Hague when he was the shadow foreign secretary, prior to the Tories forming a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats in May 2010. Hague seemed genuinely appalled by what had taken place since 9/11 — a litany of broken laws and human rights abuses, including, most noticeably, the torture of Binyam Mohamed, whose case had reached the High Court in 2008, causing embarrassment to both the UK and US governments.

David Cameron announced a judge-led inquiry in July 2010, which was cautiously welcomed, as I wrote about here, although it soon became apparent that it would not be adequate.

In July 2010, Clive Stafford Smith, the founder and director of Reprieve, called for the judge assigned to the inquiry, Sir Peter Gibson, to resign, because, as he pointed out, “As the Intelligence Services Commissioner (ISC), it has been Sir Peter’s job for more than four years to oversee the Security Services,” and “he cannot now be the judge whether his own work was effective.”

In September 2010, nine groups wrote a detailed letter to Gibson, proposing crucial guidelines for the inquiry to be credible, and in February 2011 I first mentioned a whitewash, in a report about how the human rights groups involved in this latest letter were considering whether to boycott the inquiry. As the Guardian explained at the time, the NGOs feared that the inquiry would “not be sufficiently independent, impartial or open to public scrutiny.”

In July 2011, lawyers boycotted the inquiry, and on August 3 the NGOs sent a letter to the inquiry stating that they would not be participating” and did “not intend to submit any evidence or attend any further meetings with the Inquiry team.”

Shorn of NGO involvement — and any credibility — Gibson’s inquiry limped on until January 2012, when it was cut short amid what the Guardian described as “dramatic, first-hand evidence of MI6 involvement in another rendition, that of two prominent Libyan dissidents, Abdel Hakim Belhaj and Sami al-Saadi.” Belhaj is currently suing the British government, while al-Saadi and his family accepted a settlement of £2.23m from the British government in December 2012.

That abrupt conclusion was pretty shameful, because such important allegations had just surfaced (although the excuse was that the police were investigating), but Gibson managed to issue an interim report in December 2013, after examining around 20,000 confidential documents, and as the Guardian described it:

Gibson questioned whether the UK had “a deliberate or agreed policy” of turning a blind eye to the mistreatment of prisoners, and whether the two intelligence agencies were willing to “condone, encourage or take advantage of rendition operations” mounted by others.

At the same time that Gibson delivered his interim report, it was announced that the full inquiry would be handed over to the ISC.

In their new letter to the ISC (dated October 30, 2014), the nine organizations brought the story up to date, stating that, although, in March this year, they had raised concerns with the government about whether its decision to allow the ISC to lead the inquiry was “lawful or appropriate”, their concerns “remain unaltered and have not been allayed” by a response from the foreign secretary.

As the Guardian described it, the anger of the NGOs “follows assurances by David Cameron that the inquiry into whether MI5 and MI6 were actively involved in the secret rendition and torture of UK citizens and residents would be headed by a senior judge.”

The Guardian added, “When the coalition government came to power, Cameron told MPs that no other arrangement would command public confidence, and vehemently rejected suggestions that the ISC should conduct the investigation. He said that only a ‘judge-led inquiry’ could ‘get to the bottom of the case.'”

The Guardian also noted, “The boycott follows the debacle of the independent inquiry into child abuse, which has been dogged by whitewash claims and recently lost its second chair, Fiona Woolf, after she accepted that abuse survivors had lost confidence in her ability to conduct the investigation impartially.”

The Guardian also pointed out that the ISC “has faced years of criticism as evidence of UK involvement in rendition has emerged, and was also condemned for failing to report on the bulk surveillance being conducted by the UK’s signals intelligence agency, GCHQ, until after it became public.”

In their letter, the NGOs state, “We remain unpersuaded that the decision to cut short the work of the flawed Gibson inquiry and to pass the baton on to the ISC is an adequate substitute for the establishment of an independent judicial inquiry.”

The groups also expressed their concern that the make-up of the membership of the ISC meant that it could not deliver an “impartial and thorough” investigation. As they note, “The ISC is not and cannot be, by its very design, adequate to the task of carrying out an independent investigation of these violations. It remains the case that the prime minister holds an absolute veto over its membership, the evidence which it is allowed to examine, and the information which it is allowed to publish. We are therefore of the view that the committee has neither the powers nor the independence necessary to get to the truth of Britain’s involvement in the rendition and torture of detainees abroad. Any investigation conducted by the ISC will be inherently flawed.”

Clare Algar, the executive director of Reprieve, said, “What little credibility the ISC had left is rapidly evaporating. It should now be abundantly clear that it is simply incapable of getting to the truth on the UK’s role in rendition and torture. Last time they looked into this issue, they gave the agencies a clean bill of health. We now know that conclusion was spectacularly misguided — so why should we expect anything more than a whitewash this time around? The government must now abandon this farce.”

Despite the criticisms, former Conservative defence secretary and foreign secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind, the chair of the ISC, said the inquiry “would continue regardless of the boycott,” as the Guardian described it. He added, “It’s not going to be remotely possible to complete it before the election. Apart from that, we can’t even start on the Libyan stuff because of the police inquiries,” a reference to the fact that police investigating MI6’s involvement in the kidnapping of Abdel Hakim Belhaj and Sami al-Saadi and their rendition to torture in Colonel Gaddafi’s Libya have just “passed a file of evidence to the Crown Prosecution Service.”

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer and film-maker. He is the co-founder of the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, 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.

Shaker Aamer’s Universal Declaration of No Human Rights, Part of Vice’s Compelling New Feature on Guantánamo

[image error]Congratulations to Vice, which describes itself as “an ever-expanding galaxy of immersive, investigative, uncomfortable, and occasionally uncouth journalism,” who have shown up the mainstream media by publishing a major feature on November 10, “Behind the Bars: Guantánamo Bay,” consisting of 18 articles published simultaneously, all of which are about Guantánamo — some by Guantánamo prisoners themselves, as made available by their lawyers (particularly at Reprieve, the legal action charity), others by former personnel at the prison, and others by journalists. “Behind the Bars” is a new series, with future features focusing on prisoners in the UK, Russia and beyond.

Following an introduction by Vice’s Global Editor, Alex Miller, there are five articles by three prisoners, as follows:

“The Declaration of No Human Rights” (cross-posted below) and “Colonel John Bogdan Has No Nose” by Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo, long cleared for release but still held. In the second of these articles, Shaker focuses on Guantánamo’s recently retired warden, who oversaw a period of particular turmoil at the prison; in particular, the prison-wide hunger strike last year that finally awakened widespread outrage domestically and internationally about the plight of the prisoners.
“What Happens When I Try to Give My Guantánamo Guards Presents” and “An Obituary for My Friend, Adnan Abdul Latif” by Emad Hassan, a Yemeni, cleared for release in 2009 by President Obama’s high-level, inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force, but still held, who as been on a hunger strike since 2007. Adnan Abdul Latif, a Yemeni who had serious mental health issues, was the last prisoner to die at Guantánamo, in September 2012, even though he too had long been cleared for release, so this tribute by Emad Hassan is particularly poignant.
“My Road to Guantánamo” by Younous Chekkouri (aka Younus Chekhouri), a Moroccan prisoner, also cleared for release in 2009, who tells the story of his capture and explains why he cannot return to Morocco and is seeking a third country to offer him a new home. In February this year, Reprieve made available a love letter by Younus to his wife Abla.

In addition, in “Pakistan Since Guantánamo,” Pakistani journalist and author Saba Imtiaz responds to a question by a Pakistani prisoner who is still held about the situation in Pakistan over the last 13 years, and in “Cooking Ahmed Rabbani’s Biryani at Tayyab’s East London Curry House,” the journalist Oscar Rickett visits a famous curry house in London’s East End to sample the favourite meal of Pakistani prisoner Ahmed Rabbani (aka Ahmad Rabbani or Mohammed Ahmad Ghulam Rabbani), who has not been approved for release and is waiting for a review board to assess his case.

In another powerful article, “The Banned Books of Guantánamo,” John le Carré, Frederick Forsyth, Ian Cobain, John Kampfner, John Pilger and Irvine Welsh explain what they think about their books being banned in Guantánamo, as does torture supporter Alan Dershowitz, whose book ‘Blasphemy’ is also banned.

