Andy Worthington's Blog, page 135

Guantánamo Hunger Strike: Nabil Hadjarab Tells Court, “I Will Consider Eating When I See People Leaving This Place”

Yesterday, I wrote about a motion submitted to the District Court in Washington D.C. by Reprieve, the legal action charity, and Jon B. Eisenberg, an attorney in Oakland, California, on behalf of four prisoners taking part in the prison-wide hunger strike at Guantánamo that is about to enter its sixth month. According to the authorities, 106 prisoners are taking part in the hunger strike, although the prisoners claim that the true number is at least 120.

The four men are Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, Nabil Hadjarab and Ahmed Belbacha, both Algerians, and Abu Wa’el Dhiab, a Syrian, and they are amongst the 86 men (out of 166 prisoners in total) who were cleared for release by President Obama’s inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force in January 2010, but are still held — in part because of Congressional opposition, but also because of indifference on the part of President Obama.

Despite promising to resume releasing prisoners in a major speech on national security issues on May 23, which he can do through a waiver that exists in the legislation passed by Congress that otherwise makes it all but impossible to release prisoners, the President has not released a single one of these 86 cleared prisoners since that promise was made.

As well as being cleared prisoners and hunger strikers, both Ahmed Belbacha and Nabil Hadjarab are currently being force-fed, along with 42 others out of the remaining 166 prisoners.

As part of the case, which Judge Rosemary Collyer ordered the government to respond to by 12 midnight on Wednesday July 3, Cori Crider, the Strategic Director of submitted a declaration, in which she gave detailed accounts of her recent conversations with Nabil Hadjarab, Ahmed Belbacha and Abu Wa’el Dhiab, and I’m posting below the section in which she reported Nabil’s account of the hunger strike, and added her own comments.

This is a sad account, as Nabil, who was barely out of his teens when sent to Guantánamo, has not been a hunger striker before, and has never previously been force-fed. His despair is indicative of that of many of his fellow prisoners, after eleven and half years without justice, and the ongoing failure of President Obama to, at the very least, release the men that his own task force said should no longer be held three and a half years ago — some of whom, like Nabil, were also cleared for release under President Bush.

I told Nabil’s story last year, in an article entitled, “Nabil Habjarab, the “Sweet Kid” in Guantánamo, Was Cleared in 2007 But Is Still Held,” and I refer you to that for the explanation of his broken family background, and how he ended up in Afghanistan, and then Guantánamo. Though Algerian by birth, he is an orphan, and the closest members of his extended family are in France, where he spent much of his youth.

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:

Nabil Hadjarab’s declaration from Guantánamo

Submitted by Cori Crider

I began my discussion with Mr. Hadjarab about this motion at the beginning of May when I was at Guantánamo, but we were not able to complete a declaration in that time. During the visit Mr. Hadjarab was extremely weak and had to put his head on the table to rest several times.

I have known Mr. Hadjarab since 2007. It is unprecedented in my experience for him to engage in a protest such as a hunger strike. He has throughout his detention typically been very compliant. He has actively avoided provoking the authorities, choosing instead to try to focus on maintaining his health through exercise, eating a healthy diet, and by learning as much as possible about fitness and healthy living. Over the past few years, whenever my office would visit Nabil he would request that we bring health items such as protein powder, energy bars, and fitness magazines. Previously, Nabil was very serious about trying to stay healthy despite his situation at Guantánamo. All that has changed now.

I spoke to him on June 17 by telephone, when he indicated that he wished to join the motion. In light of the communications difficulties he instructed me to file promptly in my name. I paraphrase his statements to me below.

Instruction to counsel

“I ask the Court to order the government to stop tube-feeding me, and to make sure the government cannot administer this medicine Reglan. I do not want to die, but I am prepared to. All I am asking is that I be given the choice whether to eat.

Reason for striking

“For years I never thought about being on hunger strike, but I am doing this because I want to know my destiny. I cannot abide not knowing anymore.

“The most important thing in my life is my health, my body. I used to take care of myself, tried to work out, eat right, that sort of thing. But my situation is so serious now I am willing to sacrifice my body and my health. What good are these things without freedom?

“I cannot continue here like this. I feel it’s pointless to take care of myself. I used to think that I would keep myself healthy for when I was released and that I’d continue doing it outside and enjoy myself out there with my family. But this day has never come and now it feels to me it never will. In the past I tried to have hope, but everything has a limit.

“Again, the issue is not that I wish to die. I wish to live, free, with my family in France. But I am prepared to die because I believe there is no end-point to my imprisonment.

“I am afraid I believe this despite Mr. Obama’s repeated and lofty promises, and despite that I have been cleared more than once since the Bush years. The Court may wish to believe what Mr. Obama says; no doubt the idea that someone else, sometime, somewhere will resolve my situation is an attractive one. In days gone by I wanted to believe the President, too. But the Court is not here, with me, in the space I have occupied for nearly a dozen years. I am not sure I think the Court could possibly imagine what it is like for us here, even if it tried.

“I am desperate for freedom. In our brief lives, freedom is all that matters. Things like privileges and food are secondary and meaningless.

“Force-feeding us is a way of burying what we have to say. In this place, isn’t the last thing I have left the ability to decide what to do with my own life? Will the military be allowed to take this from me too?

“I will consider eating when I see people leaving this place. Not before.”

The experience of hunger-striking and force-feeding

“I started my hunger strike on the 7th of February, shortly after my lawyer Clive left the base. I have lost a great deal of weight and am very sick. I was taken to the hospital and hospitalized for 5 days. On March 22nd I was force fed for the first time. I think I was the third one to be force fed and I am still being fed by tubes.

“I’m lost. I’m suffering every day. In a way this isn’t new: I’ve been suffering for over 11 years. But the experience in the chair is something different.

“The chair itself reminds me of an execution chair. Your legs and arms are tied with belts. Your shoulders are tied with belts. There are I think at least 6 belts in all. If you refuse to let them put the tube in, they force your head back. The medical staff puts the tubes in, in the presence of the guards.

“It’s a very painful experience. Some are passing out from having the tubes inserted. With time, I have gotten used to it. Still, it is very risky because if the tube goes in the wrong way the liquid might get into your lungs. I know some who have developed infections in the nose. They now have to keep the tubes in the nose because they have these bad infections. The whole experience is highly unnatural and a lot of people have deteriorated to a shocking extent.

“I am still not eating. I am force fed twice a day. Sometimes I feel very sad, both before and after the feedings. It is crazy to me that they save your life by force feeding, but will not negotiate with you on your freedom.

“When I go to be force fed the medical staff tell me that hunger-striking is hazardous to my health. Do they think I don’t know this? It is their role to do something about our treatment, to help us. But they don’t. They just help us to damage ourselves.

