Andy Worthington's Blog, page 132

I’m on Holiday for Two Weeks: Please Keep Sharing and Liking the GTMO Clock, Which Aims to Shame President Obama on Guantánamo

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Click on the image to visit the GTMO Clock website and see how many days it has been since President Obama promised to resume releasing prisoners from Guantánamo, and how many men have been freed.

I’m away with my family to Sicily for two sun-drenched weeks of rest and relaxation — actually, it will more probably involve a fair amount of clowning around, and walking the Mediterranean streets at noon, like the Mad Dogs and Englishmen Noel Coward sang about, but I am sure it will be relaxing, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to unwind for a little while and recharge my batteries.

It’s been an intense six months on the Guantánamo front, and I’m acutely aware that there is no good news for the men still held there, who embarked on a prison-wide hunger strike over six months ago to protest about the conditions of indefinite confinement in which they all find themselves, regardless of whether or not they have been cleared for release. 86 of the remaining 166 prisoners have, but they remain held because President Obama lacks the political will to make their release a priority, faced with hostility from Congress, where opportunistic lawmakers have imposed onerous restrictions on the release of prisoners.

Please keep the men in your thoughts, if you can. Write to them, and if you haven’t already done so, visit the GTMO Clock website I launched last week, designed by Justin Norman, to see how many days it is since President Obama promised to resume releasing cleared prisoners (in a major speech on national security on may 23), and how many men have so far been released. The answer isn’t pretty.

If you find it useful, please like it, Tweet it and share it. It currently has nearly 800 likes, but I hope to reach out to thousands more people, as this ongoing injustice grinds on, and the GTMO Clock counts every second of it, reminding President Obama of how his fine words on Guantánamo have yet again turned to ashes.

I’ll be checking in when I can over the next fortnight, but I will also be trying to briefly let go of the cares of the world. The months ahead will be challenging, for all of us who care about injustice, and we will need to be at maximum strength.

So whatever you’re doing for the next two weeks, I hope you too can find some time to relax. Those who need our support may not be able to do so, but we need to be at our strongest to take on the forces of injustice and indifference arrayed against us.

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 four-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, “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 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.

Guantánamo: British Ex-Intelligence Officer On Hunger Strike in Support of Shaker Aamer

On Monday, Harry Ferguson, 52, a former officer with MI6, the British intelligence agency, began a week-long hunger strike, as part of the Stand Fast for Justice initiative launched by the legal action charity Reprieve, in support of the prisoners at Guantánamo Bay — and, in particular, Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, who continues to be held despite being cleared for release by a military review board under President Bush in 2007 and by President Obama’s inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force in January 2010. Others who have been hunger striking as part of the campaign include Julie Christie, the comedian Frankie Boyle, and Reprieve’s Director, Clive Stafford Smith.

Shaker is one of 86 men cleared for release by the task force but still held at Guantánamo, because of a lack of political will on the part of President Obama and obstruction by Congress, and has been part of the prison-wide hunger strike that began in February. At its peak, the hunger strike involved up to 130 of the remaining 166 prisoners. That figure has apparently fallen recently, but 37 men are still being force-fed, a painful process that medical experts condemn as torture.

Explaining his reasons for embarking on a hunger strike in solidarity with Shaker and the other prisoners, Mr. Ferguson gave a statement that ought to shame everyone in the British establishment who has colluded with the Bush and Obama administrations in the lawlessness of the last 12 years, since the 9/11 attacks.

He said:

As an MI6 officer I took part in the struggle against terrorism and other threats to the UK and US. I am not some ‘bleeding heart’ liberal who believes that harsh measures are never justified. But I am ashamed that an organisation of which I was once proud to be a member now supports policies including assassination, rendition, torture and detention without trial.

He added, as the Observer described it, that “recent claims that British intelligence officers had been covertly campaigning against Aamer’s repatriation had proved the final straw” for him. He told the newspaper, “In fact Reprieve has recently uncovered evidence that MI6 is directly briefing against his return to this country because once he arrives here he will reveal that MI6 officers were present while he was being tortured.”

He also said, as the Observer described it, that “the shame he felt over such disclosures was heightened by recruitment work he had carried out for MI6 and lectures he had hosted defending the security services.”

As he put it:

Sadly, my advice today to any aspiring recruit who values the defence of human rights would be to stay away and do something better with their lives. The intelligence services are not what they were. Above all, they have forgotten the lessons that we learned during the struggle against Irish terrorism: that brutality and injustice are not the answer, they simply fuel the next generation of terrorists.

On his blog, Mr. Ferguson has been describing his fast, and this is what he had to say after his first day:

Well, that’s the first day over. Constant pain from stomach cramps and for some reason my energy level dropped to zero mid-afternoon. I could barely lift myself out of the chair at one point, but at least that passed. All this only serves to remind me of what Shaker and the other prisoners are going through. I have my family, especially my children, to support me (and occasionally taunt me with crisps in a good-natured way). Shaker has four children and he has been separated from them for more than ten years. All those missed birthdays, all those missed memories. How is it possible to withstand that kind of pain, never knowing when or even if it will ever end? And all this for a man who has never even been charged with a crime, let alone convicted. What happened to our supposed standards of justice in the Western world? When did we all agree to ditch them? Did I miss something?

That’s why all of us who are on the hunger strike are doing this. We can imagine the pain and suffering that Shaker’s captors can not or will not. We know it has to be stopped.

By yesterday, Day 2, Mr. Ferguson was struggling. In the afternoon, he wrote, “my temperature suddenly shot up and I was hit with wave after wave of nausea and retching. As I sit shivering and writing this, I am now running a proper fever.” He added, “I hope that Shaker and the other prisoners get some news of the efforts that all of the hunger strikers in the Stand Fast for Justice campaign are making. They are all heroes. I hope it gives them the strength to hang on.”

In the run-up to his fast, Mr. Ferguson also described his preparations. He began by buying lots of fruit because “Shaker’s advice is to eat nothing but fruit for the last two days before beginning the strike,” but after two days was already “painfully hungry,” although he added, “But it doesn’t really matter. I know I don’t have to face the horror of someone ramming a steel-tipped feeding tube down my throat. By comparison with that, simply being hungry seems almost pathetic.”

Mr. Ferguson’s reference was to a comment Shaker made early this year, when he told Clive Stafford Smith during a phone call, “The force-feeding itself is simple torture. Now they are using the metal-tipped tubes, forcing them in and pulling them out twice a day, leaving people vomiting on themselves in the restraint chair, and so forth.”