In addition, there are articles discussing the banning of other books, including ‘A People’s History of the United States’ by Howard Zinn, ‘An American Slave’ by Frederick Douglass, ‘Crime and Punishment’ by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, ‘The Diary of a Young Girl’ by Anne Frank and ‘Waiting for Godot’ by Samuel Beckett, as well as Jeremy Paxman discussing the banning of ‘Futility’ by Wilfred Owen, and Melvyn Bragg discussion the banning of ‘The Merchant of Venice’ by William Shakespeare.

Vice’s Guantánamo feature also includes Muslim convert Terry Holdbrooks describing “My Time as a Guard at Guantánamo Bay,” former chaplain James Yee’s article, “The Trials of Being the Only Imam at Guantánamo Bay,” Col. Morris Davis’s account of his time as the chief prosecutor of the military commissions, before he remerged from the “dark side” into the light, and some journalists — Carol Rosenberg On Covering Guantánamo, Jason Leopold on Obama and Bush: How Do the Presidents Compare on Guantánamo Bay?, an article on adolescents at Guantánamo (and please feel free to read my article from 2011, “WikiLeaks and the 22 Children of Guantánamo“), Marc Ambinder on Why Hasn’t Obama Closed Guantánamo?, an article about how Yemen’s Proposed GTMO Rehab Centre Isn’t Making Much Progress, and Guantánamo lawyer Ramzi Kassem asking, “Why Are Prisoners Who Have Been Cleared for Release Still in ​Guantánamo?”

Cross-posted below, as mentioned above, is Shaker Aamer’s powerful article, “The Declaration of No Human Rights,” his forensic analysis of how every article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights — adopted by the United Nations on December 10, 1948 (now commemorated every year as Human Rights Day), and forming the basis of a universal agreement on human rights following the horrors of the Second World War — has been overturned by the US government at Guantánamo.

This is very sharp, and occasionally very funny, and on a few occasions Shaker also mentions how the US wants to send him to Saudi Arabia, rather than to his family in the UK — a position that is not taken publicly by either the US or UK governments, but that is widely understood by Shaker’s supporters to be a major stumbling block to his release. This is because, of course, if he isn’t returned to the UK there will be a major outcry by the significant number of prominent individuals and organizations in the UK who are adamant that the UK retains an inviolable obligation to return Shaker to his family in London.

This obligation is for both legal and moral reasons — for legal reasons because he was granted indefinite leave to remain in the UK, and being kidnapped, sold to US forces and imprisoned without charge or trial in Afghanistan and Guantánamo is no reason to overturn that decision, and for moral reasons because British agents were complicit in his torture in Afghanistan, and because the British government was initially happy for all the British citizens and residents seized in the “war on terror” in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere (Zambia and the Gambia, for example) to be taken to Guantánamo, which they knew to be a lawless experimental prison run by the Bush administration, and where, moreover, they sent agents to interrogate those men they had so shamefully abandoned.

Of all those British citizens and residents — 15 in total — Shaker is the last to be held, and, as the 13th anniversary of his capture in Afghanistan approaches — on November 24, when he was first seized by Afghan bounty hunters — there can be no more excuses, and Shaker must be brought home as soon as possible.

For further information, see here for the first publicity for a campaign that I am launching on November 24, with the support of Reprieve. Please follow us. A Facebook page will follow, as will a powerful website.

The Declaration of No Human Rights

By Shaker Aamer, Vice, November 10, 2014

I have been in Guantánamo Bay for 12 years now. George W Bush’s administration cleared me to leave in 2007, Barack Obama’s in 2009. I am still here. By generously providing me with additional time in a “Single Cell Operation” [that's solitary confinement by another, more obfuscatory, name], the US military has allowed me time to make a closer study of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), as it was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1948.

Various senior members of the Bush administration periodically asserted that international human rights and humanitarian law was “outmoded” and needed to be updated to face modern challenges. However, the longer I have remained in this terrible prison, the more I have come to realise that the US has already amended the UDHR by imposing their own addendum to each Article. Here, then, is a recently declassified copy of the Declaration of No Human Rights (DNHR):

Article 1

In its original format, Article 1 reads as follows: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”

By its actions in Guantánamo Bay, however, the US has inserted an addendum to Article 1 that reads as follows: “BUT, all Muslim men held in Guantánamo Bay are considered to be something rather less than human, the worst of the worst of America’s enemies. Indeed, the detainees should have fewer rights than the iguanas that roam the naval base. Because these 148 men are not considered human beings, they should be subjected to as many indignities as the perverse human mind is capable of imagining.”

Article 2

Original: “Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status…”

Addendum: “This rule shall not be applied to the US naval base at the tip of Cuba, which the US coerced from Cuba in 1903. This should be given a special status with rigid distinctions made on whatever grounds the American military can dream up, but especially on grounds of religion.”

Article 3

Original: “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.”

Addendum: “Everyone who is Muslim, and insists on growing a beard, has the right to three inedible meals and 24-hour detention in a cell.”

Article 4

Original: “No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.”

Addendum: “But any inmate of Guantánamo Bay has to be shackled and cuffed for any step he takes outside of his cell.”

Article 5

Original: “No one shall be subjected to torture.”

Addendum: “But everyone in Guantánamo shall be subjected to as many different forms of torture as Donald Rumsfeld or whoever is playing the part of Donald Rumsfeld can imagine, and this shall continue until they are released.”

Article 6

Original: “Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.”

Addendum: “Everyone in Guantánamo Bay should be recognised only as a number and will be referred to as a ‘package’ when being taken from one ‘reservation’ to the next.”

Article 7

Original: “All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law.”

Addendum: “The men held in Guantánamo are not equal before the law and therefore are not protected by any law at all.”

Article 8

Original: “Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.”

Addendum: “But with respect to those Muslim men with beards who are in Guantánamo, it would be less embarrassing to President Barack Obama if everyone would turn a blind eye to the injustice they face daily.”

Article 9

Original: “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.”

Addendum: “In light of this rule, the US prefer it if the world (and particularly the media) would ignore the fact that the men in Guantánamo have been arbitrarily detained and exiled for many years.”

Article 10

Original: “Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.”

Addendum: “Still, hundreds of men shall be held beyond the law on an island prison for over a decade. None of these men shall be brought before an independent and impartial tribunal, since the dozen men charged will be put before what Lord Bingham has called a ‘kangaroo court’. These are the fortunate few. The others will never be charged at all.”

Article 11

Original: “Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.”

Addendum: “Those held in Guantánamo are guilty until proven guilty, and are also guilty after proven innocent. It would be inconvenient to be as liberal as a medieval king, so we will not guarantee basic rights recognised since the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215.”

Article 12

Original: “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation.”

Addendum: “Surely the UN was kidding here? The authorities at Guantánamo Bay shall interfere with each detainee’s privacy, family, home and correspondence in every way possible. They will censor a young son’s correspondences to his father because it says, ‘I love you.’ They will degrade the detainees’ honour and reputation as much as possible, including watching them shower or use the toilet. They’ll insist on groping the detainees’ genitals in a ‘scrotum search’ any time they leave their cells.”

Article 13

Original: 1. “Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.”

2. “Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.”

Addendum: 1. “Guantánamo detainees shall occasionally have the right to freedom of movement within their cells. Should they leave their cells, they have the inalienable right to be shackled tightly.”

2. “Guantánamo detainees can leave their cell to go to the small rec cage for two hours daily, although the authorities reserve the right to take detainees they don’t like there in the middle of the night.”

Article 14

Original: “Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.”

Addendum: “The only asylum we recognise for most of these detainees is the mental asylum they will end up in if we are allowed to continue abusing them.”

Article 15

Original: “No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.”

Addendum: “Shaker Aamer had better be told that he needs to be sent to Saudi Arabia because that is the only way to ensure that complicity by British intelligence agents in his torture never gets to a British court of law.”

Article 16

Original: “The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.”

Addendum: “But this really must not be allowed with Guantánamo prisoners. While lots of delusional radicals like UK Prime Minister David Cameron seem to think Shaker should be reunited with his family in London, this shall be refused indefinitely. Guantánamo shall continue to tell him that he cannot be returned to Britain and can only live in Saudi Arabia without his family.”

