Andy Worthington's Blog, page 110

Abu Qatada’s Release in Jordan Discredits Tory Hysteria About the Need to Dismiss Human Rights Law

Last Wednesday, in Amman, Jordan, 12 years of British hysteria about terrorism was thoroughly undermined when the radical cleric Abu Qatada, who was returned to Jordan from the UK in July 2013, was acquitted of terrorism charges and freed.

Abu Qatada (real name Omar Mahmoud Othman) was arrested in October 2002 — as were a handful of other foreign nationals — and imprisoned without charge or trial in Belmarsh Prison, under terrorism legislation passed in 2001. In 2005, the system of indefinite imprisonment without charge or trial was replaced with control orders, a form of house arrest, and Abu Qatada was released from Belmarsh, but after the London terrorist attacks in July 2005, he and other men were rounded up and imprisoned once more.

This time around the intention was to deport the men imprisoned without charge or trial, but although a secret terrorism court — the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) – ruled that he could be deported in February 2007, that decision was overturned by the appeals court in April 2008.

As the Guardian explained at the time, the three appeals court judges halted the deportations of Qatada and two Libyans “despite ‘memorandums of understanding’ (MoU) from Jordan and Libya promising that they would receive fair trials and not face torture.” The judges “blocked Qatada’s removal to Jordan on the grounds that it was likely he would face a trial based on evidence obtained under torture by the Jordanian intelligence services,” which would breach the UK’s obligations under Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects the right to a fair trial.

The month after, Abu Qatada was released under strict bail conditions, including a 22-hour daily curfew, but in November 2008 he was rearrested and returned to prison, pending fresh efforts to deport him, after SIAC agreed with claims made by the government, suggesting that it was “likely that he [would] break his bail conditions by absconding,” even though that seemed unfeasible to observers, like myself, who were sceptical about the hysteria used by the government in an attempt to justify its outrageous counter-terrorism measures.

In February 2009, the Law Lords shamefully reversed the appeals court ruling, as I explained in a major article at the time, ruling that Abu Qatada and a number of Algerians could be deported, although he remained imprisoned as his case was under consideration in the European Court of Human Rights, which ruled in January 2012 that, as the UK appeals court had ruled in 2008, he could not be deported because it would be a violation of his right to a fair trial under Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Bailed in February 2012, he was rearrested in April, after home secretary Theresa May said she had received assurances from Jordan that meant he could now be deported. However, Qatada appealed again, both in the European court and in the UK, where he asked Theresa May to drop the deportation order against him, and in November SIAC ruled that he was still at risk of having evidence obtained under torture used against him and Theresa May had been wrong not to revoke the deportation order against him.

During a visit to Italy, David Cameron responded by expressing exasperation with SIAC. “I am completely fed up with the fact that this man is still at large in our country,” he said. “He has no right to be there, we believe he is a threat to our country. We have moved heaven and earth to try to comply with every single dot and comma of every single convention to get him out of our country. It is extremely frustrating.”

In March 2013, he was arrested again for allegedly breaching his bail conditions, and later that month the appeals court rejected Theresa May’s appeal against SIAC’s ruling in November 2012, denying her leave to appeal in April, on the basis that “states cannot expel someone where there is a real risk that they will face a trial based on evidence obtained by torture.”

However, in May 2013, after further intensive negotiations between the UK and Jordan, Abu Qatada said that he would return to Jordan if a treaty was agreed and ratified by both the UK and Jordanian governments promising that evidence obtained through torture would not be used against him in a trial in Jordan, and when this was agreed, in July 2013, he was deported.

Reporting on the trial last week, the Guardian stated that the court in Amman “ruled there was insufficient evidence against Abu Qatada, with the judge describing the charges as weak and inadmissible.” He had initially been given a 15-year sentence in absentia in 2000 for his alleged role in an alleged plot to carry out terror attacks on Americans and Israelis during celebrations of the Millennium in Jordan, but without the information obtained through torture it turned out that there was no case.

As the Guardian also noted, six British home secretaries “spent a total of £1.7m trying numerous diplomatic moves to assuage judges’ fears that sending the preacher to Jordan would breach his human rights.”

That is a huge amount of money for nothing, but the government remains unrepentant. Trying to cover their embarrassment, ministers instead made a big noise about how Abu Qatada cannot return to the UK, which, to be honest, is not something he would want to do. The Guardian reported that the Home Office issued a statement saying, “He can’t come back, and he won’t come back. He is a Jordanian and he does not have a UK passport. He is also the subject of an indefinite deportation order as well. He would not be granted permission to enter the UK, end of story.”

All that noise, it seems to me, is designed to cover up a profoundly embarrassing truth — that, as well as spending £1.7m working out how to send Abu Qatada to Jordan, successive UK governments lied and exaggerated about the threat posed by Abu Qatada and other men detained without charge or trial on the basis of secret evidence, failing to prosecute them here in the UK, because there was no reliable evidence, and, instead, pretending that it was necessary  to deport them, even though doing so involved an unwise and unprincipled struggle to overturn the safeguards against torture that were put in place after the Second World War.

