Andy Worthington's Blog, page 136
June 23, 2013
Save Lewisham Hospital: Please Get Involved in “Justice for Lewisham Week,” June 29 to July 5, 2013
Next week (from June 29 to July 5) is “Justice for Lewisham Week” in the London Borough of Lewisham, where the hospital that serves the 270,000 inhabitants has been under threat since last October, when Matthew Kershaw, an NHS Special Administrator appointed to deal with the debts of a neighbouring NHS Trust, the South London Healthcare Trust, through legislation known as the Unsustainable Provider Regime, decided that one way of doing so would be to severely downgrade services at Lewisham (unconnected to the SLHT except by geographical proximity), shutting its A&E Department and axing 90 percent of maternity services along with all acute services.
At the end of January, Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, approved the recommendations, but the people of Lewisham — myself included — refused to give up. Campaigning has continued relentlessly, and two judicial reviews were launched in response — one launched by Lewisham Council, and another by the Save Lewisham Hospital campaign. £20,000 was needed for the Save Lewisham Hospital campaign’s judicial review, which was raised by supporters of the hospital, including Millwall F.C. and other people (including 6,000 supporters of the campaigning group 38 Degrees) who understand that Lewisham is a test case for what the would-be butchers of the NHS can get away with (both in the NHS’s own senior management, and in government).
The judicial reviews will be taking place in the High Court in London from Tuesday July 2 to Thursday July 4, and the campaign is calling for people from the community to attend the hearing each day, and also for a big group of people to be there at the start of the proceedings on the morning of July 2nd. Please email Dagmar to sign up.
The council describes its legal challenge (which I wrote about here) as follows:
The grounds for our challenge are simple — that the decisions are beyond the powers set out in the Unsustainable Provider Regime. The UPR confers powers on a Trust Special Administrator and on the Secretary of State respectively to make recommendations, and to take action, about the NHS Trust to which the TSA has been appointed, in this case the South London Healthcare NHS Trust. It confers no powers to take action about and NHS Trust, such as Lewisham Healthcare, to which a TSA has not been appointed.
The Save Lewisham Hospital campaign’s related legal challenge, which I wrote about here, focuses specifically on four tests that were supposed to have been satisfied for the recommendations to be approved. These are as follows (along with the campaign’s responses):
A Clinical evidence base underpinning the proposals. The campaign has presented evidence showing that “the clinical evidence in the TSA report is flawed.”
The changes have the support of the GP commissioners involved. “Significantly,” the campaign notes, “110/140 GPs have signed a petition against the reforms.”
They must genuinely promote choice for their patients. The campaign has provided evidence that challenges this claim.
The public, patients and local authorities have been genuinely engaged. As the campaign notes, “Local opinion is clearly against these recommendations with at least 32,000 local people signing a petition, as well as in the region of 15,000 taking to the streets in the largest local protest demonstration of its kind in decades [followed by 25,000 in January this year]. The local authority has also formally made its opposition clear.”
As Rosa Curling from the law firm Leigh Day, representing the Save Lewisham Hospital campaign, explained:
We have advised our client that the decision taken by Mr. Hunt to substantially cut services at Lewisham Hospital is unlawful. The consultation process which took place about the proposals was flawed, the four tests Mr. Hunt confirmed would have to be satisfied before any reconfiguration proposals could proceed have not been met, and the Secretary of State has misunderstood his own legal powers.
We have written to the Secretary of State setting out the basis of our client’s case but to date, he has chosen not to respond. Our client has no option therefore but to issue proceedings and to request that the Court urgently intervene. The campaign is asking the Court to declare Mr. Hunt’s decision unlawful and to quash it, so Mr. Hunt can reconsider.
As well as calling on people to attend the hearings from July 2 to July 4, the Save Lewisham Hospital campaign has also organised a wonderful and unique all-day event in Catford on Saturday June 29, the Lewisham People’s Commission of Inquiry, details of which are below:
Lewisham People’s Commission of Inquiry
Saturday June 29, 2013, 9.30am to 5.30pm, Broadway Theatre, Catford, London SE6 4RU.
Chaired by Michael Mansfield QC and including Baroness Warnock, the author Blake Morrison, Lord David Owen and Lewisham’s Mayor, Sir Steve Bullock.
At the start of “Justice for Lewisham Week,” the Save Lewisham Hospital campaign is holding a Commission of Inquiry into government plans to downgrade Lewisham Hospital, asking, “Why is the government planning to downgrade Lewisham Hospital and even sell it off to private companies?” and “How do plans for Lewisham link to the government’s overall plans for the NHS?”
The Commission will examine three particular issues:
The original vision and principles underpinning the NHS, with particular reference to the community it serves and its accountability to that community.
The extent to which the vision and principles have been eroded by the imposition of the internal market and recent moves to open the NHS to external market forces and the degree to which these changes have been openly debated.
The extent to which this process has culminated in the potential destruction of quality healthcare for the community of Lewisham and South East London, exemplified by the proposals for Lewisham Hospital.
To book a place sign up at the foot of the page on the Save Lewisham Hospital campaign website. A 50p donation will be asked for on the day.