Describing Harry Ferguson’s hunger strike, Kat Craig, Reprieve’s Legal Director, said, “Harry’s protest sends a powerful message about just how far British and American intelligence agencies have strayed from the principles they are meant to protect.  It is disgraceful that Shaker is still being held beyond the rule of law.”

Clive Stafford Smith added, “It is a big deal that someone who is so linked in with MI6 is willing to make such a strong statement.”

Note: If you’re in London tomorrow (August 15), the Save Shaker Aamer Campaign is holding “a noisy protest” outside New Scotland Yard from 1pm to 3pm (see map). SSAC will also deliver a letter to the Commissioner of Police Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe. As they explain, “The protest is to draw attention to the lack of information from the Metropolitan Police following their investigation into Shaker Aamer’s allegations that he was tortured in Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002 in the presence of British intelligence Officers. Three years ago, the Director of Public Prosecutions asked New Scotland Yard to report on these allegations. SSAC believes that the investigation was intentionally delayed to prevent public knowledge of wrong-doing by Government secret agents. Eventually, earlier this year, the Metropolitan Police interviewed Shaker Aamer in Guantánamo. They were there for three days and took 120 pages of notes. Since then, there has been silence.”

They added, “However, there is already independent evidence to support Shaker Aamer’s allegations. In 2009, the High Court ruled that Shaker’s lawyers should have access to documents held by the Government. Lord Justice Sullivan stated that, “If this information is to be of any use, it has to be put in the client’s hands as soon as possible.” He said that the documents proved that UK agents were present on at least two occasions when Shaker was subjected to torture in Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002. The papers were withheld from Shaker and his lawyers on the grounds that disclosure would endanger national security. We call for this vital evidence to be made public. The only danger is to those who are trying to hide the truth. The Metropolitan Police have made their investigation. Their report should be made public.”

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 four-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, “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 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.

Congratulations to John Grisham for Writing about the Injustice of Guantánamo

In the long and horrendous history of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay, it has been noticeable that very few celebrities have challenged the myriad injustices of Guantánamo — the torture; the indefinite detention without charge or trial; the decision by the Bush administration to tear up every domestic and international law and treaty regarding the treatment of prisoners; the refusal to make a distinction between soldiers and terrorists; the bounty payments issued to America’s Afghan and Pakistani allies, which led to numerous civilians being rounded up and sent to Guantánamo; the pressure exerted on the prisoners to make them tell lies about themselves and their fellow prisoners, to create the majority of what passes for evidence at Guantánamo; the failure of President Obama to hold any Bush administration officials (up to and including President Bush) responsible for their actions; the failure of President Obama to close the prison as he promised; the failure of President Obama to resume releasing prisoners, as he promised in a major speech in May this year; the opportunistic fearmongering of Congress, which has raised almost insurmountable obstacles to prevent the release of prisoners or the closure of the prison; the decision by judges in the appeals court in Washington D.C. (the D.C. Circuit Court) to gut habeas corpus of all meaning in relation to the Guantánamo prisoners, and to shut the Great Writ down as a route out of the prison; and the decision by the Supreme Court to allow this cynical manipulation of the law to stand, and not to assert its authority over the appeals court.

As a result of the general indifference towards Guantánamo, it came as a great and pleasant surprise when, at the weekend, the author John Grisham, whose books have sold over 250 million copies, wrote an op-ed for the New York Times about the indefinite detention of prisoners at Guantánamo, focusing, in particular, on the case of Nabil Hadjarab, an Algerian national, and an orphan, with relatives in France who have been seeking his release for many years. Grisham found out about him because he was alerted to the fact that prisoners were being prevented from reading his books, and that Nabil was one of them — and I imagine he was made aware of this through his support for the Innocence Project, a non-profit organization in the US dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted people, which Nabil’s lawyers at Reprieve have also been involved in over many years.

Grisham, I’m glad to say, has understood perfectly the horrors of Guantánamo, as the following passages from his article show:

Nabil has not been the only “mistake” in our war on terror. Hundreds of other Arabs have been sent to Gitmo, chewed up by the system there, never charged and eventually transferred back to their home countries. (These transfers are carried out as secretly and as quietly as possible.) There have been no apologies, no official statements of regret, no compensation, nothing of the sort. The United States was dead wrong, but no one can admit it.

In Nabil’s case, the United States military and intelligence agents relied on corrupt informants who were raking in American cash, or even worse, jailhouse snitches who swapped false stories for candy bars, porn and sometimes just a break from their own beatings.

Nabil is one of 86 prisoners in Guantánamo (out of 166 in total) who are still held despite being cleared for release in January 2010 by President Obama’s Guantánamo Review Task Force, and is one of the many prisoners who have been engaged in a hunger strike since February.

Moreover, he is one of 46 prisoners who have been force-fed during the hunger strike, although it is currently reported that the number of force-fed prisoners is down to 38. Nabil recently submitted a motion to a US court calling for a judge to issue a ruling compelling the government to “stop force-feeding in the prison and stop force-medicating prisoners,” as I explained in a recent article, “Guantánamo Hunger Strike: Nabil Hadjarab Tells Court, ‘I Will Consider Eating When I See People Leaving This Place.’” The motion was refused, because of a legal precedent forbidding judges to interfere in decisions regarding the treatment of prisoners in Guantánamo, but not before a judge criticized the military and President Obama.

Please see below for John Grisham’s article, which brings Nabil’s story up to date with the rather disturbing announcement that he may be one of two Algerians whose planned release was recently announced by the Obama administration — the only two of the 86 cleared prisoners that Obama has shown any interest in releasing, even though he has no family in Algeria. As John Grisham stated, if he is released to Algeria, “His nightmare will only continue. He will be homeless. He will have no support to reintegrate him into a society where many will be hostile to a former Gitmo detainee.”

After Guantánamo, Another Injustice

By John Grisham, New York Times, August 10, 2013

About two months ago I learned that some of my books had been banned at Guantánamo Bay. Apparently detainees were requesting them, and their lawyers were delivering them to the prison, but they were not being allowed in because of “impermissible content.”

I became curious and tracked down a detainee who enjoys my books. His name is Nabil Hadjarab, and he is a 34-year-old Algerian who grew up in France. He learned to speak French before he learned to speak Arabic. He has close family and friends in France, but not in Algeria. As a kid growing up near Lyon, he was a gifted soccer player and dreamed of playing for Paris St.-Germain, or another top French club.