Article 17

Original: 1. “Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.”

2. “No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.”

Addendum: 1. “Guantánamo detainees do not have any right to property, including pictures of their children, family and legal correspondence, medical prescriptions, hygienic items, and even their own underwear.”

2. “At every chance possible, Guantánamo guards shall raid and search detainees’ cells, taking everything they can. If the detainees irritate the guards with their peaceful hunger strikes, even the mats on which the men sleep should be taken, forcing the detainees to sleep on the bare concrete.”

Article 18

Original: “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.”

Addendum: “It would be absurd for the world to think the US military is going to apply this to Guantánamo. Prayer time shall be interrupted regularly and other Islamic religious requirements shall be ignored or wilfully violated.”

Article 19

Original: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

Addendum: “But we will censor every word that a detainee says, and every time his opinion is heard in the outside world, he shall be punished. In particular, Shaker Aamer shall be held in isolation most of the time, because he keeps on trying to express himself and this can be quite embarrassing to the military.”

Article 20

Original: “Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.”

Addendum: “If the men in Guantánamo attempt to peacefully assemble, they shall be punished and placed in isolation (which should never be called that, because it looks bad, so let’s call it a ‘single cell operation’ or SCO). If the man who is trying to peacefully assemble is Shaker Aamer, he shall be FCE’d immediately and put back into his SCO. (FCE means a ‘Forcible Cell Extraction’, which covers up the fact that we’ll just beat him up.)”

Article 21

Original: 1. “Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.”

2. “Everyone has the right to equal access to public service in his country.”

Addendum: “There’ll be no representation for the detainees. Detainees will not be allowed to go back to the country where they lived. Far better that they are allowed to gradually fall apart here in Cuba.”

Article 22

Original: “Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.”

Addendum: “BUT everyone at Guantánamo is ordered to mind his own business, or suffer the consequences. Okay, so we’ve wasted $5 billion of US taxpayers’ money on the place so far, and are currently spending $2.7 million every year per prisoner in Guantánamo, but we would not want this spent on anything constructive; better by far that their culture should be mocked as much as possible.”

Article 23

Original: “Everyone has the right to work.”

Addendum: “The men in Guantánamo would like to work. After all, it’d be nice to have something to do. It’d be nice to earn a little money in order to buy clothing that fits, for example. But we can’t let that happen. These men are Muslims. We can’t trust them with the work programmes we provide in other prisons.”

Article 24

Original: “Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.”

Addendum: “Sure, but not in Guantánamo. We’ll interrupt their sleep as much as we possibly can, sometimes even moving them from cell to cell to keep them awake. But, again, let’s not call this ‘sleep deprivation'; we’ll call it the ‘frequent flier programme’ as then maybe the media won’t work out what we’re doing.”

Article 25

Original: “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services.”

Addendum: “You’ve got to be kidding me if you think this kind of socialist ‘benefits programme’ is going to be in the DNHR. Medical care shall be denied to the maximum extent possible and doctors shall take their orders from the military. If a detainee is prescribed medication, these will be given out at random, on a whim. Detainees will routinely be given old, worn, and ill-fitting clothing (one of our favourite ways to irritate people is to give small-sized clothing to larger men).”

Article 26

Original: “Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental states.”

Addendum: “The only education provided to Guantánamo detainees shall be regular lessons on doing precisely what they are told, when they are told to do it. Friendships between guards and detainees are strictly forbidden.”

Article 27

Original: 1. “Everyone has the right to freely participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.”

2. “Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.”

Addendum: 1. “The authorities at Guantánamo will snatch the photos detainees’ children have taken for their fathers. When a father draws a picture for his children, to show his love from afar, this picture will be destroyed. Detainees have the right to always give up their works of art to the authorities.”

2. “Books will be censored or not allowed in. For example, The Innocent Man by that little-heard of American author John Grisham, shall be banned.”

3. “The detainees do have the inalienable right to be subjected to our experiments, both to assess the best way to break them during interrogation sessions, and to see what impact the involuntary and secretive use of drugs might have on them.”

Article 28

Original: “Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.”

Addendum: “Every man detained in Guantánamo is entitled to the prohibition of any rights set forth in the original UDHR, unless those rights have been reinterpreted in the Guantánamo Declaration of No Human Rights. If the men demand that the United Nations come to Guantánamo and enforce the UDHR, we can all be very sure it will not be permitted.”

Article 29

Original: 1. “Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.”

2. “In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society…”

Addendum: “A Guantánamo detainee shall be duty bound to do precisely as he is told. His personality should be developed to ensure he expresses no personal opinion whatsoever, but becomes an automaton guided solely by the authoritarian will of the United States of America.”

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer and film-maker. He is the co-founder of the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, 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.

Disappointment as US Judge Upholds Force-Feeding of Hunger Striking Guantánamo Prisoner Abu Wa’el Dhiab

[image error]On Friday, in the latest twist in the legal challenge mounted by Abu Wa’el Dhiab,  a hunger striker at Guantánamo, District Judge Gladys Kessler, in Washington D.C., disappointed Mr. Dhiab, his lawyers and everyone who wants personnel at Guantánamo to be accountable for their actions by denying his request “to significantly change the manner in which the US military transfers, restrains and forcibly feeds detainees on hunger strike to protest their confinement,” as the Guardian described it.

Mr Dhiab, a father of four who is in a wheelchair because of the decline in his health during 12 years in US custody, was cleared for release in 2009 by the high-level, inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force that President Obama appointed when he first took office, but he is still held because of Congressional opposition to the release of prisoners, and because he needs a third country to take him in (and although Uruguay has offered him new home, that deal has not yet materialized). Last year, he embarked on a hunger strike because of his despair that he would never be released, along with two-thirds of the remaining prisoners, and he also asked a judge to order the government to feed him in a more humane manner.

That request was turned down last summer, because of legislation passed under President Bush that was cynically designed to prevent judges from interfering in the treatment of prisoners at Guantánamo, but in February this year the court of appeals — the D.C. Circuit Court — overturned that ruling and an allied ruling, determining that hunger-striking prisoners can challenge their force-feeding in a federal court — and, more generally, as the New York Times described it, that judges have “the power to oversee complaints” by prisoners “about the conditions of their confinement,” and that “courts may oversee conditions at the prison as part of a habeas corpus lawsuit.”

Mr Dhiab subsequently asked again for Judge Kessler to look at his case, and, as I explained in a recent article:

[I]n May, [Judge Kessler] briefly ordered the government to stop force-feeding Mr. Dhiab. This order was swiftly rescinded, as Judge Kessler feared for his life, but she also ordered videotapes of his “forcible cell extractions” (FCEs) and his force-feeding to be made available to his lawyers, who had to travel to the Pentagon’s secure facility outside Washington D.C. to see them. After viewing them, Cori Crider, his lawyer at Reprieve, said, “While I’m not allowed to discuss the contents of these videos, I can say that I had trouble sleeping after viewing them,” and added, “I have no doubt that if President Obama forced himself to watch them, he would release my client tomorrow.”

On October 3, Judge Kessler ordered the government to publicly release the videotapes, in response to a motion submitted by 16 mainstream media organizations, although on October 16 she gave the government a month’s delay.

In her ruling on Friday, Judge Kessler “demonstrated the myriad complications facing detainees who turn to US courts for relief against their US military captors,” as the Guardian described it, explaining that she “appeared persuaded by written testimony from Guantánamo officials that leaving the feeding tube in for days on end, which Dhiab sought as a means to minimize pain, created a greater risk to detainees’ health and to that of Guantánamo nurses and guards.”

Judge Kessler wrote, “The government produced highly credible evidence that enteral feeding is rarely painful,” even though last summer, as the Guardian noted, she called the force-feeding “painful, humiliating and degrading.”

The Guardian added that, although Judge Kessler noted that Mr. Dhiab “had complained that the feeding is painful in ‘isolated incidents,’ she found that the Guantánamo command had not demonstrated ‘deliberate indifference’ to his suffering, the legal standard she accepted as controlling, despite the arguments of Dhiab’s lawyers.”

The Miami Herald added that, in her ruling, Judge Kessler wrote, “The evidence produced at the hearing regarding pain was very mixed. There is evidence in the record, including Mr. Dhiab’s medical chart, that he often tolerates the procedure without complaints of pain or significant discomfort.”