“One of the doctors, I suppose to try to get me to eat, asked me what food I most missed. I said yes, there is indeed a dish I miss: a nice plate of freedom with some spices.

“I try to ask the doctors why they don’t work with human rights organizations. They agree that they should but keep going with the force-feeding anyway, saying that we are putting them in a difficult, embarrassing situation.”

Reglan

“I haven’t heard of a drug called Reglan from the military. They ask me sometimes if I want something to help my upset stomach but I always say no. Still, I believe they would potentially give it to me without asking me or letting me know about the side- effects. I am very concerned about this because, in the tiny likelihood I were to be released with any of my health still intact, what if I were to have some terrible neurological disorder?”

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 Prisoners Ask US Court to Stop the Force-Feeding and Forced Medication at Guantánamo

Lawyers at the London-based legal action charity Reprieve, and co-counsel Jon  B. Eisenberg, an attorney in Oakland, California filed a motion with the District Court in Washington D.C. on Sunday evening, on behalf of four prisoners in Guantánamo, including Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison. The motion was submitted in response to the authorities’ force-feeding and forced medication of hunger strikers engaged in a prison-wide hunger strike that will enter its sixth month on Saturday. According to the authorities, 106 of the remaining 166 prisoners are taking part in the hunger strike, protesting about their indefinite detention, but according to the prisoners themselves the total is at least 120.

The motion, available here, asks Judge Rosemary Collyer to issue a ruling to compel 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 Reprieve put it in a press release. Please also see additional submissions by Cori Crider, Reprieve’s Strategic Director, and by Steven Miles, Professor of Medicine at the University of Minnesota, and by Stephen Xenakis, a retired brigadier general and Army medical corps officer with 28 years of active service, who is now an Adjunct Clinical Professor at the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences.

Shaker Aamer is one of 86 prisoners cleared for release by an inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force, appointed by President Obama, which issued its recommendations three and half years ago. The three other prisoners represented in the motion — Nabil Hadjarab and Ahmed Belbacha, both Algerians, and Abu Wa’el Dhiab, a Syrian — were also cleared for release three and a half years ago, but are still held despite President Obama’s promise to overcome restrictions imposed by Congress and resume releasing prisoners, which he made in a major speech on national security issues on May 23; in other words, nearly six weeks ago. Since that time, not a single prisoner has yet been released.

In a declaration that accompanied the motion, Ahmed Belbacha, who is currently one of 44 prisoners being force-fed, stated, “I am participating in this hunger strike of my own free choice … hunger striking is the sole peaceful means that I have to protest my indefinite detention.” Nabil Hadjarab, who is also being force-fed, added, “I do not want to die, but I am prepared to. All I am asking is that I be given the choice whether to eat.”

In the Guantánamo authorities’ Standard Operating Procedure for dealing with hunger strikers, updated since the prison-wide under strike began in February, which was obtained through FOIA legislation by Jason Leopold of Al-Jazeera, the use of Reglan was recommended during force-feeding (also see here). As Reprieve explained, “Medical studies into the drug have determined that prolonged use of Reglan also is linked to a high rate of tardive dyskinesia (TD), a potentially irreversible and disfiguring disorder characterized by involuntary movements of the face, tongue, or extremities.”

Cori Crider said, “After nearly a dozen years of limbo, the last thing my clients feel they have left is the basic dignity of choosing what goes into their bodies. For the US military to strip this final right from them is appalling — which is why everyone from the head of the American Medical Association to President Obama has condemned force-feeding. Nabil and the other prisoners need Obama to wake up to the crisis in Guantánamo, which is the worst he will face of his presidency. History will closely study how these men were treated.”

Jon B. Eisenberg said, “Force-feeding of prisoners is inhumane and a violation of medical ethics. When it is done for the purpose of keeping Guantánamo detainees alive so that they may continue to be held indefinitely without a trial of any sort, it is nothing short of grotesque. President Obama has himself condemned the force-feeding, but he has not seen fit to stop it. His deeds have not matched his soaring rhetoric.”

The lawyers also made a point of urging the court to intervene to prevent the prisoners from being force-fed during the daylight hours of Ramadan, which starts on July 8. The motion states, “Petitioners request an expeditious hearing on this application because of the extreme nature of the human rights and medical ethics violations that result from petitioners’ force-feeding, and because of the imminent risk that it will deprive them of the ability to observe the Ramadan fast, which commences this year on July 8.”

As Reprieve put it in a second press release, the government “has yet to clarify whether prisoners will continue to be force-fed during daylight hours in Ramadan.” Justice Department officials “indicated to Reprieve on Friday that it would oppose any request to stop force-feeding, including daytime feeding during Ramadan.”

In the District Court on Monday, Judge Collyer responded to the prisoners’ request, ordering the government to “file a response to the motion for preliminary injunction no later than 12:00 p.m. Eastern on July 3, 2013.”

Responding to the news, Cori Crider said, “This crisis could end, if only President Obama would start transferring cleared people, as he has the power to do. But my clients have seen no action. They cannot take years of more uncertainty about their fate. If the Gitmo authorities intend to force-feed these people during the daytime in Ramadan, it will only add insult to injury.”

It will indeed, and I add my voice to those of the lawyers and the prisoners themselves, calling for President Obama to mark Ramadan not by force-feeding prisoners, but by freeing them.

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.

Andy Worthington Attends Protest Against US Bases in UK and Discusses Guantánamo at Menwith Hill Base on July 4

[image error]Several months ago, I responded to a request to attend the annual “Independence From America” protest on July 4, the American Day of Independence, outside RAF Menwith Hill near Harrogate in Yorkshire. The event is organised by the Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases (CAAB), and I was invited by Lindis Percy, a veteran activist who has been arrested, prosecuted and imprisoned on numerous occasions, to speak about Guantánamo. I was, of course, delighted to accept the invitation, and I look forward to the brief return to my roots, as I grew up in the north of England.

The protest will be from 5 to 9 pm, and other speakers are: Salma Yaqoob, psychotherapist, Chair of Birmingham Stop the War and a spokesperson for Birmingham Central Mosque; the journalist Martin Wainwright of the Guardian; Mirzan, a poet; the “Peace Artistes” Daftasadrum; and the East Lancs Clarion Choir, “Quaker Walkers celebrating 100 years of the Northern Friends Peace Board.”

At the time I accepted the invitation, none of us knew how the existence of an alarmingly overreaching surveillance state would be in the news at the time of the protest, as a result of the revelations of the US whistleblower Edward Snowden, because there are few places that symbolize this problem as powerfully as Menwith Hill. Nominally an RAF station that provides communications and intelligence support services to the UK and the US, it has actually been controlled by America since its establishment in 1954, and has been in the control of the NSA (the National Security Agency, the organisation at the heart of Snowden’s complaints) since 1966.