Tragically for Nabil, he has spent the past 11 years as a prisoner at Guantánamo, much of the time in solitary confinement. Starting in February, he participated in a hunger strike, which led to his being force-fed.

For reasons that had nothing to do with terror, war or criminal behavior, Nabil was living peacefully in an Algerian guesthouse in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Sept. 11, 2001. Following the United States invasion, word spread among the Arab communities that the Afghan Northern Alliance was rounding up and killing foreign Arabs. Nabil and many others headed for Pakistan in a desperate effort to escape the danger. En route, he said, he was wounded in a bombing raid and woke up in a hospital in Jalalabad.

At that time, the United States was throwing money at anyone who could deliver an out-of-town Arab found in the region. Nabil was sold to the United States for a bounty of $5,000 and taken to an underground prison in Kabul. There he experienced torture for the first time. To house the prisoners of its war on terror, the United States military put up a makeshift prison at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. Bagram would quickly become notorious, and make Guantánamo look like a church camp. When Nabil arrived there in January 2002, as one of the first prisoners, there were no walls, only razor-wire cages. In the bitter cold, Nabil was forced to sleep on concrete floors without cover. Food and water were scarce. To and from his frequent interrogations, Nabil was beaten by United States soldiers and dragged up and down concrete stairs. Other prisoners died. After a month in Bagram, Nabil was transferred to a prison at Kandahar, where the abuse continued.

Throughout his incarceration in Afghanistan, Nabil strenuously denied any connection to Al Qaeda, the Taliban or anyone or any organization remotely linked to the 9/11 attacks. And the Americans had no proof of his involvement, save for bogus claims implicating him from other prisoners extracted in a Kabul torture chamber. Several United States interrogators told him his was a case of mistaken identity. Nonetheless, the United States had adopted strict rules for Arabs in custody — all were to be sent to Guantánamo. On Feb. 15, 2002, Nabil was flown to Cuba; shackled, bound and hooded.

Since then, Nabil has been subjected to all the horrors of the Gitmo handbook: sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, temperature extremes, prolonged isolation, lack of access to sunlight, almost no recreation and limited medical care. In 11 years, he has never been permitted a visit from a family member. For reasons known only to the men who run the prison, Nabil has never been waterboarded. His lawyer believes this is because he knows nothing and has nothing to give.

The United States government says otherwise. In documents, military prosecutors say that Nabil was staying at a guesthouse run by people with ties to Al Qaeda and that he was named by others as someone affiliated with terrorists. But Nabil has never been charged with a crime. Indeed, on two occasions he has been cleared for a “transfer,” or release. In 2007, a review board established by President George W. Bush recommended his release. Nothing happened. In 2009, another review board established by President Obama recommended his transfer. Nothing happened.

According to his guards, Nabil is a model prisoner. He keeps his head down and avoids trouble. He has perfected his English and insists on speaking the language with his British lawyers. He writes in flawless English. As much as possible, under rather dire circumstances, he has fought to preserve his physical health and mental stability.

In the past seven years, I have met a number of innocent men who were sent to death row, as part of my work with the Innocence Project, which works to free wrongly convicted people. Without exception they have told me that the harshness of isolated confinement is brutal for a coldblooded murderer who freely admits to his crimes. For an innocent man, though, death row will shove him dangerously close to insanity. You reach a point where it feels impossible to survive another day.

Depressed and driven to the point of desperation, Nabil joined a hunger strike in February. This was not Gitmo’s first hunger strike, but it has attracted the most attention. As it gained momentum, and as Nabil and his fellow prisoners got sicker, the Obama administration was backed into a corner. The president has taken justified heat as his bold and eloquent campaign promises to close Gitmo have been forgotten. Suddenly, he was faced with the gruesome prospect of prisoners dropping like flies as they starved themselves to death while the world watched. Instead of releasing Nabil and the other prisoners who have been classified as no threat to the United States, the administration decided to prevent suicides by force-feeding the strikers.

Nabil has not been the only “mistake” in our war on terror. Hundreds of other Arabs have been sent to Gitmo, chewed up by the system there, never charged and eventually transferred back to their home countries. (These transfers are carried out as secretly and as quietly as possible.) There have been no apologies, no official statements of regret, no compensation, nothing of the sort. The United States was dead wrong, but no one can admit it.

In Nabil’s case, the United States military and intelligence agents relied on corrupt informants who were raking in American cash, or even worse, jailhouse snitches who swapped false stories for candy bars, porn and sometimes just a break from their own beatings.

Last week, the Obama administration announced that it was transferring some more Arab prisoners back to Algeria. It is likely that Nabil will be one of them, and if that happens another tragic mistake will be made. His nightmare will only continue. He will be homeless. He will have no support to reintegrate him into a society where many will be hostile to a former Gitmo detainee, either on the assumption that he is an extremist or because he refuses to join the extremist opposition to the Algerian government. Instead of showing some guts and admitting they were wrong, the American authorities will whisk him away, dump him on the streets of Algiers and wash their hands.

What should they do? Or what should we do?

First, admit the mistake and make the apology. Second, provide compensation. United States taxpayers have spent $2 million a year for 11 years to keep Nabil at Gitmo; give the guy a few thousand bucks to get on his feet. Third, pressure the French to allow his re-entry.

This sounds simple, but it will never happen.

Note: To add your voice to others calling for the French government to demand his return to France, please sign the Change.org petition here (in English), and please also watch the recently released short animated video below, in which Nabil’s words are spoken by the British actor David Morrissey. In the video, Nabil talks about the hunger strike and the force-feeding:

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 four-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, “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 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.

Endless Injustice: Newly Announced Guantánamo Review Boards Will Be Toothless Unless Cleared Prisoners Are Freed

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.

As the hunger strike at Guantánamo reaches the six-month mark, it is, sadly, apparent that President Obama has failed to act swiftly to release prisoners following his major speech on national security issues on May 23, when he promised, “To the greatest extent possible, we will transfer detainees who have been cleared to go to other countries.”

Since then, there has been some progress, just not enough. Last week it was announced that President Obama has notified Congress of his intention to release two Algerian prisoners, but 86 of the remaining 166 prisoners have been cleared for release since January 2010, when an inter-agency task force established by the president when he took office issued its report regarding the disposition of the prisoners, and all 86 need to be released.