To make things worse, the day that Abu Qatada’s acquittal was announced, Chris Grayling, the justice secretary, told the Daily Telegraph that the Tories “are ready to change the law to ensure that Britain is no longer ‘powerless’ before the European court,” as the Telegraph put it, adding, “After extensive deliberations, the Conservatives are ready to unveil their plans to scrap the Human Rights Act and ensure that the final decision on controversial legal cases is taken by Britain’s Supreme Court and not judges in Strasbourg.”

As on so many issues of importance, the Tories, yet again, are playing a disgraceful populist card, repeatedly promoted by their tabloid messengers, even though it is not only unacceptable, legally, morally and ethically, but also unnecessary. That, lest we forget, is what Abu Qatada’s case actually shows.

Note: For an interesting perspective on this story, see “The Abu Qatada outcome is a hollow victory for human rights law” by Bernard Keenan in the Guardian.

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.

Life Sentence for Sulaiman Abu Ghaith Discredits Guantánamo’s Military Commissions

On Tuesday, in a courtroom in New York City, a long-running chapter in the “war on terror” came to an end, when Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, 48, a Kuwaiti-born cleric who appeared in media broadcasts as a spokesman for Al-Qaeda the day after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, received a life sentence based on the three counts for which he was convicted after his trial in March: conspiracy to kill Americans, providing material support to terrorists and conspiring to provide material support to terrorists.

The life sentence came as no surprise, as it is permissible for the main conspiracy charge, although Abu Ghaith’s lead defense lawyer, Stanley L. Cohen, had, as the New York Times described it, “sought a sentence of 15 years, saying in a court submission that his client was facing ‘the harshest of penalties for talk — and only talk.’” The Times added that Cohen had likened Abu Ghaith to “an outrageous daytime ‘shock-radio’ host, or a World War II radio propagandist for a losing ideology.”

In court, as the Times also noted, Cohen “emphasized that his client had played no role in specific acts of terrorism,” but the government had argued otherwise, stating in a sentencing memorandum that there was “no fathomable reason to justify a sentence other than life.”

During the court procedings, John P. Cronan, a federal prosecutor, had told the judge, Lewis A. Kaplan, that, although Abu Ghaith “had not been an ‘operational terrorist,’ he was ‘just as valuable, if not more so, than the person who strapped a suicide vest on himself and detonates a bomb.’”

That, I believe, is a dangerous argument to make, in a country that values freedom of speech, although it is one that has surfaced before in relation to terrorism since the 9/11 attacks — in the life sentence at Guantánamo in November 2008, after a trial by military commission, of Ali Hamza al-Bahlul, a Yemeni who made a promotional video for al-Qaeda (a sentence that has since been largely — though not entirely — overturned and discredited by an appeals court), and in the killing by drone attack of Anwar al-Awlaki, a US citizen, in Yemen in September 2011. The US tried to portray al-Awlaki as a “regional commander” of Al-Qaeda’s Yemen-based offshoot, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, although the evidence actually suggests that he was nothing more than a propagandist, and was killed because of the success of his propaganda, which, largely through the internet, disseminated a message of anti-American jihad in the English language.

Nevertheless, Abu Ghaith, who was held for over ten years under a form of house arrest in Iran before being freed in Turkey, and ending up in US custody last year after being deported to Jordan, failed to attract any sympathy from Judge Kaplan.

“You sir, in my assessment, are committed to doing everything you can to assist in carrying out Al-Qaeda’s agenda of killing Americans — guilty or innocent, combatant or noncombatant, adult or babies, without regard to the carnage that’s caused,” Judge Kaplan said at Abu Ghaith’s sentencing.

He added that Abu Ghaith had shown “no remorse whatsoever,” nor had expressed any doubt “about the justification for what was done.” He also said that Abu Ghaith continued to threaten the US, and in fact, as the Times also noted, Abu Ghaith had “offered no apology for his actions and did not ask for leniency. Instead, he told the judge that he would not ‘ask for mercy from anyone except God,’ and warned of the repercussions that his imprisonment would bring.”

“Islam is the religion that does not die when its followers die or get killed,” he said, “and it does not come to a stop when they get captured or imprisoned. At the same moment where you are shackling my hands and intend to bury me alive, you are at the same time unleashing the hands of hundreds of Muslim youth, and you are removing the dust of their minds. Soon, and very soon, the whole world will see the end of these theater plays that are also known as trials.”

Following the sentencing, Eric Holder, the Attorney General, issued a statement in which he said that the “trial, conviction and sentencing have underscored the power” of civilian courts “to deliver swift and certain justice in cases involving terrorism defendants.” He added, “We will continue to rely on this robust and proven system to hold accountable anyone who would harm our nation and its people.”

Just two days later, Holder announced his resignation, although his words should continue to have a resonance. One of the perceived failures of his time as Attorney General was when, having announced in November 2009 that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other men accused of planning and involvement in the 9/11 trial would be tried in federal court in New York, he was made to back down when opportunistic critics attacked the administration, and President Obama capitulated to the criticism.

As Eric Holder prepares to leave office, Abu Ghaith’s sentence at least vindicates his belief in federal court trials for those accused of terrorism, in contrast to the cheerleaders for torture and military commissions at Guantánamo. As the New York Times described it, “The trial had been widely watched, in part because the decision to prosecute Mr. Abu Ghaith in the civilian court system had been criticized by some members of Congress, who argued that he should have been held by the military for intelligence purposes.”