The Guardian also noted that Judge Kessler “declined to contradict the government on the necessity of its ‘restraint chair'” that it uses for force-feeding, and also refused to challenge “its much-contested claims that it only feeds hunger strikers facing imminent and dire risk to their life or health.”

Judge Kessler also failed to address what the Guardian called “a central claim from Dhiab’s attorneys: that the forced feedings are a form of punishment to break the Guantánamo hunger strikes, rather than a strict medical consideration,” although she did criticize officials “for initially depriving Dhiab of the use of a wheelchair to transport himself to and from the feedings, as well as an additional mattress to alleviate long-term back pain that the government itself prescribes morphine to treat.”

As she wrote, “While the government ultimately — but only a short time before the hearing — allowed Mr. Dhiab to use the wheelchair, thereby inducing him to comply with the force-feeding as he had agreed to do, common sense and compassion should have dictated a much earlier result.”

Judge Kessler conceded that Mr. Dhiab “is clearly a very sick, depressed, and desperate man,” adding, “It is hard for those of us in the continental United States to fully understand his situation and the atmosphere at Guantánamo Bay. He has been cleared for release since 2009 and one can only hope that that release will take place shortly.”

Responding to the ruling, Alka Pradhan of Reprieve, one of Mr. Dhiab’s lawyers, said, “While we respectfully disagree with today’s decision, Mr. Dhiab’s case has given us a deeper look at Guantánamo than ever before, including medical malpractice and egregious cruelty by the government which Judge Kessler highlights in her decision. Now more than ever, the American public must demand to see the force-feeding videotapes that the government is still fighting to keep secret.”

Mr. Dhiab’s lawyers also said they were considering whether to appeal.

As indicated above, despite the disappointment, Judge Kessler’s order for the government to release the force-feeding videotapes still stands, and the Justice Department has until November 17 to announce if it will disclose the tapes (with redactions to the faces of US personnel) or mount an appeal.

I await that decision with great interest, as I believe that an appeal is futile, and that the government will, eventually, have to release tapes that will reveal to the public quite how revolting the reality of Guantánamo remains behind the scenes.

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer and film-maker. He is the co-founder of the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, 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.

No More War; Wearing a White Poppy for Peace

On Remembrance Sunday in the UK, I stand with those who say “No More War,”  and I refuse to be co-opted by the British establishment, which, shamefully, from the government to the media, insists that everyone should wear a red poppy, and, like a true authoritarian regime, pretends that not doing so is unpatriotic.

As a pacifist, today I am wearing with pride a white poppy, with the single word “Peace” in the middle of it, that was given to me last week by a work colleague during a presentation on the history of London that I gave at Central School of Speech and Drama, part of the University of London.

The white poppy was produced by the Peace Pledge Union, which describes itself as “the oldest secular pacifist organisation in Britain,” and which, since 1934, “has been campaigning for a warless world.”

The red poppy was initially chosen as an emblem by survivors of the First World War, and in the UK artificial poppies were sold to raise funds for ex-servicemen — particularly disabled ex-servicemen — following the formation of the British Legion in 1921. As the Peace Pledge Union website explains, “Everyone who fought in Belgium and northern France had noticed the extraordinary persistence and profusion of an apparently fragile flower: the cornfield poppy, which splashed its blood-red blooms over the fields every summer. It blooms there to this day, on the fields now returned to the farming they were meant for, and from which the bones of the dead are still collected as the farmers’ ploughs uncover them.”

Describing the “problems” with the political manipulation of the red poppy, the Peace Pledge Union website states, “Some people who have chosen not to wear it have faced anger and abuse. It’s also got involved with politics. In Northern Ireland, for example, it became regarded as a Protestant Loyalist symbol because of its connection with British patriotism. And a growing number of people have been concerned about the poppy’s association with military power and the justification of war.” A prominent opponent of wearing a red poppy is Wigan footballer James McClean, whose letter explaining his reasons is here.

The Peace Pledge Union website also states, that the idea of decoupling the red poppy and Armistice Day (which was only renamed Remembrance Day after the Second World War) from the prevailing military culture dates back to 1926, when a member of the No More War Movement (establish din 1921 as a replacement for the No Conscription Fellowship, which was formed in opposition to compulsory conscription in 1914) “suggested that the British Legion should be asked to imprint ‘No More War’ in the centre of the red poppies instead of ‘Haig Fund’ [a reference to the Earl Haig Fund, a charity set up in 1921 by, ironically, by the British First World War military leader known widely as "the Butcher of the Somme"] and failing this pacifists should make their own flowers.” The Peace Pledge Union notes that the details of any discussion with the British Legion are unknown, but “as the centre of the red poppy displayed the ‘Haig Fund’ imprint until 1994 it was clearly not successful.”

In 1933, after input from the Co-operative Women’s Guild, the first white poppies appeared on Armistice Day, and continue to be worn to this day, although they are not promoted by the establishment. They can be ordered from the Peace Pledge Union — and next year I intend to buy a box and hand them out to my friends.

As the Peace Pledge Union explains, “The white poppy was not intended as an insult to those who died in the First World War — a war in which many of the white poppy supporters lost husbands, brothers, sons and lovers — but a challenge to the continuing drive to war.”

I cannot agree more — and I always make a point of saying that we, the pacifists, actually care more about our soldiers than the so-called patriots, because we don’t want them being sent, in the first place, to wars in which we should not be involved. This is something that is painfully apparent right now, as our involvement in Afghanistan comes to an end, with the loss of British lives — and far more Afghan lives — that no one can adequately explain.

As the Second World War veteran and social activist Harry Leslie Smith explained in an article for the Guardian last year, entitled, “This year, I will wear a poppy for the last time”:

Over the last 10 years the sepia tone of November has become blood-soaked with paper poppies festooning the lapels of our politicians, newsreaders and business leaders. The most fortunate in our society have turned the solemnity of remembrance for fallen soldiers in ancient wars into a justification for our most recent armed conflicts. The American civil war’s General Sherman once said that “war is hell,” but unfortunately today’s politicians in Britain use past wars to bolster our flagging belief in national austerity or to compel us to surrender our rights as citizens, in the name of the public good.

Smith added, “From now on, I will lament their passing [the 'soldiers, airmen and sailors'] in private because my despair is for those who live in this present world. I will no longer allow my obligation as a veteran to remember those who died in the great wars to be co-opted by current or former politicians to justify our folly in Iraq, our morally dubious war on terror and our elimination of one’s right to privacy.”

Smith proceeded to provide a devastating analysis of the slaughter of the First World War, and why the government’s attempts to dress it up as part of “British values” is so offensive:

We must remember that the war was fought by the working classes who comprised 80% of Britain’s population in 1913.

This is why I find that the government’s intention to spend £50m to dress the slaughter of close to a million British soldiers in the 1914-18 conflict as a fight for freedom and democracy profane. Too many of the dead, from that horrendous war, didn’t know real freedom because they were poor and were never truly represented by their members of parliament.

My uncle and many of my relatives died in that war and they weren’t officers or NCOs; they were simple Tommies. They were like the hundreds of thousands of other boys who were sent to their slaughter by a government that didn’t care to represent their citizens if they were working poor and under-educated. My family members took the king’s shilling because they had little choice, whereas many others from similar economic backgrounds were strong-armed into enlisting by war propaganda or press-ganged into military service by their employers.

80 years since the white poppies first began to be produced and worn, the establishment’s position on war has not fundamentally changed. Below is a powerful video by Vincent Burke, featuring his song “On Remembrance Day,” which was featured on the website of the excellent campaigning organisation Veterans for Peace UK, whose members will be walking to the Cenotaph at 2pm today carrying a banner that reads, “Never Again,” and will be holding a brief ceremony at the Cenotaph to remember all of those killed in war.

The video shows all the many many wars the UK has been involved in since 1914 — all supported by the Church of England — and says that “if 2015 is a year of peace for the UK, it will be the first for a hundred years.”