As noted above, the panel will be chaired by Michael Mansfield QC, and will include Baroness Warnock and the award-winning Lewisham-based author and journalist Blake Morrison, and the Commission will hear evidence that has been denied by Special Administrator Kershaw and Minister of State for Health Jeremy Hunt. Lord David Owen and Mayor Sir Steve Bullock will address the Commission.
Evidence from the following will also be presented to the panel: Professor Colin Leys and Professor Allyson Pollock about privatisation and the role of PFIs in the NHS; leading GPs, hospital clinicians and nurses; patients and patient representatives; representatives of the council and local businesses; and church and community representatives.
The day after, Friday July 5, is the 65th anniversary of the founding of the NHS, and there will be a demonstration by the war memorial opposite Lewisham Hospital, from noon until 2pm.
See you there, hopefully!
Note: Please also mark Sunday September 29 in your diary, when the three biggest unions in the country — Unite, Unison and the GMB — “will be protesting against the accelerating sell-off of the NHS to profit-driven private healthcare companies at the Conservative party conference in Manchester,” as a press release by Unite describes it. Watch this space for further details.
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.
June 22, 2013
150 Doctors Condemn Force-Feeding at Guantánamo; Ahmed Belbacha Describes It As a Painful Ordeal
Over 150 doctors from the US and around the world have condemned the force-feeding of hunger strikers at Guantánamo in a letter to President Obama that was published in the Lancet this week. They were following up on a letter to medical professionals at the prison, which 13 prisoners wrote at the end of May, and which I posted here.
In that letter, the prisoners complained about their abuse by doctors — “For those of us being force-fed against our will, the process of having a tube repeatedly forced up our noses and down our throats in order to keep us in a state of semi-starvation is extremely painful and the conditions under which it is done are abusive” — and called for “independent medical professionals” to be allowed into Guantánamo to treat them, and to be given full access to their medical records, in order to determine the best treatment for them.
The letter from 153 doctors echoes these calls, pointing out that the prisoners “do not trust their military doctors,” and that they “have very good reason for this,” as was revealed in the document, “Standard Operating Procedure: Medical management of Detainees on Hunger Strike,” dated March 5, 2013, which was recently obtained through FOIA legislation by my friend and colleague Jason Leopold for Al-Jazeera.
The doctors also describe it as “imperative” for the prisoners “to have access to independent medical examination and advice, as they ask,” and offer “to visit them under appropriate conditions, to assist in their recovery” — and their release, in the cases of the 86 men cleared for release by President Obama’s inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force in January 2010, if, as they say to the President, “you keep your word (given over 4 years ago), and arrange release of detainees.” They point out additionally that these men will need to become fit to fly before they can be returned to wherever you order your forces to send them.”
In testimony made available to the BBC by Reprieve, the London-based legal action charity whose lawyers represent 15 prisoners still held at Guantánamo, Ahmed Belbacha, one of the 44 men currently being force-fed, gave a first-person account to underline the doctors’ concerns. As the BBC described it, he “said the process ‘hurts a great deal’ and many prisoners vomit.”
Belbacha, an Algerian citizen who lived in the UK for two years and was cleared for release in 2007, has fought attempts to repatriate him forcefully, as he fears persecution from both the government and religious extremists in his homeland.
On the BBC’s Newshour programme, his lawyer reported that he had recently said, “I tell the doctors that force- feeding me is a violation of their medical ethics, but they say that the order comes from the guards and they have no control.”
He added that every day of the hunger strike was “an ordeal,” and also, as the BBC put it, “revealed that he tries to hide it when he vomits because otherwise he would be force-fed again.”
He also said that prisoners “are shackled as they are force-fed and strapped into a feeding chair with their hands tied to their stomachs,” and added that this process “is often made worse by the ‘inexperience or indifference’ of medical staff.”
“Sometimes,” he said, “they botch putting the tube in and tears stream down my cheek. They used to use my left nostril but it stopped working.”
Below is the letter to the Lancet, and, on publication, its first listed signatory, Dr. Frank Arnold, gave the BBC an even more sharply worded condemnation of the force-feeding at Guantánamo, describing it as torture. He said, “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.”
Open letter to President Obama on hunger strikers in Guantánamo
The Lancet, Volume 381, Issue 9884, June 22, 2013
Frank Arnold, Vincent Iacopino, Scott Allen, Hernán Reyes, Iain Chalmers, on behalf of 148 other signatories
We write to you as doctors and other health professionals to request that you attend to the open letter from 13 of the hunger strikers in Guantánamo to their military doctors.
It is clear that they do not trust their military doctors. They have very good reason for this, as you should know, from the current protocols of the Joint Task Force Guantánamo, which those doctors are ordered to follow. The orders they receive are ultimately your orders as their Commander-in-Chief. Without trust, safe and acceptable medical care of mentally competent patients is impossible. Since the detainees do not trust their military doctors, they are unlikely to comply with current medical advice.
That makes it imperative for them to have access to independent medical examination and advice, as they ask, and as required by the UN and World Medical Association. [see here and here]
Many of the hunger strikers will be currently unfit for long-distance flights.