When the hysteria over the planned 9/11 trial blew up in late 2009, Jane Mayer of the New Yorker interviewed Holder, and wrote that:

[Holder was] determined not to capitulate on the idea of holding a 9/11 trial. “I don’t apologize for what I’ve done,” he told me at one point. “History will show that the decisions we’ve made are the right ones.” Holder said that he regarded trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a courtroom as “the defining event of my time as Attorney General.”

Unfortunately, Eric Holder — and the Obama administration — elected to keep the military commissions, and five other prisoners at Guantánamo (including Ali Hamza al-Bahlul, whose dubious conviction was mentioned above) were charged at the same time that the 9/11 trial was announced, which was a gift to critics of the trial — and supporters of Guantánamo. It is good that no one new has been sent to Guantánamo under Obama and Holder, but it remains a great shame that the military commissions crawl on, despite being thoroughly discredited, when federal courts are so obviously capable of delivering trials and sentences to those accused of terrorism.

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.

On Guantánamo, No News is Bad News

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 Guantánamo, the news has largely dried up in recent weeks, which is not reassuring for the 79 men — out of the 149 men still held — who have had their release approved but are still held. 75 of these men were recommended for release in 2009 by President Obama’s Guantánamo Review Task Force, and four others were recommended for release this year by Periodic Review Boards, established to review the cases of the majority of the men who were not cleared for release by the task force.

Since last May, when President Obama promised to resume releasing prisoners — after a period of nearly three years when only five men were released — 17 men have been released, which is obviously progress of sorts. The drought of releases from 2010 to 2013 was because of obstacles raised by Congress and the president’s refusal to use a waiver in the legislation to bypass Congress, but although it is reassuring that 17 men have been freed, the last of those releases was at the end of May, and campaigners for the closure of Guantánamo can be forgiven for wondering when the next prisoner will be released, especially as that last prisoner release — six Taliban leaders in exchange for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the sole US prisoner of war in Afghanistan — attracted such cynical and hysterical opposition.

According to reports in May, six of the cleared prisoners, from Syria, Palestine and Tunisia — all men who cannot be safely repatriated — were offered new homes in Uruguay after President Mujica responded positively to a request for assistance from the US.

At the start of September, the New York Times reported that the Uruguay deal had been postponed, but a Uruguayan spokesperson responded by stating that the agreement was still on, but no date had yet been set.

It is, of course, hugely disappointing that the release of prisoners to Uruguay has not yet happened, and unfortunately no other countries currently seem to be in line to take in prisoners. The New York Times reported that news of the Uruguay deal had “inspired similar talks with Brazil, Chile and Colombia,” according to regional news reports. In recent weeks, it has been reported that Chile is evaluating a request to accept prisoners, and that the Peruvian government had also been doing the same, but had turned down the request.

As the New York Times also put it, “as many as 14 other releases could also happen by the end of the year if they get approved,” according to officials with knowledge of deliberations, including deals “to repatriate four Afghans and a Mauritanian,” which were completed in March, but have not previously been reported. I mentioned the four Afghans here, and reported the story of the Mauritanian, Ahmed Ould Abdel Aziz, last year.

On September 11, AFP mentioned Aziz in an article noting how “dozens of Guantánamo detainees ought to have sight of freedom, but hard-won deals for their release are languishing awaiting a final Pentagon signature,” essentially because of the obstacles raised by Congress. As AFP also reported, sources within the administration said that “many of the new transfer deals had won a green light from five of the six government agencies involved.” The stumbling block is defense secretary Chuck Hagel, who “has to give final approval to every transfer,” and has been accused of dragging his feet.

Pentagon sources denied that, “saying every case needed proper and thorough review to ensure the right conditions are in place,” and in May Hagel himself explained his reticence.

As I reported recently:

In May, the White House sent Chuck Hagel a memo “saying he should accept more than ‘zero risk’” in approving prisoner transfers “because allowing the prison to remain open raised risks, too.” However, referring to the certification that must be made prior to any prisoner release, Hagel told the Times at the time, “My name is going on that document. That’s a big responsibility.”

In its mention of Ahmed Ould Abdel Aziz, AFP noted how he “is eager to be reunited with his wife, who was pregnant when he was detained, and the young son he has never met,” according to his lawyer, Anna Holland Edwards, who said there are only “so many formative years left and he wants to spend those years with his son,” adding, “He often talks not about living in Guantánamo, but of living in a grave.” She also said that, in addition to his wife and son, there is “an apartment, a job and a social network awaiting Aziz whenever he finally flies back to Mauritania.”

Here at “Close Guantánamo,” we remain convinced that, every day the prison at Guantánamo Bay remains open, it has a corrosive effect on America’s belief that it is a nation that upholds the rule of law, and also continues to create enemies abroad.

Releasing prisoners will not bring this shame and danger to an end on its own; for that, the prison must finally be closed and those accused of crimes tried in an internationally recognized forum, but it remains imperative that men approved for transfer out of the prison are released a soon as possible. Otherwise, it appears that America pretends to have reviews to decide whether to hold or release prisoners, but then fails to let them go if they are approved for release.

What you can do now

Call the White House and ask President Obama to release the Yemenis cleared for release. Call 202-456-1111 or 202-456-1414 or submit a comment online.

Call the Department of Defense and ask Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to issue certifications for other cleared prisoners: 703-571-3343.

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.