In 1988, the journalist Duncan Campbell exposed how Menwith Hill played a key role in the ECHELON surveillance program, which, in 2000, led to an EU committee  on ECHELON noting that it involved the USA, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and, as Wikipedia describes it, “raised concerns about the incompatibility of the interception of private and commercial communications with the fundamental right to respect for private life,” enshrined in Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights), all of which now sounds hauntingly familiar. In a Guardian article in 2012, Richard Norton-Taylor noted how the Federation of American Scientists, an independent US body, stated that computers at the base “are capable of carrying out 2m intercepts an hour.”

For further information, please see the report, “Lifting the Lid on Menwith Hill: The Strategic Roles & Economic Impact of the US Spy Base in Yorkshire,” written by Dr. Steve Schofield, with support from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, and published by Yorkshire CND in March 2012. At the time the base was undergoing an expansion, as part of what was described as Project Phoenix, which Schofield called “one of the largest and most sophisticated high technology programs carried out anywhere in the UK over the last 10 years.”

In April 2012, Schofield told RT that Menwith Hill also played a role in drone attacks. He said, “The UK’s providing a facility here that’s involved in drone attacks that we know, from independent assessments, are killing and injuring thousands of civilians, and because of the covert nature of that warfare, it’s very difficult to provide information and accountability through the UK parliament. And yet these are acts of war. And normally when we have war, parliament should inform people that we’re involved in those. And we’re not being informed. We’re kept entirely in the dark about them.”

Below are my comments about the importance of the protest, and if anyone is able to make it to Menwith Hill on Thursday, I look forward to seeing you there:

The recent revelations about surveillance, involving Edward Snowden, only highlight how the UK government is throughly complicit in the illegal and undemocratic activities of the US. It’s a familiar story from the last 11 years of “war on terror,” with Britain as America’s staunchest ally amongst the numerous countries who volunteered, or were prevailed upon to assist in the Bush administration’s programme of rendition and torture.

The starkest icon of the “war on terror” is the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where 166 men are still held without rights, and where the majority of the men are taking part in a hunger strike that will have lasted five months on July 4, including Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, one of 86 prisoners cleared for release but still held.

July 4 is the day when America recalls its declaration of independence from the tyranny of the UK, but the US now needs to recognize that it has become the tyrant, and to take the necessary steps to release the cleared prisoners in Guantánamo, to close Guantánamo and end indefinite detention without charge or trial, to hold torturers to account, to end its mass surveillance programmes, and to drastically scale back its global military presence, including in the UK.

For further information, please phone 01423 884076.

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.

Judge Calls for An End to Unjust Provisions Governing Guantánamo Prisoners’ Habeas Corpus Petitions

In preventing the release of prisoners from Guantánamo, all three branches of the US government are responsible. President Obama promised to close the prison within a year of taking office, but he lacked a concrete plan, and soon caved in to criticism, blocking a plan by White House counsel Greg Craig to bring some cleared prisoners who couldn’t be safely repatriated — the Uighurs, Muslims from China’s Xinjiang province — to live in the US, and imposing a ban on releasing all Yemenis after it was discovered that a failed plot to blow up a plane bound for the US on Christmas Day 2009 was hatched in Yemen.

Congress, in turn, imposed ban on bringing prisoners to the US mainland, and, in the last two versions of the National Defense Authorization Act, a ban on releasing prisoners to any country where even a single released prisoner has allegedly engaged in recidivism (returning to the battlefield), and a requirement that, if a prisoner were to be released, the Secretary of Defense would have to certify that they would not be able, in future, to engage in any terrorist activities — a requirement that appears to be impossible to fulfill.

Largely overlooked has been the responsibility of the judiciary — and specifically, the Court of Appeals in Washington D.C. (the D.C. Circuit Court), and the Supreme Court, but their role in keeping men at Guantánamo is also crucial.

Nine years ago, in June 2004, in Rasul v. Bush, the Supreme Court granted the prisoners habeas corpus rights, a momentous ruling that pierced the veil of secrecy that had allowed the Bush administration to establish a torture regime at Guantánamo, and also allowed the prisoners to be represented by lawyers, who were allowed to visit them.

However, no habeas corpus petitions proceeded to court, because Congress passed laws that purported to strip the prisoners of their newly granted rights. It was not until June 2008, in Boumediene v. Bush, that the Supreme Court declared that these decisions had been illegal, and restored the prisoners’ habeas corpus rights.

That second momentous decision led to 38 victories for the prisoners between October 2008 and July 2010, as judges in the District Court in Washington D.C. examined the cases against them, and concluded that the government had failed to establish, by a preponderance of the evidence (a lower standard than that used in trials), that the prisoners were involved with al-Qaeda and/or the Taliban.

This was a vindication for those, like myself, who had always maintained that the supposed evidence was profoundly unreliable, consisting largely of witness statements that involved the use of torture, other forms of coercion, or bribery. The decision led to the release of 28 prisoners, but the D.C. Circuit Court soon fought back, on a basis that can only, in all honesty, be attributed to ideology, rather than judicial fairness.

In rulings on appeals, undertaken from January 2010 to October 2011, a handful of judges in this generally very Conservative court redefined the standards used by the lower court, reversing or vacating a number of successful petitions, and pushing the District Court judges to stop doubting the information put forward by the government as evidence.

The bleakest decision of all took place in October 2011, when the D.C. Circuit reversed the successful petition of Adnan Latif, a mentally ill Yemeni who had also been cleared for release under President Bush, and by President Obama’s inter-agency task force, telling the lower court that anything put forward by the government as evidence — even battlefield intelligence reports that were often nothing more than hasty, ad hoc assessments — had to be treated as reliable, unless the prisoners could prove otherwise.

Latif subsequently died at Guantánamo, last September, spurned not only by the D.C. Circuit Court, but by the Supreme Court, which, in June, had been presented with the opportunity to challenge the Circuit Court’s distortions, and its hijacking and annihilation of the prisoners’ habeas rights, in seven cases in total, including Latif’s, but had refused to get involved.

The power of the D.C. Circuit Court to prevent the release of prisoners under any circumstances has been so successful that the eleven habeas petitions that were ruled on between July 2010 and October 2011 were lost, and the prisoners and their lawyers essentially gave up, accepting that habeas corpus, for the men in Guantánamo, had been killed off by the D.C. Circuit Court, and that the Supreme Court didn’t care, and nor did the Justice Department, which had never shown any willingness to drop cases — for prisoners cleared for release by the task force, for example — rather than pursuing them as aggressively as possible.

On June 18, 2013, a judge in the D.C. Circuit Court finally spoke out about this continuing injustice, in a rare appeal by one of the last prisoners to have his habeas petition denied, in October 2011. Abdul al-Qader Ahmed Hussain, a Yemeni, and one of 16 men seized in a house raid in Pakistan in March 2002 — on a house that appears to have largely held students — had his appeal denied, but not before Senior Circuit Judge Harry T. Edwards “called on the president and Congress to consider a different approach to the handling of legal cases of Guantánamo Bay prisoners,” as the Associated Press described it.