I understand that Congress has imposed onerous restrictions on the release of prisoners, insisting that the administration must provide assurances that any released prisoner must be unable to engage in terrorist acts against the US. However, Guantánamo must be closed, as President Obama promised when he took office in January 2009, and the hunger strike must be brought to an end.

The only way forward is for President Obama to address both issues by releasing all the cleared prisoners as swiftly as possible — to their home countries if possible, to third countries if it is unsafe for them to be repatriated, and to the US if third countries cannot be found.

For the 80 other prisoners, it must also be shown that justice has not permanently disappeared, and to do that the president needs to put them on trial or release them. When the task force issued its report in January 2010, the recommendations were that 36 prisoners should be prosecuted, and 48 others should continue to be held without charge or trial, on the basis that they were to dangerous to release, but insufficient evidence existed to put them on trial.

The decision to continue holding 48 men without charge or trial was fundamentally unacceptable, and was only tolerated by critics of the administration because, when President Obama issued an executive order authorizing the ongoing detention of the 48 men in March 2011, he also promised that there would be periodic reviews of their cases to establish if they were still regarded as a threat.

Disgracefully, the Periodic Review Boards had still not been established two years and four months after President Obama issued his executive order, and it was not until July 20 that lawyers representing the prisoners were notified by the government that “the men who the Obama administration has determined can neither be prosecuted nor released will finally have their cases reviewed to determine whether they should still be indefinitely detained,” as Jason Leopold described it in his article announcing the news.

The following day, Carol Rosenberg in the Miami Herald elaborated, explaining that  71 of the remaining 166 prisoners would “get parole-board-style hearings.” This includes those designated for continued detention by the task force and in President Obama’s executive order of March 2011, whose numbers were reduced to 46 when two of them died at the prison in 2011, and 25 of the men recommended for prosecution.

This is progress of a kind, as it shows that the administration accepts that it is unacceptable to keep holding these men without reviewing their cases, and also recognizes that prosecution is unfeasible for the majority of the men recommended for prosecution by the president’s task force. This was demonstrated most powerfully last October, and in January this year, when judges in the federal appeals court in Washington D.C. dismissed the convictions against two of the only men ever convicted in the military commission system, on the basis that their crimes were not recognized as war crimes when the legislation governing the commissions was established by Congress in 2006 (after an earlier version was ruled illegal by the Supreme Court).

Since the task force recommended 36 men for prosecution, one was tried and convicted in federal court before Congress raised its ideological barriers, two have been tried and freed, two others have accepted plea deals but are still held, and eight others have been charged. That leaves 23 who will not be charged — close to the figure of 25 mentioned in the announcement that the PRB process has been initiated, and more than acknowledged in June by Brig. Gen. Mark Martins, the chief prosecutor of the military commissions, who said that, of the 33 men recommended for prosecution, a minimum of 19 would never be charged.

As the Miami Herald described the announcement of the establishment of the PRBs:

Retired Rear Adm. Norton C. Joerg, a former senior Navy lawyer during the Bush administration, advised the lawyers [for the prisoners] that the new six-member panels do not decide whether the Pentagon is lawfully imprisoning their captive client. Rather, the panel members “assess whether continued law of war detention is necessary to protect against a continuing significant threat to the security of the United States.”

However, for the PRBs to have any meaning, it  is imperative that the prisoners already cleared for release are freed, otherwise they are meaningless.

This was noted by Ramzi Kassem, a law professor at the City University of New York and the attorney for several Guantánamo prisoners, including Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, and Abdelhadi Faraj, a Syrian. Speaking to the Miami Herald, Mr. Kassem said, “For the Periodic Review Boards to be taken seriously, the US government should begin releasing the men that were cleared for release by the previous interagency entity years ago.”

While I await further news about the PRBs, and again offer my services to provide detailed and objective analyses of the men’s cases to assist the boards, as I have been offering since last year (through the “Close Guantánamo” campaign), I can only reiterate the importance of releasing cleared prisoners before embarking on another process that purports to approve any more prisoners for transfer out of the prison, but then fails to let them go.

The unpalatable truth, for Americans who believe that their country respects the rule of law, is that, at present, the men still held at Guantánamo are all indefinitely detained, prisoners of opportunistic Congressional obstruction and Presidential inertia, and they resemble the victims of dictatorships who have no regard for the law. Moreover, by establishing a task force to review their cases, and then refusing to release them when cleared for release, the US is actually acting with more cruelty than totalitarian regimes, which wouldn’t establish a process that purported to free prisoners, but then consigned them to indefinite detention anyway.

President Obama needs to release the 86 cleared prisoners, and he needs to do it now, and he also needs to ensure that the Periodic Review Boards for the the men are fair and objective. No other course of action is acceptable.

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 four-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, “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 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: Shaker Aamer Protest in London, and His Latest Message from Guantánamo

Shaker Aamer Protest in London, July 18, 2013, a set on Flickr.

Now that many people have been wakened to the plight of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo, through P.J. Harvey writing a song about him that has sent ripples through the music world, I hope that ongoing efforts to secure his release will attract more support in the months to come. After all, what excuse is there for people not to be outraged that he is one of 86 men cleared for release under President Bush and Obama who are still held, and that he is part of a prison-wide hunger strike to which the authorities are responding with force-feeding?

On July 18, as Parliament shut up shop for the summer, I joined campaigners from the Save Shaker Aamer Campaign and the London Guantánamo Campaign in Parliament Square, outside the Houses of Parliament, for a last vigil before the summer recess began. I have already posted a video of an interview I undertook on the day with a representative of the PCS union (the Public and Commercial Services union), but art the time I didn’t have the opportunity to make the photos I took available, and I was then derailed by a week away.

I’m posting them now to try to help keep Shaker’s story in the public eye, and also to thank the Save Shaker Aamer Campaign and the London Guantánamo Campaign for their tireless work to try and secure the closure of Guantánamo and the release of Shaker Aamer.

Below, I’m also posting the latest message from Shaker himself, via a phone call with his lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, the director of the legal action charity Reprieve, which was recently published in the Independent, and which, on Shaker’s part, deals with the Forcible Cell Extractions (FCEs) to which he is subjected on an horribly regular basis.

In the article, mention was also made of the claim that the US wants to return him to Saudi Arabia, where he would almost certainly be imprisoned, and would not be able to be reunited with his British wife and his four British children. As Clive Stafford Smith asked in the Independent‘s article, “Surely the US cannot think they can render him involuntarily for further abuse in Saudi Arabia, never to see his British wife and kids, and never to give evidence against his torturers in the ongoing criminal investigation by the Met Police?”