Photos: The People’s Climate March, London, September 21, 2014

See my photos of the People’s Climate March on Flickr here.

On September 21, 2014, all around the world, hundreds of thousands of people in 166 countries took part in over 2,800 events calling for urgent, coordinated action on climate change. The website for the New York City event — attended by an estimated 300,000 people — described it accurately as the “largest climate march in history.”

The trigger for the coordinated events around the world was the Climate Summit taking place at the United Nations headquarters in New York on Tuesday, where over 120 world leaders “will try to rally the political will for a new world-wide climate treaty by the end of 2015,” as the Wall Street Journal described it.

I attended the event in London, which involved around 40,000 people, a largely sunny day and a very friendly atmosphere, and took the photos available on Flickr. It was a powerful demonstration of widespread concern about the climate that is an important antidote to the cynical and well-funded climate change denial lobby, and the general indifference of politicians, who sometimes make positive noises about the environment, but are more generally in bed with the polluters — and, in addition, find themselves unable to tell the truth to their electorates: that we urgently need to make the environment a priority, and that doing so has to involve curbing our own destructive appetites.

The London march was organised by The Campaign against Climate Change with the support of Airport Watch, Avaaz, BP or Not BP, CAFOD, Christian Aid, Climate Coalition, Compass, Fire Brigades Union, Fuel Poverty Action, Grandparents for a Safe Earth, Greenpeace UK, One Million Climate Jobs, Operation Noah, Oxfam, People’s Assembly Against Austerity, Tearfund, Transport Salaried Staffs Association, WWF-UK and 350.org.

Note: See the Guardian‘s report on events around the world here, and see here for an interview in the New Yorker with the journalist and environmental activist Bill McKibben, one of the main organisers of the march. Also see the Guardian review of Naomi Klein’s new book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate, and an interview with Klein here.

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.

Final Appeal for Donations to Support My Work on Guantánamo: $1900 Still Needed

Please support my work!

Dear friends and supporters,

Normal service will resume next week, but in the meantime I’m still focusing on securing a financial basis for my work on Guantánamo and related issues for the next three months, and putting out a last shout for donations.

I’m enormously grateful to the 12 friends and supporters who have donated $600 (£350) to support my work for the next three months, but I’m still a long way from my target of $2500 (£1500). If you can help me to raise the $1900 (£1150) I’m still looking for, I’ll be very grateful.

As I have explained earlier on this fundraising week, the majority of my work is unpaid — or, rather, is reader-supported — so most of my articles, as well as the maintenance of this website and the social media associated with it, and most of my media appearances, are only possible with your support. If you can help out at all, please click on the “Donate” button above to donate via PayPal (and I should add that you don’t need to be a PayPal member to use PayPal).

All contributions to support my work are welcome, whether it’s $25, $100 or $500 — or, of course, the equivalent in pounds sterling or any other currency. You can also make a recurring payment on a monthly basis by ticking the box marked, “Make This Recurring (Monthly),” and if you are able to do so, it would be very much appreciated.

Readers can pay via PayPal from anywhere in the world, but if you’re in the UK and want to help without using PayPal, you can send me a cheque (address here — scroll down to the bottom of the page), and if you’re not a PayPal user and want to send a check from the US (or from anywhere else in the world, for that matter), please feel free to do so, but bear in mind that I have to pay a $10/£6.50 processing fee on every transaction. Securely packaged cash is also an option!

Next week I’ll be looking for new angles to take to put pressure on the Obama administration and Congress to address the ongoing horrors of Guantánamo — a place where 149 men are still held, and where over half of those men (79 in total) are still held despite having been approved for release by government task forces and review boards. In addition, lest we forget, a number of hunger-striking prisoners are still being force-fed, a horribly abusive process that has no place in a civilized society, and the very nature of Guantánamo — a place where those held still cannot receive family visits, and have reason to fear that they will never leave Guantánamo alive — ought to be a persistent source of shame to all decent people.

I hope you’ll stay with me as I continue to challenge the ongoing injustice of Guantánamo.

With thanks, as ever, for your support.

Andy Worthington

London

September 19, 2014

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.

Quarterly Fundraiser Day 3: Still Seeking $2200 to Support My Guantánamo Work

Please support my work!

Dear friends and supporters,

Every three months, I ask you, if you can, to donate to support my research, writing and campaigning on Guantánamo and related issues. This has been the focus of my working life for the last eight and a half years, and, in order to focus on the need to close Guantánamo, to return to the rule of law, and to hold accountable those who authorized the many crimes of the “war on terror,” most of my work is independent and reader-supported. I don’t have an institution or a think-tank behind me, and although I do some mainstream media work I don’t generally pursue it because the mainstream media is generally only interested in Guantánamo in fits and starts.

As a result, I need your support to enable me to keep working as I do. Since launching my quarterly fundraiser on Monday, nine friends have donated $300, but I am still seeking another $2200. Over three months, that is just $200 a week — not a huge amount for the work I do, which involves media interviews and public appearances (mostly unpaid), as well as all my writing.

I know that tens of thousands of people read my work, through this website and via Facebook and Twitter, and if just a hundred of you gave $25 — or £15 — I’d reach my target.