Ever since Tony Blair took us into an illegal war in Iraq, following the largest protest in British history, when two million people marched against the war, it has seemed to me that we pacifists very possibly now outnumber the warmongers in the UK. Perhaps one day our dreams will come true, and Britain will cease to be such a relentless aggressor — and we can slash our annual £57 billion war budget and our absurd commitment to Trident and spend that money on peace and on the people.

Until then, I — and many, many other people — will continue to wear our white poppies with pride.

Note: If you are interested in peace, please also see the World Beyond War website.

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer and film-maker. He is the co-founder of the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, 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.

Fawzi Al-Odah Freed from Guantánamo, Returns Home to Kuwait

Congratulations to the Obama administration for arranging for Fawzi al-Odah, one of the last two Kuwaiti prisoners in Guantánamo, to be sent home, a free man, on the day after the US mid-term elections — although he will be held in Kuwaiti custody for a year and required to take part in a year-long rehabilitation program.

With control of the Senate passing from the Democrats to the Republicans, and the House of Representatives maintaining its Republican majority, it may be difficult for President Obama to engage constructively with lawmakers on the eventual closure of the prison during his last two years in office.

However, by releasing al-Odah, leaving 148 men still held at the prison, including the last Kuwaiti, Fayiz al-Kandari, the president has sent a clear signal that his administration remains committed to releasing prisoners approved for release by governmental review boards, following the rules laid down by Congress, which require the administration to give them 30 days’ notice prior to any release, and for the defense secretary to certify that he is satisfied that it is safe for the prisoner or prisoners in question to be released.

Al-Odah, who was born on May 6, 1977 and is 37 years old, was seized crossing from Afghanistan to Pakistan in December 2001 and transferred to US custody on January 2, 2002. He arrived at Guantánamo on February 13, 2002, and, as a result, spent over a third of his life at the prison, without ever having been charged or tried.

The US authorities made a number of outlandish allegations him — the most ridiculous of which was a claim that he was involved in an Al-Qaeda cell in London, even though there was no evidence that he had visited the UK, or, indeed, that any such cell existed. This allegation — and another, that he had sworn bayat (an oath of allegiance) to Osama bin Laden — were made by a notoriously unreliable prisoner, a Saudi released in 2007. A former mujahid who had been branded a spy for declaring his admiration for Ahmad Shah Massoud, the leader of the Northern Alliance, he had been tortured and imprisoned by the Taliban in a prison in Kandahar, which was where he was found after the US-led invasion, with other men who, inexplicably, were all subsequently sent to Guantánamo. Other allegations were made by the most unreliable witness of all, a talkative Yemeni prisoner who was freed in 2009.

I first wrote about al-Odah’s case in 2006, in my book The Guantánamo Files, when I noted that he said he “took a short vacation and travelled to Afghanistan in August 2001 ‘to teach and to help other people.’ After finding a liaison in the Taliban, which ‘was necessary because that was the government in Afghanistan at that time,’ he was ‘touring the schools and visiting families,’ teaching the Koran and handing out money, until his activities were curtailed after 9/11.” He said he was then advised to leave the country, and given instructions about how to do so, and ended up, with other men, crossing the border into Pakistan, where they were then handed over to the Pakistani authorities.

I revisited al-Odah’s case in an article for the BBC in December 2007, when I noted that he had been a primary school teacher, and that his father, a retired air force pilot, had fought with US forces during the Gulf War in 1991, and also noted that, in his most recent military review, he had been accused of “firing a Kalashnikov [AK-47] rifle at some targets” at a small camp where he had been taken by a Tal[i]ban official,” staying in a house in Jalalabad “with three Arabs who appear to be fighters who carried Kalashnikovs,” and fleeing Afghanistan with a group of men “who may have had some al-Qaeda or Tal[i]ban members.”

At the time of my article, al-Odah was the lead plaintiff in one of two cases before the Supreme Court, in which the Guantánamo prisoners were asking to be granted constitutionally guaranteed habeas corpus rights. The other lead plaintiff was Lakhdar Boumediene, an Algerian, and al-Odah’s case was eventually consolidated with it. In June 2008, the Supreme Court granted the prisoners constitutionally guaranteed habeas corpus rights, and in the two years that followed, several dozen prisoners had their habeas corpus petitions granted by District Court judges, until the court of appeals — the D.C. Circuit Court — rewrote the rules.

In that time, Lakhdar Boumediene had his habeas corpus petition granted (in November 2008), but Fawzi al-Odah was not so fortunate. In August 2009, as I explained at the time, he had his habeas corpus petition turned down by Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly,

agreeing with the government that it was “more likely than not” that he “became part of Taliban and al-Qaeda forces in Afghanistan” (PDF). Judge Kollar-Kotelly’s ruling was based on a dubious assemblage of information that relied more on inconsistencies in al-Odah’s account of his activities than it did on anything resembling concrete evidence, as she herself admitted, when she wrote that there were “significant reasons why the Government’s proffered evidence may not be accurate or authentic.” She explained that some of it was produced “in circumstances that have not allowed the Government to ascertain its chain of custody, nor in many instances even to produce information about the origins of the evidence,” that other evidence was “based on so-called ‘unfinished intelligence,’ information that has not been subject to each of the five steps in the intelligence cycle (planning, collection, processing, analysis and production, and dissemination),” and that other evidence was “based on multiple layers of hearsay (which inherently raised questions about reliability), or is based on reports of interrogations (often conducted through a translator) where translation or transcription mistakes may occur.”

In June 2010, the D.C. Circuit Court turned down al-Odah’s appeal, and in September 2010 he asked the Supreme Court to look at his case, but that appeal was rejected in April 2011.

He then had to wait until July this year for further progress, when a Periodic Review Board approved him for release. Involving representatives of the Departments of State, Defense, Justice and Homeland Security, as well as the office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the PRBs were established to review the cases of 71 prisoners — the majority of the remaining prisoners who had not been approved for release by the high-level, inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force, set up by President Obama in 2009, which reviewed all the prisoners’ cases and made recommendations about whether to release them, try them or continue holding them without charge or trial in its final report in January 2010.

Nine PRBs have taken place since last November, with five men recommended for release, and four for ongoing imprisonment without charge or trial. However, no one had been freed until Fawzi al-Odah was sent home.

To return to how I began this article, it is commendable that Fawzi al-Odah has been released, but now the four other men recommended for release by the PRBs must also be released, as must the 75 other men approved for release by the Guantánamo Review Task Force in January 2010.

*****

Reporting on al-Odah’s story for the New York Times, Charlie Savage noted that administration officials had told him that “an end-of-the-year flurry” of releases “might be coming: The Pentagon has notified Congress that nine other detainees, including six bound for Uruguay, may soon be transferred.”

Savage noted, however, that “there are signs that disagreements remain within the administration over how much risk to accept as it tries to winnow down the population of low-level inmates and close the prison.” He added that, according to officials, the administration “had been poised to repatriate four Afghans who have long been approved for transfer, but Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel recently pulled back from that plan.” They said that the administration “decided at a ‘principals’ committee’ meeting on Oct. 3 in the White House Situation Room to proceed with notifying Congress that it intended to repatriate the four Afghans.” President Obama’s national security adviser, Susan E. Rice, chaired that meeting.

The notice about the intended repatriation “was supposed to be given within a week after the State Department obtained an unspecified security assurance from the Afghan government,” according to the officials, but although it was completed three weeks ago, Chuck Hagel has, apparently, not yet sent it.

Savage added that, although the Pentagon had signed off on the Afghans’ repatriation in 2009, during the Guantánamo Review Task Force’s deliberations, “officials familiar with the deliberations said Mr. Hagel had decided to reassess the timing after Gen. John F. Campbell, the top military leader in Afghanistan, sent a memo expressing concerns that they might attack American or Afghan troops.”

He also said that Hagel’s spokesman, Rear Adm. John Kirby, “described the department’s deliberations about whether the security risk has been mitigated as including ‘inputs from commanders in the field, whose perspectives are not only greatly valued by the secretary but heavily relied upon.'”

Savage called it “unusual for a cabinet secretary to independently reconsider a decision reached at a principals’ committee meeting,” but added that transfers from Guantánamo “are an unusual type of policy decision” because of the requirement by Congress for 30 days’ notification prior to any prisoner release.