That last reference is to Shaker’s claim that British agents were present in the room when he was being violently treated by US operatives in Afghanistan, prior to his transfer to Guantánamo. This claim, recognized as valid by a British court back in December 2009, is being investigated by the Metropolitan Police, whose investigators recently travelled to Guantánamo to interview him.

The desire to shut Shaker up may explain why the British government has not told the Obama administration, in no uncertain terms, that he must be returned to the UK, but that is clearly the only acceptable course of action, as I explained in the notes that accompany the photos above, in which I wrote:

There is no excuse for Shaker still to be held, and it is disgraceful that (a) the US government wants to return him to Saudi Arabia, the country of his birth, where he would almost certainly be imprisoned, and not allowed to be reunited with his family, and (b) the British government has not done all in its power to demand and secure his return to the UK, as is their obligation.

See below for Shaker’s latest statement:

Shaker Aamer’s latest statement from Guantánamo, describing the Forcible Cell Extractions

The FCE (Forcible Cell Extraction team) are still using the Darth Vader uniforms after all these years. They use some female FCE members now. They bear down on my cell — stomp! Stomp! STOMP!

“239!” shouts the WC [Watch Commander]. I have heard these words in my sleep. “239! Lay down on your stomach! Your hands behind your back! Cross your legs! DO NOT RESIST THE TEAM!”

Then comes the translator. He says the same in Arabic, in a thin, reedy, whiny voice. Then comes the front guy in the FCE team, shouting, “I see the detainee! He’s laying on his back! He’s in the middle of the pen! He doesn’t have a weapon! The floor is dry! The detainee is dry!” Always the same words, rote.

On this occasion, it is about my ongoing protest. I won’t come in from the rec cage [recreation cage] without being forced to. I have said what I want to do: just sit there for a week, doing nothing, just sitting. It’s about as non-violent, non-problematic a protest as you could imagine, but they won’t let me do it.

Ultimately, it’s all about control, and if they feel they are not always in control, then that’s a threat to national security, a threat to the thousands of soldiers with their M16s at Guantánamo.

I refuse to do what they tell me, even though I know I am about to get beaten up. Sometimes, you just have to make a stand, however pointless that stand might seem to be.

The front guard is called FCE-1. Vooom! He runs at my head. FCE-2 through FCE-5 take their position, one on each arm, one on each leg. FCE-6 is back up. The “Head” guy is the worst. He is meant to “protect” your head, but actually he is grabbing pressure points to subdue you. If I shout, he pushes the pressure points to shut me up. They pin me down. “Leg FCE!” comes the shout and they shackle my legs. “Arm FCE!” and they shackle my arms. They might use steel or plastic shackles, though it’s mostly plastic.

Sometimes they get the shackles on backwards. I shout at the Watch Commander and the Corpsman, who are observing all this, as it’s painful. The Head man squeezes my neck. “Stop resisting!” he shouts.

“Team! Prepare to search!” They flip me over for the search. Mostly, that’s just an assault, sometimes a sexual assault. We call it the Gitmo massage. There is meant to be a board, like a wooden stretcher, and they are meant to roll me on. But now they don’t have them. Now they carry me like a sack of potatoes, which is much harder on the guards, and really painful for me.

“Team!” shouts FCE-6. “Push the detainee towards me!” They push me like a potato sack. Pat! Pat! Pat! More Gitmo massage. “Team! Prepare to lift!” They are meant to do a fireman’s lift, but they actually seize an arm or a leg and just yank. You are on your side, so one of them tends to be doing a half-nelson on me, in handcuffs. It’s like the Spanish Inquisition torture Strappado — you feel as if your shoulder is being dislocated.

FCE-6 has my head now. He is walking backwards, directing the others. “Watch the stairs! Step! Step! Step!” Up six steps; down six steps; through ten doors. “Watch Commander! Watch Commander!” I shout. “Look at my hand! It’s going to be broken!” If I try to move my hand, it’s “Stop Resisting! Stop Resisting!”

They get me to my cell. It’s been 150 metres. There’s a rec cage three metres from my cell, but they don’t let me use that one. They know then I would make them FCE me every time, as it wouldn’t hurt so much. So they take me 150 metres, through ten doors.

“Team! Halt!” “Team! Prepare to lower! Team! Lower!” They are all in touching distance of each other, but they have to shout. They put me on the cold concrete floor on my face. “Key in!” says FCE-6. “Leg’s unsecure!” “Key to Hands!” “Key in!” “Hands unsecure!” “Key out! Leg shackles out! Hand shackles out!”

I am on my stomach. The Pig has his hands pushing down on my back. My legs are crossed and pressed up towards my lower back. The Pig is 270lb, and there are 600 more pounds shoving him from behind, doggy style.

“239! Stay on the floor! DO NOT GET UP! Do not resist the Team! Stay down until we close the door!”

They go out one at a time. One of them falls over backwards. It seems rather comical. I lie still on the floor, because I know what is coming next. If you stay still, they come back in.

“239! Do you need medical attention! Do you need Tylenol?” “You fool!” I reply. “You were meant to prevent me from getting hurt. And now you’re telling me I can have a Tylenol.” “239 seems responsive!” he says.

Then I start singing. Today, it will be “Get up! Stand up!” by Bob Marley. Last time it was “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” by Eurythmics.

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 four-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, “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 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.

GTMO Clock Launched, 75 Days Since Obama’s Promise to Resume Releasing Prisoners from Guantánamo, and Six Months Since Hunger Strike Started

[image error]Please click on the “GTMO Clock” image to visit the website and see how many days it has been since President Obama promised to resume releasing prisoners from Guantánamo, and how many men have been freed.

Today, the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, Witness Against Torture and the Center for Constitutional Rights are launching the “GTMO Clock,” to show how long it is since President Obama promised to resume releasing prisoners from Guantánamo, and how many men have been freed. This article is published simultaneously here and on the “Close Guantánamo” website.

It’s six months since the prisoners at Guantánamo embarked on a prison-wide hunger strike to protest about their seemingly endless detention. Although President Obama promised to close the prison within a year when he took office in January 2009, he failed to do so, and in February this year, the majority of the 166 men still held began refusing food, in the hope of attracting the world’s attention to their plight, and forcing President Obama to act.