If you can help out at all, please click on the “Donate” button above to donate via PayPal (and I should add that you don’t need to be a PayPal member to use PayPal). You can also make a recurring payment on a monthly basis by ticking the box marked, “Make This Recurring (Monthly),” and if you are able to do so, it would be very much appreciated.

Readers can pay via PayPal from anywhere in the world, but if you’re in the UK and want to help without using PayPal, you can send me a cheque (address here — scroll down to the bottom of the page), and if you’re not a PayPal user and want to send a check from the US (or from anywhere else in the world, for that matter), please feel free to do so, but bear in mind that I have to pay a $10/£6.50 processing fee on every transaction. Securely packaged cash is also an option!

I hope very much that you can help me to continue working as an independent expert on Guantánamo. Like other long-term campaigners, I sometimes find it difficult to believe that Guantánamo will have been open for 13 years in January, longer than the two World Wars combined, and difficult not to get exhausted by the long struggle to get it closed, which has been made unnecessarily difficult by fear-mongering lawmakers in Congress, and President Obama’s refusal to challenge Congress adequately.

Nevertheless, those of us who care about justice and the rule of law — and who also think about the men held at Guantánamo, far from their families, and still subjected to the abusive nature of indefinite detention without charge or trial — must continue working to close it. With your help, I will continue to do so.

With thanks, as ever, for your support.

Andy Worthington

London

September 17, 2014

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.

Shameful: US Judge Increases Prison Sentence of Tortured US Enemy Combatant Jose Padilla

[image error]Of the tens of thousands of victims of the Bush administration’s novel approach to detention in the “war on terror” — which involved shredding the Geneva Conventions, the use of torture and indefinite detention without charge or trial, and, in some cases, extraordinary rendition –  few of the victims were American citizens, but three particular individuals need to be remembered, because they were not only tortured and held without charge or trial for years, but their torture and lawless detention took place on US soil.

The three men are Jose Padilla, Yaser Hamdi and Ali al-Marri (the latter a legal US resident rather than a citizen), and Padilla — a former Chicago gang member who converted to Islam, and was held as an “enemy combatant” on US soil from May 2002, when he was seized after returning him from Pakistan, until November 2005 — was back in the news last week when a judge extended to 21 years the sentence of 17 years and four months he received in January 2008, when he was convicted of conspiracy to murder, kidnap and maim people abroad, and providing material support for terrorism.

The sentence was a disgrace, as I explained at the time in an article entitled, “Why Jose Padilla’s 17-year prison sentence should shock and disgust all Americans,” because of Padilla’s torture, which had destroyed his mind, because the judge prohibited all mention of his torture during the trial, and because the “dirty bomb plot” he had allegedly been involved in had turned out to be non-existent, and his trial and sentence was based instead on his involvement in a handful of phone calls that made reference to jihad.

In September 2011, as I explained at the time, “the latest phase in this alarming saga of paranoia, torture and injustice took place in Florida, when the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit not only backed the government against Padilla, but went so far as to vacate the original sentence, in effect telling the judge that she had been too lenient, and that she should revisit her ruling and hand down a much longer sentence.”

Padilla’s new 21-year sentence was handed down by Judge Marcia Cooke in the District Court for the Southern District of Florida last Tuesday, when she made a point of ordering him to remain held in a super-maximum security prison. As Reuters explained, when it came to Padilla’s original sentence, federal prosecutors had “agreed not to seek more than 30 years in prison for Padilla as long as his lawyers did not introduce records related to alleged harsh conditions he endured during the 3-1/2 years spent in a South Carolina military prison.”

Reuters use of the word “alleged” is, I believe, disingenuous, as Padilla’s torture was not disputed by the Supreme Court in May 2012, when, nevertheless, the court refused to find for Padilla in his case against torture architect John Yoo, the lawyer who wrote the 2002 memos justifying torture while working in the Office of Legal Counsel, the Justice Department office that, ironically, is supposed to provide impartial legal advice to the Executive Branch. Padilla was seeking $1 in symbolic damages from Yoo, but the Supreme Court wouldn’t allow him his day in court.

As the New York Times described it at the time:

In a 35-page opinion, the judges state that “Although it has been clearly established for decades that torture of an American citizen violates the Constitution, and we assume without deciding that Padilla’s alleged treatment rose to the level of torture, that such treatment was torture was not clearly established in 2001-03.” Mr. Yoo is therefore entitled to immunity.

And the torture? Well, the treatment that the Supreme Court “assume[d] without deciding” rose “to the level of torture” was as follows:

[H]e was subjected to prolonged isolation; deprivation of light; exposure to prolonged periods of light and darkness, including being “periodically subjected to absolute light or darkness for periods in excess of twenty-four hours”; extreme variations in temperature; sleep adjustment; threats of severe physical abuse; death threats; administration of psychotropic drugs; shackling and manacling for hours at a time; use of “stress” positions; noxious fumes that caused pain to eyes and nose; loud noises; withholding of any mattress, pillow, sheet or blanket; forced grooming; suspensions of showers; removal of religious items; constant surveillance; incommunicado detention, including denial of all contact with family and legal counsel for a 21-month period; interference with religious observance; and denial of medical care for “serious and potentially life-threatening ailments, including chest pain and difficulty breathing, as well as for treatment of the chronic, extreme pain caused by being forced to endure stress positions.”

Despite all this, Judge Cooke still had the nerve to say, last Tuesday, before re-sentencing Padilla, “There are certain things we know and don’t know about how Mr. Padilla was held.”