Charlie Savage also noted that Chuck Hagel’s “apparent decision to pull back from swiftly repatriating the Afghans came amid turbulence prompted by an inaccurate Fox News report about former Guantánamo detainees fighting in Syria.”

Fox News reported last Thursday that “as many as 20 to 30 former Guantánamo Bay detainees released within the last two to three years are suspected by intelligence and Defense officials of having joined forces with the Islamic State and other militant groups inside Syria.” However, just 22 prisoners have been released in total in the last three years and 10 months, as the Times noted, adding that, of these 22, “no more than two — perhaps none — are suspected or confirmed of ‘re-engagement’ worldwide, according to semi-annual reports issued by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.” The Times also stated that, crucially, an official “said there had been no Syria-related change to its numbers since the most recent report.”

In the face of such lies and distortions by the right-wing media, supported by numerous Republican lawmakers, it is essential that President Obama — and Chuck Hagel in particular — are not deterred from releasing more prisoners. Holding men approved for release is never a good idea, and I hope to hear soon that the administration has overcome its long-standing reluctance to release Yemenis, who make up the majority of those approved for release, and will be sending Yemenis back home, to be reunited with their families, like Fawzi al-Odah.

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer and film-maker. He is the co-founder of the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, 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.

See the following for articles about the 142 prisoners released from Guantánamo from June 2007 to January 2009 (out of the 532 released by President Bush), and the 88 prisoners released from February 2009 to May 2014 (by President Obama), whose stories are covered in more detail than is available anywhere else –- either in print or on the internet –- although many of them, of course, are also covered in The Guantánamo Files (and for the stories of the other 390 prisoners released by President Bush, see my archive of articles based on the classified military files released by WikiLeaks in 2011: June 2007 –- 2 Tunisians, 4 Yemenis (here, here and here); July 2007 –- 16 Saudis; August 2007 –- 1 Bahraini, 5 Afghans; September 2007 –- 16 Saudis; September 2007 –- 1 Mauritanian; September 2007 –- 1 Libyan, 1 Yemeni, 6 Afghans; November 2007 –- 3 Jordanians, 8 Afghans; November 2007 –- 14 Saudis; December 2007 –- 2 Sudanese; December 2007 –- 13 Afghans (here and here); December 2007 –- 3 British residents; December 2007 –- 10 Saudis; May 2008 –- 3 Sudanese, 1 Moroccan, 5 Afghans (here, here and here); July 2008 –- 2 Algerians; July 2008 –- 1 Qatari, 1 United Arab Emirati, 1 Afghan; August 2008 –- 2 Algerians; September 2008 –- 1 Pakistani, 2 Afghans (here and here); September 2008 –- 1 Sudanese, 1 Algerian; November 2008 –- 1 Kazakh, 1 Somali, 1 Tajik; November 2008 –- 2 Algerians; November 2008 –- 1 Yemeni (Salim Hamdan) repatriated to serve out the last month of his sentence; December 2008 –- 3 Bosnian Algerians; January 2009 –- 1 Afghan, 1 Algerian, 4 Iraqis; February 2009 — 1 British resident (Binyam Mohamed); May 2009 —1 Bosnian Algerian (Lakhdar Boumediene); June 2009 — 1 Chadian (Mohammed El-Gharani), 4 Uighurs to Bermuda, 1 Iraqi, 3 Saudis (here and here); August 2009 — 1 Afghan (Mohamed Jawad), 2 Syrians to Portugal; September 2009 — 1 Yemeni, 2 Uzbeks to Ireland (here and here); October 2009 — 1 Kuwaiti, 1 prisoner of undisclosed nationality to Belgium; October 2009 — 6 Uighurs to Palau; November 2009 — 1 Bosnian Algerian to France, 1 unidentified Palestinian to Hungary, 2 Tunisians to Italian custody; December 2009 — 1 Kuwaiti (Fouad al-Rabiah); December 2009 — 2 Somalis, 4 Afghans, 6 Yemenis; January 2010 — 2 Algerians, 1 Uzbek to Switzerland, 1 Egyptian, 1 Azerbaijani and 1 Tunisian to Slovakia; February 2010 — 1 Egyptian, 1 Libyan, 1 Tunisian to Albania, 1 Palestinian to Spain; March 2010 — 1 Libyan, 2 unidentified prisoners to Georgia, 2 Uighurs to Switzerland; May 2010 — 1 Syrian to Bulgaria, 1 Yemeni to Spain; July 2010 — 1 Yemeni (Mohammed Hassan Odaini); July 2010 — 1 Algerian, 1 Syrian to Cape Verde, 1 Uzbek to Latvia, 1 unidentified Afghan to Spain; September 2010 — 1 Palestinian, 1 Syrian to Germany; January 2011 — 1 Algerian; April 2012 — 2 Uighurs to El Salvador; July 2012 — 1 Sudanese; September 2012 — 1 Canadian (Omar Khadr) to ongoing imprisonment in Canada; August 2013 — 2 Algerians; December 2013 — 2 Algerians, 2 Saudis, 2 Sudanese, 3 Uighurs to Slovakia; March 2014 — 1 Algerian (Ahmed Belbacha); May 2014 — 5 Afghans to Qatar (in a prisoner swap for US PoW Bowe Bergdahl).

76 US Lawmakers Ask Obama to Let Them See Guantánamo Force-Feeding Videos

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.

On Thursday, 76 members of the US Congress — the Congressional Progressive Caucus, represented by co-chairs Raúl Grijalva and Keith Ellison — sent a letter to President Obama asking to be allowed to see videotapes of force-feeding at Guantánamo.

In May, District Judge Gladys Kessler ordered videotapes of the force-feeding — and “forcible cell extractions” (FCEs) — of Abu Wa’el Dhiab, a Syrian prisoner, to be made available to his lawyers, who had to travel to the Pentagon’s secure facility outside Washington D.C. to see them. After viewing them, Cori Crider, his lawyer at the legal action charity Reprieve, said, “While I’m not allowed to discuss the contents of these videos, I can say that I had trouble sleeping after viewing them,” and added, “I have no doubt that if President Obama forced himself to watch them, he would release my client tomorrow.”

On October 3, in response to a motion submitted in June by 16 major US media organizations, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, McClatchy, the Guardian, the Associated Press and others, Judge Kessler ordered the videotapes — eleven hours of footage, consisting of 28 tapes in total — to be publicly released, once they have been “redacted for ‘all identifiers of individuals’ other than Mr. Dhiab.”

On October 16, Judge Kessler granted the government a month’s delay in releasing the tapes, to allow them time to make the redactions, and also so as not to conflict with the possibility of a government appeal, but while this delay is underway the Congressional Progressive Caucus has stepped in to keep the focus on Mr. Dhiab’s case.

In their letter, the lawmakers call on the president not only to let them see videotapes of Mr. Dhiab’s force-feeding, but also of the force-feeding of another prisoner, Emad Hassan (aka Imad Hassan), who, in May, submitted a motion for his own videotapes to be released. As the lawmakers explain, “The recordings are currently classified at the ‘Secret’ level, although no national security or other justification has been provided for this classification.”

The lawmakers also point out that the videotapes have been described as containing “evidence of unlawful force-feedings taking place at Guantánamo,” and note that Mr. Dhiab “asserts that the force-feeding techniques are applied arbitrarily and constitute abuse that potentially rises to the level of torture.”

They also refer to the important stand taken by the US guard who refused to take part in the force-feeding, and whose story emerged in July, and conclude by telling the president, “The facts pertaining to these practices at Guantánamo should be available to Members of Congress,” adding, “Ongoing secrecy is untenable. US personnel at Guantánamo should not carry out policies that are contrary to American laws or values.”

The Congressional Progressive Caucus’s Letter to President Obama Regarding the Release of Videotapes of Force-Feeding in Guantánamo

Congressional Progressive Caucus

US House of Representatives

Washington, D.C. 20515

The Honorable Barack H. Obama

President of the United States

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW

Washington, D.C. 20050

October 30, 2014

Dear Mr. President,

We write to request that you release to Members of Congress the video recordings of Guantánamo Bay detention facility detainees who are being force-fed while on hunger-strike.