Judge Edwards made his comments at the end of a written opinion in which he “reluctantly concurred” with the decision of his two fellow judges, to reject Hussain’s appeal because of the precedent established by the court.

“However,” he wrote, “when I review a record like the one presented in this case, I am disquieted by our jurisprudence.” He added, “I think we have strained to make sense of the applicable law, apply the applicable standards of review, and adhere to the commands of the Supreme Court. The time has come for the President and Congress to give serious consideration to a different approach for the handling of the Guantánamo detainee cases.”

This is an important call, and one that needs to be heeded by the Obama administration, and by lawmakers.

The case against Hussain is demonstrably thin. He had been in Afghanistan prior to the 9/11 attacks, and had been living near the front lines of the civil war between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance. There, housemates of his, involved with the Taliban, had supplied him with an AK-47, and had trained him to use it.

According to Judge Thomas Griffith, who wrote the majority opinion, and was backed by Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson, this was sufficient to authorize his ongoing imprisonment because it was likely that he was part of an enemy force when he was captured.

Judge Griffith wrote, “Evidence that Hussain carried an assault rifle given him by Taliban forces while living among Taliban forces near a battle line fought over by Taliban forces brings to mind the common sense view in the infamous duck test,” — a reference to the famous saying, “if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck.”

In response, Judge Edwards called the duck test “quite invidious because, arguably, any young, Muslim man traveling or temporarily residing in areas in which terrorists are known to operate would pass the ‘duck test.’”

More importantly, he challenged the basis for assessing whether or not Hussain should continue to be detained. Under the Authorization for Use of Military Force, which Congress passed the week after the 9/11 attacks, the President can detain anyone who “planned, authorized, committed, or aided” the attacks. In the prisoners’ habeas corpus petitions, as noted above, the government is required to show, by a preponderance of the evidence, that the prisoner being detained was part of al Qaeda and/or the Taliban.

However, as Judge Edwards explained, his fellow judges had “implicitly shift[ed] the burden of proof from the Government to Hussain.” He added:

Under the approach adopted by the majority, Hussain’s petition is rejected because he could not offer a coherent story about his whereabouts during the times in question, not because the Government proved by a preponderance of the evidence that he was “part of” al Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces. Respectfully, this is not an appropriate application of the preponderance of the evidence standard. It was the Government’s burden to show that Hussain “planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001,” and this burden was not met by Hussain’s failure to explain his whereabouts. Hussain is not presumed to be guilty under the applicable law merely because he was taken into custody and transferred to Guantánamo.

That is not how it should be, but it is a fair summary of the truth: that the mere fact of having been in Afghanistan or Pakistan, with a gun, or staying in a guest house allegedly associated with al-Qaeda or the Taliban, is enough to justify imprisonment for life. So tangential are these claims to the existence of any kind of real threat that it is hardly a great leap to state that many of the men held in Guantánamo are only there because the fact that they ended up in US custody is regarded as proving something significant about the threat they pose.

In an absurd twist, Abdul al-Qader Ahmed Hussain was actually cleared for release by President Obama’s inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force nearly two years before he had his habeas corpus petition denied. If there was any sense of logic and justice in the US administration, the Justice Department would not have contested his petition — and if President Obama had not responded with a blanket ban on releasing Yemenis after the failed airline bomb plot on Christmas Day 2009, he would have been freed before his habeas petition was considered in the first place.

It is well beyond time that this dark farce, which ruins the lives of men who are no threat to the US, and which blackens America’s name, costs a fortune and is dangerously counter-productive, is brought to an end. If no one will do anything now, then the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan next year ought to provide a spur for the prison’s closure, a repeal of the outrageous Authorization for Use of Military Force, and, hopefully, an end to the unjustifiable tyranny of judges who — with the exception of Judge Edwards — confuse being a Muslim in Afghanistan or Pakistan between 2001 and 2003 with being a member of al-Qaeda and/or the Taliban.

Note: Abdul al-Qader Ahmed Hussain is also identified as Abdul Qader Ahmed Hussein or Ahmed Abdul Qader. His ISN number is 690.

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.

As published exclusively on the website of the Future of Freedom Foundation.

Radio: Andy Worthington Discusses Edward Snowden, Whistleblowers and the Overreach of Surveillance on Voice of Russia

On Thursday, I took part in a fascinating conversation on Voice of Russia about Edward Snowden, the role of whistleblowers and the surveillance state. The discussion was entitled, “How far can politicians go to protect our security?” and I was with Brendan Cole in London, while, in Moscow, Dmitry Medvedenko’s guest was Dr. Boris Martynov, Deputy Head of the Institute of Latin America in Moscow, and in Washington Rob Sachs’ guest was Bruce Zagaris, a partner with Berliner, Corcoran & Rowe LLP.

The 40-minute show is available here, and in it I made a particular point of explaining how far too much of the mainstream media is obsessively focusing on Edward Snowden’s search for asylum, rather than focusing on the aspect of the story that is much more significant — the fact, as I put it, that “he felt compelled to sacrifice his career because he wanted to reveal the extent that people were being spied on by their governments.”

I also explained why that is so important — because, instead of governments regarding their citizens as “innocent until proven guilty,” they have revealed themselves — with America in the driving seat — as “massively obsessed with trawling for information about all of us,” and having “an obsession with power and a sense of paranoia that is very inappropriate.”

There was much more in the show, and I hope you have time to listen to it, not least because Bruce Zagaris was very informative about the legal and political aspects of the case, involving extradition treaties and international law.

I was very pleased to be asked to take part, as the importance of whistleblowers cannot be overstated. As Bradley Manning’s trial continues, and Edward Snowden seeks a safe place for asylum, it’s worth remembering how another NSA whistleblower, Thomas Drake, described the threat to all of us from the US government and those working closely with it (like the UK, for example).

Drake, who, as the New Yorker described it, “was charged with espionage for revealing details about an electronic-eavesdropping project called Trailblazer, a precursor to Operation Prism, one of the programs that Snowden documented,” spoke to ABC in Australia a few days, and described “a vast, systemic, institutionalized, industrial-scale Leviathan surveillance state that has clearly gone far beyond the original mandate to deal with terrorism.”

That says it all, really. And as Edward Snowden said, in the video that introduced him to the world just three weeks ago, “I don’t want to live in a society that does these sort of things.”

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.

Radio: Andy Worthington Discusses the Guantánamo Hunger Strike with Scott Horton

A few days ago, I was delighted to talk to Scott Horton, who I’ve been talking to, on a regular basis, for nearly six years, about the ongoing horrors of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay, which, in a few weeks’ time, will have been open for its appalling business of arbitrary detention and torture for eleven and a half years. The half-hour interview is available here as an MP3.