In May, after the world’s media had picked up on the hunger strike, and international bodies including the UN, the EU and the International Committee of the Red Cross had put pressure on President Obama, he responded with a major speech on national security, in which he promised to resume releasing prisoners from Guantánamo. Today, however, it’s 75 days since that speech, and no prisoners have yet been released. The “GTMO Clock” will be keeping track of how many days it has been since President Obama made his promise, and how many men have been released.

The ongoing imprisonment of the 166 men in Guantánamo, for the most part without charge or trial, is particularly distressing for the 86 men who were cleared for release in January 2010, in the final report of the inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force, featuring representatives from the main government departments and the intelligence agencies, which was established by President Obama when he took office and made his promise to close the prison.

These men are still held for two particular reasons. 56 of them are Yemenis, and, in January 2010, President Obama issued a ban on releasing any of them, after it was discovered that a failed bomb plot on Christmas Day 2009 had been hatched in Yemen. In his speech in May, President Obama dropped his ban on releasing Yemenis, but none have so far been freed.

In addition, in the National Defense Authorization Acts for 2012 and 2013, Congress banned the release of any prisoners unless the president and defense secretary certified to Congress that they would be unable to engage in any terrorist activities against the US — a certification that is, of course, almost impossible to make.

The result of all these obstacles is that, in the last three years, just seven prisoners have been released from Guantánamo, and it is no wonder that, by February this year, the prisoners were in despair, having concluded that they were never going to be released. Last week, President Obama notified Congress of his intention to release two Algerian prisoners, but their release will be of little comfort to the 84 other cleared prisoners.

Nor is the situation any better for the 80 other prisoners, as, with just a few exceptions, they are held without charge or trial, and with no indication of when, if ever, they will be delivered anything resembling justice.

46 of them were recommended for ongoing detention without charge or trial by the task force, on the basis that they were too dangerous to release, but that insufficient evidence existed to put them on trial — which, of course, suggests that the supposed evidence is in fact profoundly unreliable. However, in March 2011 President Obama issued an executive order authorizing their detention, although he also promised that they would receive periodic reviews of their cases. These, however, had not materialized by the time the prisoners began their hunger strike, making their despair understandable.

Similarly, despair on the part of the majority of the rest of the prisoners, who were recommended for prosecution by the task force, is also understandable because the majority of them have not even been put forward for trials, and it is unlikely that they ever will be, as Brig. Gen. Mark Martins, the chief prosecutor of the military commissions, conceded in June.

We hope you have time to look at the “GTMO Clock,” and to share it if you find it useful. It also includes details of how you can write to President Obama and the Department of Defense to demand the immediate release of prisoners.

Note: Huge thanks to Justin Norman (Shrieking Tree) for taking this idea, which I proposed back in June, and creating the site.

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 four-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, “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 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 and Other Guantánamo Prisoners Call Force-Feeding Torture, Ask Appeals Court for Help

On June 30, as I reported here, lawyers for four prisoners in Guantánamo — Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, Nabil Hadjarab and Ahmed Belbacha, both Algerians, and Abu Wa’el Dhiab, a Syrian — filed a motion with the District Court in Washington D.C., asking a judge to issue a ruling compelling the government to “stop force-feeding in the prison and stop force-medicating prisoners, particularly with Reglan, a drug used by the US during the force-feeding process that when used for extended periods of time can cause severe neurological disorders, including one that mimics Parkinson’s disease,” as it was described in a press release by Reprieve, the London-based legal action charity whose lawyers filed the motion, along with Jon B. Eisenberg in the US.

The men are amongst the 86 prisoners (out of the 166 men still held), who were cleared for release by the inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force, established by President Obama when he took office in 2009. In addition, all are involved in the prison-wide hunger strike that began six months ago, and both Nabil Hadjarab and Ahmed Belbacha are amongst the 41 prisoners who are being force-fed.

Although the prisoners made a compelling argument for the need for intervention, the judge ruling in Abu Wa’el Dhiab’s case, Judge Gladys Kessler, was unable to grant the motion, because of a legal precedent from February 2009, when, in the case of Mohammed al-Adahi, a Yemeni who sought to stop his force-feeding, a court ruled that “no court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider any other action against the United States or its agents relating to any aspect of the detention, transfer, treatment, trial, or conditions of confinement of an alien who is or was detained by the United States and has been determined by the United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant.”

Judge Kessler was, nevertheless, sympathetic to the prisoners’ plight, pointedly noting that Abu Wa’el Dhiab had “set out in great detail in his papers what appears to be a consensus that force-feeding of prisoners violates Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which prohibits torture or cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment,” and also explained that “the President of the United States, as Commander-in-Chief, has the authority — and power — to directly address the issue of force-feeding of the detainees at Guantánamo Bay.”

The judge addressing the motion submitted by the other three prisoners — Judge Rosemary Collyer –  was less sympathetic, but sympathetic or not, the refusal to grant the men’s motion led to only two options, appealing or not, and today the lawyers at Reprieve, and Jon B. Eisenberg, filed an appeal on behalf of Shaker Aamer, Ahmed Belbacha and Nabil Hadjarab, asking the appeal court in Washington, D.C. (the D.C. Circuit Court) to reconsider their motion.

In a recent phone call with Cori Crider, Reprieve’s Strategic Director, Ahmed Belbacha described how horrendous the force-feeding still is.

He said:

I’m still being force-fed, once a night, and the way that they do it in Ramadan makes us all exhausted. There are two waves: the first group goes at 8pm, and the second group later. In theory, it’s at 10pm, but sometimes it happens at 11, midnight or even later. It’s extremely tiring.

The other problem I’ve had since Ramadan is this new feeding solution they use, called Jevity — it’s very strong. Before was bad, but this is even worse. I’ve thrown it up several times. They never seemed to notice. I’ve never been fed twice in a night. I suppose because I haven’t vomited until I have gotten back to my cell. I weigh 125 pounds now and am extremely feeble.

If someone has a nose problem, they can be with them for a very long time and will have to try to insert the tube repeatedly. A lot of people have a problem getting the tube in the nose. I still cry sometimes, with the tube. It’s very difficult.

One guy broke his hunger strike because the tube was just too painful. It took a very, very long time to get the tube in. Every single time it was torture for him, and eventually he just had to give up.

Soldiers are always trying to get us to stop the hunger strike. Most recently the doctor took people and told them that they wanted us to stop — and officers said to us at the start of Ramadan that if we didn’t stop we’d be put in isolation.

In response to Ahmed Belbacha’s complaints, Cori Crider said, “As a federal judge has pointed out, President Obama has the power to address this situation — but he has persistently failed to do so.  He could bring this crisis to an end by letting the prisoners which his own Government has cleared, and that’s the majority at this point, go home.”