US officials first acknowledged the existence of such video recordings in April, 2014, during the habeas proceedings of Abu Wa’el Dhiab, a Syrian detainee cleared for release. Thirty two video recordings of Mr. Dhiab’s forcible cell extractions and force-feedings have been produced to his legal team as part of his habeas proceedings. Four additional video recordings have been produced for Imad Abdullah Hassan, a Yemeni detainee also cleared for release. The recordings are currently classified at the “Secret” level, although no national security or other justification has been provided for this classification.

Although Mr. Dhiab’s legal representatives are barred from revealing the contents of the recordings, they have broadly described them as “extremely disturbing” and allege that they are evidence of unlawful force-feedings taking place at Guantánamo Bay. In his court filings, Mr. Dhiab asserts that the force-feeding techniques are applied arbitrarily and constitute abuse that potentially rises to the level of torture. According to recent reports, at least one medical provider at Guantánamo is refusing to participate in force-feeding because of his opposition to the techniques.

A number of prominent non-governmental organizations have asserted that JTF-GTMO’s force-feeding techniques violate medical ethics and acceptable medical care standards, and constitute human rights abuses. The organizations also raise concerns about the secrecy surrounding the techniques.

The facts pertaining to these practices at Guantánamo should be available to Members of Congress. The judge for this case, Judge Gladys Kessler, has issued an order to release the videos. Ongoing secrecy is untenable. US personnel at Guantánamo should not carry out policies that are contrary to American laws or values. We urge you to allow Members of Congress to view the video recordings of Mr. Dhiab’s and Mr. Hassan’s force-feedings and to take any action necessary to correct these practices.

We will continue to support your efforts to close the Guantánamo Bay detention facility. Until that occurs, we would like to work with the administration to stop any abusive or illegal practices that take place within its walls. We look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Raúl Grijalva

Member of Congress

Keith Ellison

Member of Congress

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer and film-maker. He is the co-founder of the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, 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.

UK Appeals Court Rules Abdel Hakim Belhaj, Rendered to Torture in Gaddafi’s Libya, Can Sue British Government

What a long road to justice this is turning out to be. Back in December 2011, Abdel Hakim Belhaj (aka Belhadj), a former opponent of the Gaddafi regime, who, in 2004, in an operation that involved the British security services, was kidnapped in China with his pregnant wife and delivered to Colonel Gaddafi, first attempted to sue the British government — and, specifically, the former foreign secretary, Jack Straw, MI6’s former director of counter-terrorism, Sir Mark Allen, the Foreign Office, the Home Office and MI5.

Since then, the government has fought to prevent him having his day in court, but on Thursday the court of appeal ruled, as the Guardian described it, that the case “should go ahead despite government attempts to resist it on grounds of the ‘act of state doctrine’, arguing that the courts could not inquire into what happened because it involved a foreign state.” The Guardian added that the ruling “establishes a significant precedent for other claims,” although it is possible, of course, that the Foreign Office will appeal to the Supreme Court.

The Guardian also noted that the British government had “maintained that the UK’s relations with the US would be seriously damaged if Belhaj was allowed to sue and make his case in a British court.” However, the judgment said that “while the trial relating to the couple’s rendition was likely to require a British court to assess the wrongfulness of acts by the CIA and Libyan agents, that was no reason to bar the claim.”

The judges said that the respondents (Jack Straw et al.) “are not entitled to any immunity before the courts in this jurisdiction … Their conduct, considered in isolation, would not normally be exempt from investigation by the courts. There is a compelling public interest in the investigation by the English courts of these very grave allegations. The risk of displeasing our allies or offending other states … cannot justify our declining jurisdiction on grounds of act of state over what is a properly justiciable claim.”

The judges added, “The stark reality is that unless the English courts are able to exercise jurisdiction in this case, these very grave allegations against the executive will never be subjected to judicial investigation.”

In response to the ruling — which represents a well-deserved victory not only for Mr. Belhaj and his wife, but also for his lawyers at Leigh Day & Co. and Reprieve, who have worked so hard on their behalf — Andrea Coomber of Justice, the all-party law reform and human rights organization (which contributed to the case), said, “The government’s case would fundamentally undercut the international rule of law and undermine the global commitment to remedies for victims of human rights violations. The ‘they did it too’ defence traditionally hasn’t worked in the playground. Yet, the UK government would — in expanding the ‘act of state’ doctrine and the scope of state immunity — seek to enshrine it in common law. States cannot be encouraged to supplement the international law of state immunity with their own pick and mix patchwork of domestic rules on justiciability.”

John Dalhuisen of Amnesty International (also involved in the case) had some thoughts about the ruling as well. “The court of appeal has,” he said, “set the stage for real accountability in the UK, which has been a long time in coming. Other states implicated in the CIA rendition and secret detention programmes — e.g. Poland, Lithuania, Romania — must also commit to conducting effective investigations that reveal the whole truth about Europe’s complicity in these appalling crimes, hold perpetrators accountable, and give victims access to justice.”

Speaking to the Guardian from Libya, Mr. Belhaj, who is now the head of Libya’s Al-Watan political party, said, “I always had faith in the British justice system. The right decision has been made. I feel I am getting closer to realizing justice in my case.”

He also stated that he would be talking to his lawyers about the possibility of giving evidence in a future trial. “It would be great if I and my wife could be present at the hearing in order to explain exactly what the impact of these events has been,” he said, adding, “There’s still a large effect, especially when I catch myself thinking about what happened to my wife, who was pregnant at the time. We were subject to a long period of bad treatment.”

As I explained in an article in December 2011, “evidence of the UK’s role in the rendition of Abdel Hakim Belhadj and Fatima Bouchar was revealed in a number of fawning, and previously classified documents that came to light in Tripoli, in September, as the Gaddafi regime fell, and which were discovered by Human Rights Watch. These documents reveal that the British government told the Libyan government that the couple were in Malaysia in early March 2004, and Sir Mark Allen, who was then the director of counter-terrorism at MI6, wrote to the notorious torturer Moussa Koussa, the head of Libyan intelligence, who … fled Libya as the regime began tumbling and was briefly welcomed in the UK.”

As I also explained in my article, Abdel Hakim Belhaj was “not the first former opponent of Gaddafi to sue the British government.” In October 2011, Sami al-Saadi (also known as Abu Munthir), another prominent opponent of Gaddafi, who was rendered from Hong Kong with his wife and four children, “launched an action to claim damages from the British government after the documents discovered in Tripoli revealed the key role played by MI6 in his rendition as well. The Tripoli documents revealed a fax the CIA sent to Moussa Koussa, just two days before Tony Blair’s visit to Gaddafi [to welcome him as an ally in the "war on terror"], which, as the Guardian put it, ‘shows that the agency was eager to join in the Saadi rendition operation after learning that MI6 and Gaddafi’s government were about to embark upon it.’”

In December 2012, Mr. al-Saadi and his family accepted a settlement of £2.23m from the British government. Mr. Belhaj, however, has refused to negotiate a settlement. As the Guardian described it, he “is seeking nominal damages of £1 and an apology from the British government.”

“I’m not interested in taking revenge for the past,” Mr. Belhaj said. “I want to build relations with the UK afresh. It’s natural for people to want to have justice to right their wrongs. We are very thankful for the way the British stood by us when we rid ourselves of the regime of Gaddafi. My faith in British justice has been restored.”

In their hearing, Mr. Belhaj and his wife submitted the following account of their ordeal, as described by their lawyers:

In the 1990s Mr. Belhaj was involved in a Libyan group opposed to Colonel Gaddafi and in 1998 he was forced to flee to Afghanistan. In 2003 he moved to China to evade detection by the Libyan intelligence agencies. In about June 2003 Mr. Belhaj married Mrs. Boudchar [aka Bouchar], who subsequently moved to China to live with him. In early 2004 they became concerned that they were no longer safe in China and decided to seek asylum in the United Kingdom. In February 2004, at which time Mrs. Boudchar was approximately four months pregnant, they tried to take a commercial flight from Beijing to London. They were detained at Beijing airport by Chinese border authorities for two days before being deported to Kuala Lumpur. On arrival in Malaysia they were taken by Malaysian officials to the Sepang Immigration Detention Centre where they were detained for approximately two weeks.