In the show, Scott and I discussed the hunger strike at Guantánamo, now on its 143rd day, in which 106 of the remaining 166 prisoners (by the military’s own account) are on hunger strike, and 44 are being force-fed.

As I always explain, although it is horrible that men are being force-fed, which medical experts regard as a form of torture, this should not distract us from the reasons that the men are starving themselves and risking their lives — because they have reached a point of despairing at ever being released or provided with anything resembling justice, and with good reason.

Over half of the 166 men still held — 86 in total — have been cleared for release for at least three and a half years, after the inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force, established by President Obama when he took office, issued its report recommending whether the prisoners should be released, prosecuted or held indefinitely without charge or trial — recommendations that, just two weeks ago, through FOIA legislation, were finally accompanied by a full list of the prisoners and which categories they had been placed in by the task force, which I wrote about in my article, “The Guantánamo Review Task Force’s Decisions on Who to Release, Try and Hold Indefinitely Are Finally Released.”

The plight of these 86 caused Scott to note that it was “like a horror movie,” which I think is very accurate.

Scott and I also spoke about the men recommended for trials (33 of the men still held), and how the chief prosecutor recently admitted that no more than 12 of the remaining prisoners will be put on trial, and the 46 others designated for indefinite detention without charge or trial, on the alarming and unjustifiable basis that they are too dangerous to release, but insufficient evidence exists to put them on trial, who were promised reviews of their cases two years ago, which have not yet materialized.

There was much more in the show, including discussions of whether or not Guantánamo might ever close, the relative culpability of President Obama and Congress, and the permanent lack of any more than a handful of genuine terrorist suspects at Guantánamo, and I hope you have a spare half-hour to listen to it. It was a pleasure to talk to Scott, as ever.

This is how Scott described the show:

Andy Worthington, author of The Guantánamo Files, discusses the remaining prisoners in Guantánamo who will never get charged with a crime or receive a trial — yet are force-fed by the US government to stave off mass suicide; the Congressional hawks who have no incentive to close Guantánamo; and the foot soldiers from Afghanistan (don’t call them terrorists) who have been caught up in a decade-long travesty of justice.

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.

The Guantánamo Review Task Force’s Decisions on Who to Release, Try and Hold Indefinitely Are Finally Released

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. Also, please see our updated Guantánamo prisoner list here, which now, for the first time, provides the status of all of the remaining 166 prisoners, based on the “Final Dispositions” of President Obama’s Guantánamo Review Task Force (dated January 22, 2010, but only made publicly available on June 17, 2013) indicating whether they have been cleared for release, whether they have been designated for indefinite detention without charge or trial, and whether they were recommended for prosecution.

On June 17, 2013, through FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) legislation, a long-standing mystery was solved — the identities of the Guantánamo prisoners recommended for trial, for indefinite detention and for “conditional detention” by the inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force that President Obama established after taking office in January 2009 — when the task force’s “Final Dispositions as of January 22, 2010″ were released by the Department of Justice.

The “Final Dispositions” document contains the names of 240 prisoners, one short of the total number of prisoners held when the the task force began its deliberations — that extra prisoner being Ali Hamza al-Bahlul, who was convicted after a one-sided trial by military commission in November 2008, at which he refused to mount a defense, and given a life sentence.

Of those 240, the task force, in its final report in January 2010, recommended 156 for release, 36 for trials and 48 for indefinite detention without charge or trial, but did not reveal which prisoners were assigned to the various categories.

71 were subsequently released, and three died, leaving 166 men still held.

Of those 166, it has long been known that 86 are cleared for release (and that one of the three men who died — Adnan Latif, who died last September — was also cleared for release), and 33 were recommended for trials. It was also known that 46 were recommended for indefinite detention without charge or trial, and that the other two men who died — Awal Gul and Inayatullah, both Afghans, who died in 2011 — were also in this category.

However, the only prisoners identified by name — other than the three men who died — were the 13 who have been put forward for trials, and 56 of the prisoners cleared for release, whose names were released by the Department of Justice in a court case last September.

Until the “Final Dispositions” were released, it was not known who were the 23 other prisoners recommended for trials, and who were the 46 men designated for indefinite detention. Nor were the identities known of the 30 other men, all Yemenis, who were also cleared for release, but with a proviso. The task force conjured up a new category for them, “conditional detention,” which it described as being “based on the current security environment in that country.”

The task force added, “They are not approved for repatriation to Yemen at this time, but may be transferred to third countries, or repatriated to Yemen in the future if the current moratorium on transfers to Yemen is lifted and other security conditions are met.”

The moratorium referred to was imposed by President Obama just weeks before the task force’s report was issued, as a response to the failed airline bomb plot of Christmas Day 2009, which was hatched in Yemen. The task force gave no indication of how it would be decided that the security situation in Yemen had improved, but in fact President Obama’s moratorium effectively consigned all the Yemenis to “conditional detention.” That remained the case until May 23, 2013, when President Obama declared, in a major speech on national security, “I am lifting the moratorium on detainee transfers to Yemen, so we can review them on a case by case basis.”

Despite that, none of the 56 cleared Yemenis have been released, but nor have any of the 30 other cleared prisoners either.

The release of the “Final Dispositions” document is important because, for the last three and a half years, since the task force’s report was published, it has been difficult to campaign for men whose status was unknown.

Now we do know their identities, we can campaign for them much more effectively than before. In the weeks to come, I’ll be analyzing the list in detail, examining who was placed in which category, and assessing what the various decisions mean. However, upfront it is clear to Tom Wilner and I that the wording used to describe the 46 men to be held indefinitely is important.

Firstly, we note the distinction between 33 of these men and 13 others. 33 are recommended for “Continued detention pursuant to the Authorization for Use of Military Force (2001), as informed by principles of the laws of war,” while 13 are recommended for “Continued detention pursuant to the Authorization for Use of Military Force (2001), as informed by principles of the laws of war, subject to further review by the Principals prior to the detainee’s transfer to a detention facility in the United States.” We cannot say with any certainty what this sub-category signifies, as, back in 2009-10, until Congress intervened to block it, the intention to transfer prisoners to the US was part of the Obama administration’s plans for all the prisoners except those cleared for release. As a result, we cannot see why one sub-group of the 46 should be moved to the US, but not the other.

Secondly, the description of “continued detention … informed by principles of the laws of war” is very different to the general descriptions of these men as being indefinitely detained, and seems to indicate and acceptance that the justification for holding the majority of the prisoners is finite, and tied to the duration of the armed conflict in connection with which they were seized.