Reuters noted that Padilla “sat shackled in a khaki jumpsuit and did not speak during the two-hour hearing.” His mother, Estela Lebron, who, in 2012, tried to sue former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and a number of high-ranking military officials for violating the US constitution, said after the sentencing, “Washington, D.C., George Bush, Barack Obama, all of the judges … they know that my son was tortured.” His brother, Tomas Texidor, also spoke, telling the court, “He’s not the man you think he is.”

I hope you share my disgust at the continuing disdainful treatment of Jose Padilla, and will share this article if you do. Below I am also making available some information about the other US “enemy combatants,” Yaser Hamdi and Ali al-Marri.

About Yaser Hamdi and Ali al-Marri

Yaser Hamdi, seized in Afghanistan in December 2001, and flown to Guantánamo on February 11, 2002, was born in 1980 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to Saudi parents, but moved to Saudi Arabia when he was a child. Nevertheless, he retained his US citizenship, causing consternation to the authorities at Guantánamo when his nationality was discovered, because only foreigners were supposed to be held without rights in Guantánamo.

Hamdi was moved from Guantánamo to a navy brig in Norfolk, Virginia, on April 5, 2002. He was later moved to a navy brig in Charleston, South Carolina, and, in total, he was held incommunicado for nearly two years until he was allowed to meet with a lawyer, in February 2004. The month before, the Supreme Court agreed to hear his case, Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, and on June 28, 2004 the court issued a hugely important ruling, in which eight of the nine justices agreed that the Executive Branch does not have the power to hold a US citizen indefinitely without basic due process protections that are enforceable through judicial review.

In a memorable passage, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor stated that “a state of war is not a blank check for the President when it comes to the rights of the nation’s citizens.” She also wrote, “An interrogation by one’s captor, however effective an intelligence-gathering tool, hardly constitutes a constitutionally adequate fact-finding before a neutral decision-maker.”

On October 9, 2004, after agreeing to renounce his US citizenship, Hamdi was released, and deported to Saudi Arabia, where he was subjected to severe travel restrictions.

Ali al-Marri, a legal US resident, was also held as an “enemy combatant” on US soil, from June 2003 until President Obama took office in January 2009, when he was moved into the federal court system, and in those early years he too was subjected to torture. In October 2009, he received an eight-year sentence as part of a plea deal, having accepted that he had come to the US as an al-Qaeda agent. Unlike Padilla, the judge in his case, Judge Michael M. Mihm of the District Court in Peoria, Illinois, “accepted a request from al-Marri’s lawyers to take into account the nearly eight years he ha[d] already spent in US custody, including the five years and eight months that he spent in almost complete isolation as part of the Bush administration’s aberrant ‘War on Terror’ policies,” as I explained at the time.

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.

Quarterly Fundraiser: Can You Help Me Raise $2500 to Support My Guantánamo Work?

Please support my work!

Dear friends and supporters,

It’s that time of year when I ask you, if you support my work on Guantánamo and the “war on terror,” to make a donation, if you can, to support my work. I have been researching and writing about Guantánamo for eight and a half years, since spring 2006, and I will continue to write about it, and to campaign for its closure, until it is finally shut for good.

Most of my work is unpaid, so many of my articles, the maintenance of this website and the social media associated with it, and most of my media appearances are only possible with your support. If you can help out at all, please click on the “Donate” button above to donate via PayPal (and I should add that you don’t need to be a PayPal member to use PayPal).

All contributions to support my work are welcome, whether it’s $25, $100 or $500 — or, of course, the equivalent in pounds sterling or any other currency. You can also make a recurring payment on a monthly basis by ticking the box marked, “Make This Recurring (Monthly),” and if you are able to do so, it would be very much appreciated.

Readers can pay via PayPal from anywhere in the world, but if you’re in the UK and want to help without using PayPal, you can send me a cheque (address here — scroll down to the bottom of the page), and if you’re not a PayPal user and want to send a check from the US (or from anywhere else in the world, for that matter), please feel free to do so, but bear in mind that I have to pay a $10/£6.50 processing fee on every transaction. Securely packaged cash is also an option!

Since my last fundraiser in June, I have done my best to keep Guantánamo in people’s minds, through my writing here, and on the “Close Guantánamo” website, which I established with the US lawyer Tom Wilner three years ago, and also through my work for Al-Jazeera (see here and here), and my public appearances — for example, my appearance on a lively show on CCTV America last week.

As we count down to the 13th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, on January 11 next year — an anniversary that, I believe, few us expected to see when President Obama took office in January 2009 — all of us who want to see Guantánamo closed, and have spent many long years working to that end, must continue to put pressure on the Obama administration to fulfill his promise to close  Guantánamo, which he made when he took office, and to continue releasing prisoners approved for release — 79 of the remaining 149 prisoners — as he promised in a major speech last May.

I hope to be involved in new initiatives over the next few months to maintain pressure on the Obama administration, and to keep educating people about  Guantánamo, and why it must be closed, but in the meantime, I’d like to thank you, as ever, for your support, and, in advance, to thank those of you who are willing and able to donate to support my work. I genuinely cannot do what I do without your help.

Andy Worthington

London

September 15, 2014

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.