I can only agree. It is now 73 days since President Obama delivered a major speech on national security in which he promised to resume releasing prisoners, but not a single one of the 86 cleared prisoners has yet been released. Severe obstacles have been raised by Congress, requiring the administration to certify that released prisoners will be unable, after their release, to take up arms against the US, but President Obama needs to overcome these cynical obstacles if he is not to be judged as the President whose fine words and promises were not matched by his actions — if necessary, by using a waiver in the legislation that allows him to bypass Congress.

Last week the White House announced that the Department of Defence had “certified to Congress its intent to repatriate an additional two detainees to Algeria,” adding, “We are taking this step in consultation with the Congress, and in a responsible manner that protects our national security.”

The administration is to be congratulated for taking the necessary steps to release these two men, who have not been publicly identified, but are amongst the five Algerians still held who have been cleared for release. Disgracefully, however, they will be the first prisoners to be released as a result of the task force’s determinations — and President’s Obama’s leadership (or lack of it) — since September 2010, because, in the last three years, the only men to be released — just five in total — either had their release ordered by the courts, or as a result of plea deals negotiated in their military commission trials.

These two men need to be followed, as swiftly as possible, by the 84 other cleared prisoners. 56 of these men are Yemenis, whose release was prevented not only by Congress but also through a disgraceful ban imposed by President Obama in January 2010, after it was discovered that a failed bomb plot on Christmas Day 2009 had been hatched in Yemen. In his speech in May, President Obama stated, “I am lifting the moratorium on detainee transfers to Yemen, so we can review them on a case by case basis,” but although he met with President Hadi last week, the two men did not reach a specific agreement on repatriating the men.

Others need third countries to provide them with a new home, as it is unsafe for them to be repatriated, but others, like Shaker Aamer, could be immediately returned to his family in the UK if the will existed in Washington — and if the British government made it a priority. The recent news that P.J. Harvey has recorded a song about Shaker will no doubt spur new interest in his case in the UK, and will hopefully lead to added pressure on David Cameron and William Hague to insist on his immediate return to the UK, but the key to his release and that of the other cleared prisoners, as Judge Kessler recognized last month, is President Obama.

In his speech on May 23, President Obama said, “Look at the current situation, where we are force-feeding detainees who are holding a hunger strike,” and asked, “Is that who we are? Is that something that our founders foresaw? Is that the America we want to leave to our children?” The answer is no, but there is only one way to end the force-feeding of hunger strikers, and that is for President Obama to release the cleared prisoners, and to initiate urgent and objective reviews of the cases of the other men, to establish whether or not they can be put on trial. If not, they too should be released.

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 four-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, “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 and the chronological list of all Andy’s articles.

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

Video: Culture of Impunity Part Two – Andy Worthington on Bush’s War Crimes, Bradley Manning and Guantánamo

Six weeks ago, on June 26, the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, initiated by the United Nations in 1997, on the 10th anniversary of the the day that the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment came into force, I posted the first half of a newly released documentary film, “Culture of Impunity,” for which I was interviewed along with the law professor and author Marjorie Cohn, the professor, author and filmmaker Saul Landau, the author and activist David Swanson, Laura Pitter of Human Rights Watch and Stephen Rohde of the ACLU.

The documentary, which looks at the many ways in which the most senior figures in the Bush administration — including George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld — have escaped accountability for the crimes committed in the “war on terror” declared after the 9/11 attacks, was produced by Alternate Focus, which describes itself as “working for peace and justice by offering the American public media which shows another side of Middle Eastern issues,” and I was interviewed for it in April.

The producer, John Odam, has just sent me a link to the second part of this powerful documentary, on YouTube, which I’ve made available below, along with the first part. It features all of the experts interviewed in the first half, as well as Stephen Zunes, a Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of San Francisco.

“Culture of Impunity,” Part One (originally made available in June 2013).

“Culture of Impunity,” Part Two (newly released).

In this second part — 33 minutes in length — I discussed the importance of the UN Convention Against Torture, and how disgraceful it was that the Bush administration did away with it (through the extremely cynical method of pretending that torture wasn’t torture), and I also described the horrors of holding people, as in Guantánamo, without any of the rights traditionally made available to prisoners, either as prisoners as war, protected by the Geneva Conventions, or as criminal suspects, to be prosecuted in federal courts, and how, eleven and a half years after the prison opened, the 166 men still held — 86 of whom have been cleared for release — may die at Guantánamo without ever having been charged or tried, or having had the supposed evidence against them ever tested in a genuinely objective manner.

I also spoke about the enormous failure of President Obama to close Guantánamo, as he promised when he took office in January 2009, and how this disgraceful and unacceptable failure has been compounded by the President’s own lawless warmongering, primarily through his worldwide program of assassinations by drone, without any accountability for his actions.

I also spoke about the importance of the files about the Guantánamo prisoners released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, on which I worked as a media partner, and I’m pleased to note that this newly released second part of the “Culture of Impunity” documentary also includes discussions of the case of Bradley Manning, the whistleblower who released the Guantánamo files as part of the biggest leak of classified documents in US history. I’m grateful that I was able to contribute to this section of the film, as Bradley Manning awaits sentencing, while those who approved the crimes he exposed continue to get away with their actions. As well as Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, the officials still at large include Condoleezza Rice; David Addington, Dick Cheney’s senior lawyer; William J. Haynes II, the Pentagon’s General Counsel; former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; Douglas Feith, the former under secretary of Defense for policy; John Yoo, who wrote the notorious “torture memos” that sought to redefine torture; and Jay S. Bybee, who signed Yoo’s memos.

As the film’s title notes, with no senior officials prosecuted for their crimes — and Bradley Manning facing life in prison for exposing the war crimes of America’s leaders and military personnel — this is indeed a “Culture of Impunity.”

I hope you have the time to watch the film, and to share it if you find its message useful and important. And if you want to see more of my interviews, please feel free to subscribe to my YouTube channel.

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 four-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, “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 and the chronological list of all Andy’s articles.

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

Video: Andy Worthington Discusses the Bradley Manning Verdict on RT

On Wednesday evening, I spoke to RT about the verdict in the trial by court-martial of Pfc. Bradley Manning, following his conviction on 20 charges, including espionage and theft, which was announced by the judge in his case, Army Col. Denise Lind, on Monday. My five-minute interview is available below, via YouTube.