As Tom states, “Those principles allow detention without charge or trial only so long as the conflict in which the detainee was apprehended continues. In the absence of charge, trial and conviction, US law does not allow people to be detained after an armed conflict has ended, and these documents recognize that. The conflict in Afghanistan, which is the proper one to consider, is about to end. And the president has now acknowledged that even the so-called ‘war’ on terrorism cannot be indefinite but must come to an end.”

Finally, for now, here are three particular demands we can make:

1. We can campaign for the release of all 86 cleared prisoners, because we now know the identities of the 30 Yemenis recommended for “conditional detention,” to add to the 56 men whose identities were already known.

2. We can demand that President Obama initiates periodic reviews for the 46 men recommended for indefinite detention without charge or trial, which he confirmed in an executive order in March 2011. At the time, he promised that Periodic Review Boards (PRBs) would be established, but, shamefully, these have not yet begun. As well as continuing to push for the start of these reviews, we can also now provide useful information to help the administration ascertain that, in most cases, fears about the threat posed by these men has been overblown, because the material that purports to be evidence justifying these men’s detention is, in most cases, more fundamentally unreliable than anyone in the administration realizes. This is something we have been offering to do for many months, and we hereby renew our offer to provide assistance.

3. We can demand that, following the recent admission that a maximum of 12 current prisoners will be charged and tried, which was made by Brig. Gen. Mark Martins, the chief prosecutor of the military commissions, on June 10, the other men recommended for prosecution by the task force, but who will never be charged — a total of 19 men — must also be given periodic reviews, like the 46 men designated for indefinite detention without charge or trial.

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 – New Online Film Includes Andy Worthington Talking About Guantánamo, Torture and Ibn Al-Shaykh Al-Libi

As today is 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’d like to take this opportunity to promote a newly released half-hour 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 film, the first of a two-part documentary (with the second part to follow later in the year) 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.

Dealing with the illegal invasion of Iraq, the establishment of Guantánamo, “extraordinary rendition,” CIA “black sites,” America’s secret torture program, and the guilt of those responsible for initiating the war, the arbitrary detention and the torture — including George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice  — the film also covers the case of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, who I spoke about.

One of the most notorious victims of the Bush administration’s “war on terror,” al-Libi was rendered to Egypt, after his capture in Afghanistan late in 2001, where he was tortured and made a false claim that al-Qaeda representatives were meeting Saddam Hussein to discuss the use of chemical and biological weapons, which, disgracefully, was used to justify the invasion of Iraq.

After Egypt, al-Libi was shunted around a variety of CIA “black sites,” ending up being sent back to Libya and Col. Gaddafi, probably in 2006, where he died — allegedly by committing suicide — in 2009. My key articles about al-Libi are “Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi Has Died In A Libyan Prison,” “WORLD EXCLUSIVE: New Revelations About The Torture Of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi” and “Seven Years of War in Iraq: Still Based on Cheney’s Torture and Lies.”

I also spoke about the disgraceful manipulation of the truth about torture in the film “Zero Dark Thirty,” which suggests that torture helped to lead to the US identifying the location of Osama bin Laden, when that is patently untrue, and briefly spoke about the torture of Abu Zubaydah, the first prisoner tortured in the “high-value detainee” torture program that John Yoo, a lawyer in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which is supposed to provide impartial advice to the executive branch, attempted to justify in a series of memos that will be forever known as the “torture memos.”

As we mark the victims of torture today, it remains a horrible truth that those who authorized and attempted to justify the use of torture in America’s “war on terror” — including the senior officials mentioned above, as well as others including 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, and Jay S. Bybee, who signed Yoo’s memos — remain at large, when they should all have been prosecuted for their crimes against humanity.

As Article 2.2 of the UN Convention Against Torture explains, “No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.” You don’t get a pass on the above by being America, or by having a cynical lawyer onside (John Yoo), who attempts to explain that torture isn’t torture. One day, I hope, there will be accountability and not impunity because, until that day comes, the torturers and their apologists are still able to peddle filthy lies about their monstrous activities, and to persuade others that they were right.

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 Protests on the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture in Washington D.C. and London

Tomorrow (Wednesday June 26) is the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, established by the United Nations in 1997 to mark the 10th anniversary of the day that the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment came into force.

I have been marking this day since 2007 — also see my reports from 2009, 2010 (and here), 2011 and 2012 — and this year I note that UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on Member States “to step up efforts to assist all those who have suffered from torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”

He added, “This year is also the 25th anniversary of the Committee against Torture. This body — along with other UN human rights mechanisms such as the Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture and the Special Rapporteur on Torture — is vital to strengthening a victim-oriented approach that also includes a gender perspective. This effort was further strengthened by the adoption this year of a UN Human Rights Council resolution focussing on the rehabilitation of torture victims.”

He also stated, “I urge all Member States to accede to and fully implement the Convention against Torture and support the United Nations Voluntary Fund for Victims of Torture.  Let us work together to end torture throughout the world and ensure that countries provide reparation for victims.”

Some of those victims are still at Guantánamo, sadly — the specific victims of torture in CIA “black sites,” or of Donald Rumsfeld’s torture regime at Guantánamo itself, or, right now, the 44 hunger strikers being force-fed, who are part of the prison-wide hunger strike that is on its 140th day today, and that continues, with no end in sight, 33 days since President Obama made a major speech promising to resume the release of prisoners. Since that speech, however, not a single prisoner has been freed.

Dr. Frank Arnold, the lead signatory on a recent letter to President Obama from 153 doctors in the US and worldwide, calling for force-feeding to be brought to an end, and for independent medical personnel to have access to the prisoners, told the BBC last week, “The UN and numerous other authoritative bodies have quite explicitly stated that the force-feeding that goes on in Guantánamo is torture. Forcing someone to accept treatment which they’re competent to refuse is an assault.”

I would also point out that holding men in indefinite detention, without charge or trial, with no family visits permitted, and with no sign of when, if ever, release will be forthcoming, is and always has been a form of torture — and it is especially galling, of course, that 86 of the remaining 166 men still held indefinitely at Guantánamo were actually told three and half years ago that the US no longer wanted to hold them. However, they continue to be held because they are pawns in a cynical game of political football involving the Obama administration, Congress, the courts, the media and the American people.

To mark the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, there are events taking place in Washington D.C and London.

Protest outside the White House

My activist friends in Witness Against Torture are leading the protest in Washington, D.C., with a rally and speeches in front of the White House, beginning at noon. As they explain, “140 days into the hunger strike at Guantánamo, members of Witness Against Torture and other groups will lay 86 black cloths, each with the name of a Guantánamo prisoner cleared for transfer, on the sidewalk of the White House to dramatize the demand that the President begin transferring men from the prison facility.”

I wish I could be there with them, but at least I was able to help by providing information about the identities of the 86 men cleared for release but still held — the 56 identified last September, and the 30 others, all Yemenis, who were identified for the first time last week in a full list of the decisions regarding the disposition of the prisoners that was taken three and half years ago by the inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force, established by President Obama when he took office in January 2009.