It is alleged that the respondents became aware that the appellants were being detained in Malaysia. On 1 March 2004 the Secret Intelligence Service informed the Libyan intelligence services where the appellants were being held. On 4 March 2004 the US Government became aware of the appellants’ detention in Malaysia and a plan was then formulated to abduct the appellants and transfer them to Libyan custody without any form of judicial process. On 4 March 2004 US officials sent two faxes to the Libyan authorities. The first stated that US authorities were working with the Malaysian Government to effect the extradition of Mr. Belhaj from Malaysia and to arrange his transfer to US custody. It stated that once they had Mr. Belhaj in custody “we will be very happy to service your debriefing requirements and we will share the information with you”. The second fax indicated that US officials were committed to rendering Mr. Belhaj to Libyan custody. It is alleged that on the 6 March the US sent two further faxes to the Libyan authorities. The first was entitled “Planning for the Capture Rendition of [Mr. Belhaj]”. It explained that the Malaysian Government had informed the US authorities that they were putting the appellants on a commercial flight from Kuala Lumpur to London via Bangkok on the evening of 7 March 2004. It stated that the US authorities were planning to arrange to “take control” of the appellants in Bangkok and place them on “our aircraft for a flight to your country”.

In response to the appellants’ repeated requests that they be allowed to travel to the United Kingdom they were told by the Malaysian authorities that they could travel to the United Kingdom only via Bangkok. On the evening of 7 March 2004 they boarded a commercial flight from Kuala Lumpur bound for London via Bangkok. Upon arrival at Bangkok they were removed from the plane by Thai officials and separated. Mrs. Boudchar alleges that she was taken to a van containing US agents who pulled her into the van, forced her onto a bench, blindfolded and bound her. Later she was forced out of the van into a building where she was placed in a cell where she was bound to two hooks. She alleges ill treatment during her detention. After a period of time she was hooded and bound in a painful manner and taped tightly to a stretcher. She was driven to a nearby building where she was released from the stretcher but her eyes and ears remained covered. She was punched in the belly. She was then injected with something which caused her to feel very weak. She was again taped onto a stretcher and driven to an aircraft.

Mr. Belhaj alleges that on arrival in Bangkok he was taken by two Thai officials to a van on the airport runway which contained US agents. They pulled him into the van and strapped him onto a stretcher, shackled and hooded him. He was taken in the van to a building and placed in a cell where he was chained to two hooks on the wall. Whilst still hooded he was repeatedly slammed into the wall. He was interrogated and subjected to loud music blasts. He was prevented from sleeping. He was beaten on arrival, when moved from one cell to another and before leaving the building. He was intermittently interrogated by two American men. After about a day he was injected with something which caused him to feel sleepy and confused. He was handcuffed, shackled and hooded and strapped onto a stretcher in a position which was extremely painful.

It is alleged that at sometime between 7 and 9 March 2004 Mr. Belhaj and Mrs. Boudchar were carried on stretchers onto an aircraft. They both allege further ill treatment during the flight. Shortly before landing in Tripoli Mr. Belhaj alleges that he was beaten again. Mrs. Boudchar was concerned that as a result of the ill treatment she suffered she had lost her baby. They were separated and driven to Tajoura Prison where they were placed in cells.

It is alleged that on 18 March 2004 Sir Mark Allen sent a letter to Mr. Mousa Kousa, the Head of the Libyan External Security Organisation, congratulating him on the successful rendition of Mr. Belhaj. The letter states:

“Most importantly, I congratulate you on the safe arrival of [Mr. Belhaj]. This was the least we could do for you and for Libya to demonstrate the remarkable relationship we have built up over recent years. I am so glad…[Mr. Belhaj’s] information on the situation in this Country is of urgent importance to us. Amusingly, we got a request from the Americans to channel requests for information from [Mr. Belhaj] through the Americans. I have no intention of doing any such thing. The intelligence about [Mr. Belhaj] was British. I know I did not pay for the air cargo. But I feel I have the right to deal with you direct on this and am very grateful to you for the help you are giving us.”

Mrs. Boudchar was detained in Tajoura Prison where she alleges further ill-treatment. She was released from prison on 21 June 2004 and gave birth to her son on 14 July 2004.

It is alleged that on his arrival at Tajoura Prison Mr. Belhaj was met by Mr. Kousa. Mr. Belhaj alleges that after approximately four months in Tajoura Prison his treatment by the Libyans became worse. He was kept in isolation without any natural light. He was subjected to intensive interrogations lasting for several days at a time. He was deprived of sleep by being chained by his wrist to a window in the interrogation room. He was beaten by guards, hung from walls and kept in solitary confinement, including being denied family visits, for much of 2005 and 2006.

Mr. Belhaj alleges that whilst detained in Tajoura Prison he was interrogated by British Intelligence Officers on at least two occasions. Mr. Belhaj alleges that he gestured to the British agents that he was being beaten and hung by his arms and showed them his scarred wrists. On another occasion, when he refused to sign a statement in relation to whether a group of Libyans in the United Kingdom had sent money to an armed group in Libya, he was told by a Libyan interpreter that the British team was in Libya waiting for this information and he was threatened with torture by being placed in a mechanical box with an adjustable ceiling that would restrict his movement. He signed the papers. There are further allegations of complicity by agents of the Security Service in interrogations in March and October 2004 and in February 2005.

After about three or four years in Tajoura Prison Mr. Belhaj was brought into a room which he was told was a court. Thirteen charges against him were read out. Mr. Belhaj attempted to defend himself against the charges. His defence lawyer simply repeated what Mr. Belhaj had said. Mr. Belhaj was then returned to his cell, the whole process having taken around fifteen minutes. Mr. Belhaj was later transferred to Abu Salim Prison where he was told that he had been found guilty and sentenced to death. At Abu Salim Prison he was kept in total isolation for a year. Conditions were insanitary. He was subjected to beating at the whim of the guards and medical treatment was non-existent. He was eventually released on 23 March 2010.

Speaking about the visits of British intelligence agents while he was in Tajoura Prison in Libya, Mr. Belhaj has stated, “On two or three occasions, delegations of MI6 officers visited me in Tajoura. They asked me various questions but while that was going on I made every attempt to indicate to them that I was subject to ill treatment in prison. I’m certain they understood but I didn’t see any response from them. The Libyan security services were very keen for the British to send other [Libyan exiles] back to Tripoli. The Libyan intelligence agencies were trying to force me to testify against other people, including Libyans who were living in Britain and had UK citizenship — which is appalling.”

It is indeed appalling, but as I explained in December 2011, Mr. al-Saadi was subjected to similar experiences. He stated that “he was interrogated about Libyans living in the UK, shown photographs of a number of them, and on one occasion questioned by two British intelligence officers while one of his Libyan interrogators was present,” and, as I explained, “what is clear from the experience of Libyan dissidents in the UK, who had claimed asylum, is that, after Gaddafi’s miraculous volte-face [in March 2004], his enemies were subjected to arbitrary imprisonment in the UK (in prisons, and also under house arrest) and shameful attempts to repatriate them, in contravention of the UN Convention Against Torture and the European Convention on Human Rights.”

As I also explained in December 2011, although a can of worms was being prised open in the UK, the Obama administration was “studiously avoiding having to answer any questions about the Bush administration’s involvement in the rendition and torture not only of Abdel Hakim Belhaj and Sami al-Saadi, but also of several other Libyans, some of whom I profiled for the United Nations” in a report on secret detention in 2010.

I added:

Most significant, however, is Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, the former emir of the Khaldan training camp in Afghanistan. Seized by the US crossing from Afghanistan to Pakistan [in December 2001], he was sent to Egypt to be tortured, where he came up with a false confession that al-Qaeda operatives had met with Saddam Hussein to discuss obtaining chemical and biological weapons. Al-Libi recanted his claim, but it was, nevertheless, used to justify the US-led invasion of Iraq, and al-Libi himself, after a tour of US torture prisons, was also returned to Libya, where he too was imprisoned and tortured. Unlike Belhaj, al-Saadi and others, however, al-Libi never survived. In May 2009, it was reported that he had committed suicide in his cell at Abu Salim prison, a story that no one with knowledge of Gaddafi — or, for that matter, the CIA — believed, especially as the US embassy in Tripoli reopened just three days after his death.

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer and film-maker. He is the co-founder of the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, 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).

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