The Despair of Guantánamo’s Most Prominent Hunger Striker

Guantánamo’s most prominent hunger striker is Abu Wa’el Dhiab, a 43-year old Syrian prisoner, married with four children and long cleared for release, who is in a wheelchair as a result of his treatment in US custody, and has been on a hunger strike since last spring.

Others have been on a hunger strike for longer — one man has been refusing food since 2005, and others have been starving themselves since 2007 — but Mr. Dhiab is particularly well-known because, in May, a US judge — District Judge Gladys Kessler, in Washington D.C. — ordered the government to stop force-feeding him, and to preserve videotaped evidence of his force-feeding, and his “forcible cell extractions” (FCEs), when a team of armored guards drags him out of his cell to take him to be force-fed.

Soon after, Judge Kessler reluctantly dropped her ban on Mr. Dhiab’s force-feeding, fearing that otherwise he would die. However, she also ordered the government to release the videotapes to Mr. Dhiab’s lawyers, and, after seeing them, one of his legal team, Cori Crider of the legal action charity Reprieve, said that she “had trouble sleeping after viewing them.”

16 major US news organizations subsequently submitted a motion calling for the videotapes to be made public — as did Mr. Dhiab’s wife. No decision has yet been taken on that motion, but in the meantime Judge Kessler ordered the authorities at Guantánamo to allow two independent doctors to visit the prison to evaluate Mr. Dhiab’s health.

With all this pressure on the government, it would have made sense for Mr. Dhiab to be released, to bring his legal challenges to an end, but although President Mujica of Uruguay agreed to offer new homes to Mr. Dhiab and five other cleared prisoners who cannot be safely repatriated in March this year, they are still held.

In July, the Pentagon told Congress it intended to release Mr. Dhiab and the five other men, giving lawmakers 30 days’ notice, as required in the legislation passed by Congress to make it difficult to release men from Guantánamo. However, the deal has been delayed. Earlier this week, Ben Fox of the Associated Press reported that Diego Canepa, a spokesman for President Mujica, recently stated that “aspects of the transfer were still being finalized and that it would be unlikely within the next two to three months,” which “would put it past Uruguay’s Oct. 26 presidential and legislative elections, and perhaps even a possible Nov. 30 runoff.”

Fox noted that the US government said that the transfer of Dhiab and the other men was “still going to happen.” Ian Moss, an adviser to Cliff Sloan, the Special Envoy for Guantánamo Closure at the State Department, said, “We are very appreciative of Uruguay’s decision to resettle these individuals. It truly is a significant humanitarian gesture.”

Ben Fox also spoke to Alka Pradhan, one of his lawyers at Reprieve, about his current condition. After 18 months on a hunger strike, he weighs just 155 pounds, and Pradhan described him as “pale and weak,” and “so lethargic at times” that “he had to lie on the floor when he met with her one day this summer” at the prison. “Everyone who has seen him recently is alarmed,” she said, adding that “he has only eaten parts of a meal or a nutritional supplement to avoid the ‘forcible cell extraction,’ to which he has been subjected 48 times so far this year.”

According to a recently submitted affidavit from Army Col. David Heath, the new commander of the guard force at Guantánamo (known as the Joint Detention Group), since April Mr. Dhiab “has physically assaulted troops three times and twice used vomit and feces to attack them,” and has also “threatened to kill guards.” As Ben Fox put it, Col. Heath stated that he is “considered to pose such a danger that officials opposed allowing him to be unshackled” when, two weeks ago, the doctors hired by his legal team visited the prison to assess his health.

“Given his recent behavior, the risk is unacceptable that Mr. Dhiab would take advantage of the opportunity presented by being completely unrestrained … to further commit harmful acts that endanger the guards, the medical consultants or himself,” Col. Heath stated, in the affidavit submitted on August 26.

In the Associated Press article, Alka Pradhan responded to Col. Heath’s claims by stating that she “expects his hunger strike will continue.” She said, “He is so desperate to see his family and see his kids,” adding, “He really doesn’t want to die. But you can understand him not wanting to end his hunger strike until he’s actually on a plane.”

I can also understand that Mr. Dhiab’s despair is such that he has occasionally resorted to lashing out at those who are oppressing him and force-feeding him, but the authorities at Guantánamo remain so insensitive that they refuse to accept what despair can do to a man who continues to be held indefinitely without charge or trial, even though he has been told repeatedly that he will be freed.

I sincerely hope that the Uruguay deal will not be subjected to further delays, and that Mr. Dhiab will soon be free to be reunited with his wife and children, who currently live in Turkey. It is time for his horrendously long ordeal to come to an end.

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.

Calling for the Closure of Guantánamo on the 13th Anniversary of the 9/11 Attacks

I wrote the following article, under the heading, “On the 13th Anniversary of 9/11, It’s Time for Guantánamo to Close,”  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.

It’s 13 years since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, but while it remains important to remember all those who died on that dreadful day, it is also important to acknowledge the terrible mistakes made by the Bush administration in response to the attacks.