Also highlighted in the actions in Washington D.C. tomorrow are the efforts of three three US military veterans, who are on open-ended fasts in solidarity with the Guantánamo prisoners.

Elliott Adams, a former paratrooper in Vietnam, who has been on a hunger strike since May 17, said, “What is happening in Guantánamo is despicable. The continued detention of innocent men is a violation of our moral and religious principles, domestic and international law. It goes against the values I thought the American flag stood for when I was a young man in the Army. I just can’t sit and enjoy my life when my country is doing such terrible things.”

Diane Wilson, a former Army medic and fourth-generation shrimp boat captain from Texas, who has lost 50 pounds in over 56 days, said, “I know who this American fisherwoman is and where I stand. I stand in solidarity with the Guantánamo prisoners and I will fast indefinitely until justice for them comes.”

Veterans For Peace national board member Tarak Kauff, who has been on a hunger strike since June 8, says, “It is up to human beings of conscience to take the risks, step out of our comfort zones and do our utmost to end the nightmare of Guantánamo. If we do not act now, our children and their children will reap the bitter results of our cowardice: an America without basic rights and a world without justice.”

These principled men and women are amplifying a “rolling fast,” organized by Witness Against Torture, in which hundreds of US citizens have been fasting in support of the hunger strikers at Guantánamo over the last few months.

Matt Daloisio, an organizer with Witness Against Torture, said, “It should not take people denying themselves food, whether in Guantánamo or in the US, to have President Obama stand up for the Constitution and human rights. The renewed promise to close Guantánamo is important, but without immediate steps to release people, it is only another promise.”

For further information, please contact Matt Daloisio on 201-264-4424 or Jeremy Varon on 732-979-3119.

Protest in Trafalgar Square

In London, there will be a vigil in Trafalgar Square, outside the National Gallery, from 6-8pm, led by the London Guantánamo Campaign, in which LGC members and other human rights activists will “hold up placards in multiple languages calling for an end to the practice of torture and will wear T-shirts bearing the same message,” as a press release explains.

Aisha Maniar, from the London Guantánamo Campaign, said, “The theme of this year’s action, across the world, is the right to rehabilitation. This includes the right to justice and redress. In the UK, this is not always forthcoming, particularly with the enactment of the Justice and Security Act 2013 and large-scale cuts to legal aid that effectively close the doors of justice in the faces of victims.

“Over the past year, across Europe, we have also seen a decline by states in their efforts to investigate collusion in extraordinary rendition. This is in spite of positive results in favour of victims through the judicial process at both the European Court of Human Rights [in the case of Khaled El-Masri] and in Italy [in the case of Abu Omar] as well as by the European Parliament. States must demonstrate their commitment to human rights and the rule of law and not give up their duty to investigate and offer real remedies to victims of their collusion in torture over the past decade.”

I hope to be there, depending on other commitments, and to add my voice to those of campaigners calling, in particular, for the release of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, who has been the most persistent and eloquent commentator on the hunger strike from within Guantánamo (see my articles here, here, here, here, here and here), and who should be on a plane home tomorrow, as he has been cleared for release by the US, the UK wants him back, and lawmakers in the US cannot argue about his release, as they can with other prisoners, because they have imposed restrictions on the release of prisoners to countries they regard as dangerous. This, however is a description that cannot realistically apply to the UK, America’s staunchest ally in the disgraceful “war on terror” declared by the Bush administration after 9/11, and not brought to an end by President Obama.

For further information about the London event, please contact Aisha Maniar on 07809 757176.

Note: Also see the new CloseGitmo.net site (not to be confused with Close Guantánamo, established by myself and the US attorney Tom Wilner), and follow the links for additional actions in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York.

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.

“I Wish I Was Dead,” Shaker Aamer Says from Guantánamo, as David Cameron Writes to His Daughter

In a desperate message from Guantánamo, Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, told one of his lawyers by phone, “The administration is getting ever more angry and doing everything they can to break our hunger strike. Honestly, I wish I was dead.”

Shaker, who was cleared for release from the prison under President Bush in 2007 and under President Obama in 2009, was speaking to Clive Stafford Smith, the director of the legal action charity Reprieve, and his words were reported in the Observer, which also noted his claims that “the US authorities are systematically making the regime more hardline to try to defuse the strike, which now involves almost two-thirds of the detainees.”

As the Observer explained:

Techniques include making cells “freezing cold” to accentuate the discomfort of those on hunger strike and the introduction of “metal-tipped” feeding tubes, which Aamer said were forced into inmates’ stomachs twice a day and caused detainees to vomit over themselves.

The 46-year-old from London tells of one detainee who was admitted to hospital 10 days ago after a nurse had pushed the tube into his lungs rather than his stomach, causing him later to cough up blood. Aamer also alleges that some nurses at Guantánamo Bay are refusing to wear their name tags in order to prevent detainees registering abuse complaints against staff.

Shaker also told his lawyer about his “declining health” and “how the camp’s regime deliberately inflates the weight of detainees on hunger strike,” as the Observer put it. “They said I was 160lb,” he explained, “but I was 154lb a few days ago. Unless there has been a miracle, my weight has not gone up without eating. But they cheat by adding shackles and sometimes even pressing down as they do it to add to your weight.”

Shaker added, “If you have a medical standard for when a detainee should be force-fed for his own health, then force-feed him when it can still save his health. Don’t wait until his body is so harmed by the lack of food that all you are protecting is the US military — from the harm of a prisoner dying for a principle.”

He also described his daily diet at Guantánamo as “a cup of tea or two each day with a low-calorie sweetener and occasionally an Ocean Spray powder mix that has 10 calories — enough to give an energy boost.”

Clive Stafford Smith told the Observer, “These gruesome new details show just how bad things are in Guantánamo. The whole thing is at breaking point. Clearly the US military is under enormous pressure and doing everything it can to hurt the men and break the hunger strike.”

The suffering of the prisoners on hunger strike remains deeply alarming. According to the US authorities, 104 of the remaining 166 men are taking part in the hunger strike which is on its 139th day, although the prisoners allege that the true number is a least 130. Even more alarming is the fact that 44 of these men are being force-fed, a situation that caused over 150 doctors from the US and around the world to write a letter to President Obama last week calling for an end to the force-feeding, and for independent medical personnel to be allowed to visit the prisoners, and that also caused Sen. Dianne Feinstein to write to the Defense Secretary, Chuck Hagel, calling for an end to the force-feeding. In her letter, Sen. Feinstein explained that she was writing to “express to you my concerns and opposition to the force- feeding of detainees, not for reasons of medical necessity but as a matter of policy that stands in conflict with international norms.”