Significantly, Judge Lind refused to convict Manning on the most serious charge — that of “aiding the enemy,” which the prosecution had tried to claim proved that Manning had “general evil intent” when he leaked hundreds of thousands of classified US government documents, including the “Collateral Murder” video, featuring US personnel indiscriminately killing civilians and two Reuters reporters in Iraq, 500,000 army reports (the Afghan War logs and the Iraq War logs), 250,000 US diplomatic cables, and the Guantánamo files, released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, on which I worked as a media partner.

However, that was the only good news on Monday, as Manning still faces 136 years in prison based on the other charges, which is a horrendous situation. Asked about it, I explained that it is an unacceptable ruling for whistleblowers, motivated, as Manning was, to make available information that is in the public interest  — about war crimes, for example — that the US government wanted to keep hidden, and I also pointed out how the mainstream media evidently agreed, having used what he leaked to sell newspapers and attract viewers for news programs for many months in 2010 and 2011.

In my opinion, the only sentence Manning should receive is one based on the ten charges he admitted to voluntarily in February. As the Guardian explained at the time, the charges to which he pleaded guilty “carry a two-year maximum sentence each, committing Manning to a possible upper limit of 20 years in military prison.”

Nevertheless, I hasten to add that, although I follow the logic of Manning receiving a sentence based on those charges, because of the US military’s rules, I don’t believe it would be fair, when, as I discuss in the interview, his various revelations were not crimes, but immensely useful leaks in the public interest, and, of course, it is completely unacceptable that those who committed the crimes he exposed — and particularly senior officials in the Bush administration, up to and including the President — have not been held accountable for their actions.

As the sentencing phase continues, my hope is that the case against Manning will crumble still further. Certainly, on Wednesday, the testimony of Brig. Gen. Robert Carr, a senior counter-intelligence officer who headed the Information Review Task Force that investigated the impact of WikiLeaks disclosures on behalf of the Defense Department, was extremely important. As the Guardian explained, he told the court that “they had uncovered no specific examples of anyone who had lost his or her life in reprisals that followed the publication of the disclosures on the internet.”

As the Guardian added, “It has been one of the main criticisms of the WikiLeaks publications that they put lives at risk, particularly in Iran and Afghanistan. The admission by the Pentagon’s chief investigator into the fallout from WikiLeaks that no such casualties were identified marks a significant undermining of such arguments.”

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 four-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, “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 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: Victory for the Save Lewisham Hospital Campaign

Victory for the Save Lewisham Hospital Campaign, a set on Flickr.

Here are my photos from yesterday’s celebrations by campaigners for Lewisham Hospital — myself included — outside the High Court, and then outside Lewisham Hospital, following a spectacular victory in the High Court after nine months of campaigning.

As I explained in my brief report yesterday, after I returned from the High Court, Mr. Justice Silber, ruling on two judicial reviews submitted by Lewisham Council and the Save Lewisham Hospital campaign, ruled that health secretary Jeremy Hunt had acted unlawfully when he approved plans to severely downgrade services at Lewisham Hospital, including shutting its A&E Department, so that there would only be one A&E Department for the 750,000 inhabitants of the boroughs of Lewisham, Greenwich and Bexley, and cutting maternity services so severely that nine out of ten mothers in a borough of 270,000 people would have to give birth elsewhere.

The judicial reviews were launched when, in January, Jeremy Hunt approved the proposals for Lewisham, which were put forward last October by Matthew Kershaw, an NHS Special Administrator appointed to deal with the financial problems of a neighbouring trust, the South London Healthcare Trust, in the first use of the Unsustainable Providers Regime, legislation for dealing with bankrupt trusts that was introduced by the last Labour government.

Mr. Justice Silber ruled that “neither the recommendations of the TSA [the Trust Special Administrator] nor the decision of the Secretary of State reducing the facilities at LH [Lewisham Hospital] fell within their powers,” and also ruled that Hunt and the TSA had failed to satisfy one of four requirements for the proposals; namely, that the plans had “support from GP Commissioners” — something that was powerfully explained by Dr. Helen Tattersfield, the Chair of the Lewisham Clinical Commissioning Group, in a submission that I posted here.

Commenting on the result, the Save Lewisham Hospital campaign particularly noted that, in his judgment (Para. 38):

Mr. Justice Silber also referred to a pledge made by the Prime Minister, David Cameron, in January 2013 to Dame Joan Ruddock, MP for Lewisham Deptford that, in relation to Lewisham Hospital in particular: “What the Government and I specifically promised was that there should be no closures or reorganisations unless they had support from the GP commissioners, unless there was proper public and patient engagement and unless there was an evidence base. Let me be absolutely clear: unlike under the last Government when these closures and changes were imposed in a top-down way, if they do not meet those criteria, they will not happen.”

In response to the ruling, Rosa Curling from Leigh Day, who represented the campaign, and Lewisham Council, said, “When the Secretary of State appointed the Trust Special Administrator to investigate and develop recommendations on the future of South London Healthcare NHS Trust, he promised that there would be no ‘back-door approach to reconfiguration’ and there would be no reconfiguration of neighbouring NHS services delivered by other NHS bodies beyond the South London Trust. He broke this promise — in fact, his decision regarding south London included a substantial reconfiguration of services delivered by other NHS bodies beyond south London and in particular in relation to Lewisham Hospital. The court has today agreed that the TSA and the Secretary of State has no legal power to do this and has emphatically made clear that this decision should be quashed.”

Dr Louise Irvine, a GP in Deptford, and the chair of the Save Lewisham Hospital campaign (who is featured in the photos), explained that she had been overwhelmed by the support from people around the UK. She said, “This is an incredible day. We are delighted for every single person who has supported the campaign and those who will now continue to benefit from this extraordinary hospital. The support from thousands of people in Lewisham is a very real demonstration of the Big Society. David Cameron himself said that there would be no top-down approach to closures and we appreciate the court’s decision which should serve as a reminder to this Government to not forget their promises and not to underestimate those who they seek to represent.”

As I explained yesterday, this is not the end of the struggle — for Lewisham, or for the NHS as a whole — but it is a hugely significant victory that deserves celebrating. It proves that we can defeat the dark forces of the Tory-led government, and the misguided senior management of the NHS, if we believe in ourselves, and refuse to give up. I hope that message will continue to resonate throughout the country, inspiring others to fight this government, who care only abut the rich, and are determined to destroy the state provision of all services.

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 four-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, “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 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.