First came the invasion of Afghanistan, to overthrow the Taliban and defeat Al-Qaeda, in which, as Anand Gopal, the author of No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War through Afghan Eyes, told me, the US vastly overstayed its welcome, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Then there was the illegal invasion of Iraq, and the blowback from that conflict that is evident in the rise of ISIS/ISIL in Iraq and Syria, as well as the hundreds of thousands of civilians killed in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In addition, the US also embarked, after 9/11, on a program of extraordinary rendition and torture, in defiance of domestic and international laws, as documented in the still-unreleased Senate Intelligence Committee report, and established, at Guantánamo, a prison where those held have been held neither as criminal suspects, nor as prisoners of war protected by the Geneva Conventions, but as “enemy combatants,” indefinitely imprisoned without charge or trial. For the first two and a half years of their imprisonment, they had no rights at all, and even though they eventually secured habeas corpus rights, the legal avenue to their release has been cynically cut off by appeals court judges.

At the weekend — in other words, just a few days before the 9/11 anniversary — the New York Times focused on the ongoing injustice at Guantánamo in an editorial, “Limbo and Cruelty at Guantánamo,” in which the editors wrote about the 149 men still held, out of the 779 men held throughout the prison’s 12 year and eight month history, describing the prison as a “nightmarish American outpost,” and noting that they “remain adrift in a limbo of justice denied,” in which they are “trapped as much by the tooth-and-claw politics of Washington as by the legal dilemmas rooted in bungled government policy.” The Times‘ editors added, “Their de facto sentence, without benefit of trial, is to wait and wait for some far-fetched resolution to their open-ended imprisonment.”

The Times‘ editors also noted that 79 of the remaining prisoners — over half of the men still held –  “are officially rated as low-level detainees — nonstrategic Taliban foot soldiers and others already recommended for release to other countries under a resettlement policy.” 75 of these men were recommended for release by the high-level, inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force that President Obama established shortly after first taking office, but they remain held because of obstacles raised by Congress, and because of President Obama’s unwillingness to spend political capital bypassing Congress, using a waiver in the legislation relating to the Guantánamo prisoners. Four other men have had their release approved in recent months by Periodic Review Boards, established to review the cases of the majority of the men not approved for release by the task force.

Citing Charlie Savage’s recent detailed report about Guantánamo, which I covered here, the editors noted that the resettlement policy “has presented huge hurdles,” and specifically mentioned six men, who cannot be safely repatriated and who were meant to be flown to new lives in Uruguay last month, until, as Charlie Savage reported, based on discussions with US officials, “the agreement fell apart at the last minute when the Uruguayan president, José Mujica, feared it could prove politically risky at home.”

A spokesperson for the Uruguayan government disputed the claim that the deal “fell apart,” but this will provide no comfort to the six men. In addition, even a cursory examination of the 79 men approved for release reveals that the majority of them — 58 men in total — are Yemenis. In January 2010, President Obama imposed a ban on releasing any Yemenis, following a failed airline bomb plot in December 2009 that was hatched in Yemen. That ban was always an unacceptable imposition of what I call “guilt by nationality,” but it was finally dropped by the president in a major speech on Guantánamo last May, although since then no Yemenis have been freed.

The Times‘ editors also wrote about the remaining 70 prisoners, claiming that they “are considered higher-level suspects,” and noting that they “includ[e] some alleged 9/11 principals whose potential prosecutions have been blotted by earlier policies of official torture.” It is reassuring to see the Times finally referring to torture by name, but unfortunately, overall, the description of the remaining 70 men should acknowledge that those who consider them as “higher-level suspects,” based on the task force’s deliberations, have not objectively established that they are guilty of anything or that they are genuinely a threat to the US. Just a handful of men are facing trials, and the rest of the 70, as noted above, are scheduled to face Periodic Review Boards, which have already approved four men for release.

The Times‘ editors also wrote about how the obstacles to the prison’s closure have meant that the prison itself is now decaying, while the men still held are aging, and, increasingly, need more medical treatment. However, because of what the editors call “Congress’s ban on the sensible Guantánamo solution — transferring high-level detainees to better equipped, secure prisons in the United States — [which] also includes a ban on sending extremely ill prisoners to the mainland for treatment … doctors and expensive equipment must be flown in to Guantánamo Bay when needed.”

That ban on transferring prisoners to the mainland for any reason is the one that particularly needs to be overcome if Guantánamo is ever to be closed, but last year lawmakers refused to drop their ban, and they will probably be unwilling to do so this year after the manufactured hysteria that followed a prisoner exchange in May, when the administration released five Taliban leaders in exchange for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the sole US prisoner of war in Afghanistan.

In addition, as the Times‘ editors noted, Charlie Savage’s article also reported a split “between State Department officials eager to see low-level detainees transferred to other countries and Pentagon officials who are more cautious about potential risks.” The editors also wrote about how the ongoing existence of Guantánamo inspires terrorism, describing how the recent “hideous beheadings of two American journalists,” in which “the Islamist killers dressed their victims in bright orange prison garb,” was “widely taken as an allusion to the prison at Guantánamo Bay.”

In conclusion, whatever obstacles have been raised to prevent the closure of Guantánamo, it remains clear that the status quo is unacceptable. As the Times‘ editors noted, “Congress remains determined to keep the prison open, if only as a symbol of vengeance.” And yet, they added, the prison at Guantánamo “should have been closed years ago.”

They concluded their editorial by declaring, “It endures now as a symbol of injustice.”

It does indeed — and, as we have been saying since we started this website in January 2012, the 10th anniversary of the opening of the Guantánamo prison, it needs to be closed 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.