Despite promising to resume releasing prisoners in a major speech on national security on May 23, President Obama has not, to date, released a single prisoner, even though the power to do so in his hands. Congress has raised severe obstacles to the release of prisoners to countries they regard as dangerous or countries where there is a single alleged case of “recidivism” (returning to the battlefield), although none of these restrictions apply to the UK, and as a result Shaker’s ongoing imprisonment remains thoroughly disgraceful, and ought to be a source of shame for both President Obama and the British Prime Minister David Cameron.

The Observer noted that the “momentum” behind efforts to release Shaker “mounted sharply last week with David Cameron raising the issue directly with the US president, Barack Obama, during the G8 summit in Northern Ireland.”

On Wednesday, responding to a parliamentary question about his discussion with President Obama, David Cameron stated that he would be writing to the President about the “specifics of the case and everything that we can do to expedite it,” adding, “Clearly, President Obama wants to make progress on this issue and we should help him in every way that we can with respect to this individual.”

The Observer described David Cameron’s comments as “the most positive indication to date that Aamer will eventually be freed,” which to some extent is true, although as Clive Stafford Smith told the Huffington Post, in response to a letter from David Cameron to Johina Aamer, Shaker Aamer’s daughter, and the eldest of his four children (the youngest of whom he has never seen), David Cameron “has far more power to secure the detainee’s release than was revealed in the letter.”

In response to a wonderfully eloquent letter from Johina, which I’m cross-posting below, David Cameron wrote to her to explain that, “Despite efforts to secure his release, it remains the case that he has been cleared for transfer but not for release,” adding, “It also remains the case that any decision regarding your father’s release remains ultimately in the hands of the US Government.”

Clive Stafford Smith told the Huffington Post, “It is the repeatedly stated policy of the UK government that Shaker can and should come home to the UK. This is in David Cameron’s hands and to suggest that he doesn’t have the power to influence the US in this matter is slightly embarrassing.”

That is certainly true, and it is important to refuse to accept claims, by the Prime Minister, or any other representatives of the UK government, that there is some kind of difference between “transfer” and “release,” when there is not. All the prisoners cleared for release have technically been “approved for transfer,” but the conditions involve a desire on the part of the US authorities to have released prisoners monitored, which would not be difficult for the British government. What the Prime Minister didn’t explain openly is that the US wanted — or perhaps still wants — to send Shaker back to Saudi Arabia, overlooking the UK’s own obligations to bring Shaker back to the UK, which are not negotiable, as Clive Stafford Smith noted. The UK has been requesting Shaker’s return since August 2007, and no acceptable reason can be provided for him not to be returned here, to his home and his family.

David Cameron also told Johina that the question of her father’s release “had been repeatedly raised with the US,” and that the government had also received information about his hunger strike. “The US authorities have assured us that he is in a stable condition and that he is being offered medical treatment,” he wrote, even though the words themselves mean very little.

Graciously, Johina told the Times, “My family and I are grateful to the Prime Minister for having the courtesy to respond to us directly after being ignored by the Labour Government.” Nevertheless, she added, “However, 11 years is too much for anyone to take, and our desire is that the UK uses … its political strength to force the US to return our father home to us.”

That is extremely well put, and I would only add that David Cameron needs to stop procrastinating, and needs to use the “political strength” Johina refers to, in order to get her father back immediately.

The endless excuses are so tiresome now that it is no longer possible for them to be regarded as even vaguely acceptable. Shaker Aamer needs to be put on a plane tomorrow, and flow back to the Uk to be reunited with his family.

For further confirmation of why this is so necessary, please read Johina’s letter to David Cameron about her father, which was written two months ago.

Johina Aamer’s letter to David Cameron, April 19, 2013

The Rt. Hon. David Cameron MP

10 Downing Street

London

SW1A 2AA

Sir,

My name is Johina Aamer, and I am the daughter of the last British resident in Guantánamo Bay, Shaker Aamer. To be honest, it is a little tiring writing that introduction, as the fact that I need to introduce myself highlights the extent to which I feel my family and I have been betrayed by our own country for the last 11 years.

I had just turned four when my family was deprived of a father and husband. He has been in Guantánamo Bay for more than 11 years while the British government allowed him to be tortured, causing both physical and mental scars. His petition has now surpassed the 100,000 signatures mark meaning his case will now be discussed in parliament next week, on Wednesday 24th April 2013 [see the transcripts of the debate in Westminster Hall here and here]. I question, however, whether this parliamentary discussion will be enough to bring my father home — if you felt the compassion that the signatories feel for my father, you would not have allowed him to remain in Guantánamo Bay for this long.

Like the public you are most likely to be knowledgeable of the fact that my father has been cleared for release many times in the past, which leads me to question why is he still in prison? I am also wondering how many times it will take for me to say “My name is Johina Aamer, I am 15 years old and my dad is in prison” until someone from the government takes our plight seriously, and actually does something to help?  My father is now one of the many Guantánamo detainees who are on hunger strike: exhausted by our government’s neglect of his situation, he is starving himself out of protest. My father has been on hunger strike many times in the past but now his lawyer has attested to the fact he is genuinely frightened for his survival this time. Do you have any concept of what it is like for me, my brothers and my mother to hear this news?

I am writing to you to ask — please explain to me what you have been doing to secure my father’s release? I previously wrote to the former Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, but he did not consider my family’s difficult situation important enough to reply — I hope that you will not be so inconsiderate.

Although I am young, I have come to understand that maybe you are delaying my father’s return due to the Justice and Security Bill I keep on reading about. I would like to say that I would want to add my name to all those who have opposed this bill, including the 702 lawyers who have signed the petition [actually a letter] in opposition to it. The reason for this is that my family has felt the impact of secret evidence more than most — we have a personal experience of how damaging it can be to be left in the dark about allegations and not to have the opportunity to defend yourself.

The closed material procedure is fundamentally immoral and takes away yet another basic human right. I know that the British Government is using this law to escape anything in court that may cause humiliation. However adopting the bill will just cause a greater state of shame in addition to giving the government a bad reputation for not being able to confess to their involvement in torture.

I see the injustice of the Justice and Security Bill on my father’s release. I clearly recognise that the British government is not willing to take any action until the law gets passed because my father’s return to Britain will cause additional disgrace upon the British government, especially after the case of Binyam Mohamed. This is also being shown by how fast the government have rushed the bill through parliament. Even though it is wrong and instead of finding ways to stop the country’s involvement in human rights abuses, it is supporting torture and rendition by allowing it to be covered up.

If the Justice and Security Bill is an imperative for my father’s release, then I strongly suggest that you continue your inaction against him. My father would not under any condition buy his freedom at the price of injustice.

While I am not confident that you will, if you conclude that you are willing to write back, then I would like the answers to my questions and for you to allow me to acquire your exact accomplishments that are beneficial to my father’s case.

Yours sincerely

Johina Aamer

15 years old

The daughter of Shaker Aamer

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

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