We endorse their request, and are prepared to visit them under appropriate conditions, to assist in their recovery and release, and certify when we are confident it is medically safe for them to fly.
If you keep your word (given over 4 years ago), and arrange release of detainees, they will need to become fit to fly before they can be returned to wherever you order your forces to send them.
We have the deepest sympathy for the hunger strikers, the military doctors, and your predicaments. We offer our services to visit, examine and advise them, and to assist in any way that is acceptable to all parties.
We declare that we have no conflicts of interest.
From US:
Dr. Edward Ameen
Dr. Jean Maria Arrigo
Dr. Nancy Arvold
Dr. Deborah Ascheim
Ms. Suzanne Bolwell RN
Dr. Trudy Bond
Dr. J. Wesley Boyd
Dr. Yosef Brody
Dr. Michelle Cartier
Dr. Walter Coppenrath
Dr. Gerard Coste
Dr. Chris Curry
Dr. Tamara Goldberg
Dr. Naomi Granvold
Dr. Sarah Gundle
Ms. Sharon Haight-Carter
Dr. Karen Hanscom
Dr. Michael Jackson
Mr. Todd Jailer
Ms. Sarah Kamens
Ms. Daniela Kantorova
Dr. Craig Katz
Rev. Dr. Carol Kessler
Dr. Sarah Kimball
Dr. Sarah Kureshi
Dr. Ellen Levine
Dr. Silvia Linares
Dr. Constance Liu
Ms. Courtney Massaro
Dr. John May
Mr. Thomas McCoy
Dr. Ayesha Mian
Dr. Ranit Mishori
Dr. Jeffrey Nichols
Dr. Brad Olson
Ms. Sheridan Phillips
Dr. Matthew Pius
Dr. Rishi Rattan
Dr. Barry Roth
Ms. Marion Seymour
Dr. Marc F. Stern
Dr. William Wedin
Dr. Mary White
From clinicians in other countries:
Dr. Mohamed Abdi
Mr. Olufunso Adedeji
Dr. Saeed Ahmad
Dr. Shahzad Alikhan
Dr. Ben Alofs
Dr. Alice Armitage
Prof. Jane Armitage
Dr. Edwin Armitage
Dr. Adam Asghar
Dr. Sarah Lou Bailey
Dr. Anna Barnes
Dr. Noel Baxter
Dr. Miriam Beeks
Mr. Brian Beveridge
Dr. Kathryn Boyd
Dr. Judith Burchardt
Dr. Christopher Burns-Cox
Dr. Robert Chalmers
Dr. Ravi Cheedella
Prof. Rory Collins
Prof. David Colquhoun
Dr. Paul Cooper
Dr. Alison Cran
Dr. Camilla Day
Prof. Carol Dezateux
Dr. Martin Duddy
Dr. Donal Duffin
Dr. Martin Eccles
Mr. David Evans
Prof. Gene Feder
Prof. Richard Fielding
Dr. Peter Fisher
Prof. Alastair Forbes
Ms. Selina Gann
Prof. Ruth Gilbert
Dr. Charmian Goldwyn
Dr. Kate Granger
Prof. Trish Greenhalgh
Prof. Sir Andrew Haines
Mr. David Halpin
Dr. Mark Thomas Heafield
Dr. Bradley Hillier
Mr. David Hirst
Dr. Walter Holland
Dr. Laura Jefferys
Dr. Dan Joyce
Prof. Cornelius Katona
Prof. Christopher Kelnar
Dr. Asad Khan
Mr. Steve Kilby
Dr. Danni Kirwan
Prof. Parveen Kumar
Prof. Malcolm Macleod
Dr. Javed Mahmood
Mr. Masood Majoka
Dr. Steven Martin
Dr. Adrian Martineau
Dr. Margaret McCartney
Dr. David McCoy
Dr. John Middleton
Dr. Jennifer Mindell
Dr. Rosemary Mullett
Mrs. Sarah Mumford
Dr. Elisabeth Murray
Dr. Annette Neary
Dr. Penny Neild
Dr. David Nicholl
Dr. Joost den Otter
Dr. Neil Pakenham-Walsh
Dr. Louise Pealing
Dr. Tomasz Pierscionek
Prof. Allyson Pollock
Dr. Piyush Pushkar
Dr. Ian Roberts
Dr. James Robertson
Dr. Benjamin Robinson
Dr. Martin Samuels
Dr. Mariam Sbaiti
Dr. Claudia Schoenborn
Dr. Anoop Shah
Miss Linda Shampan
Dr. Khaled Sherlala
Dr. Gregory Shields
Prof. Sam Shuster
Dr. Marianna Siapera
Dr. S Ruth Silverman
Dr. Ron Singer
Dr. Richard Smith MSc
Gerrianne Smits
Dr. Egan Soph
Miss Rachael South
Dr. Angharad Spencer
Dr. Angelo Stefanini
Dr. Lucy Stephenson
Dr. Sarah Stringer
Mr. Ciaran Stuart
Mrs. Rachel Stuchbury
Dr. Payam Torabi
Dr. Zara Usmani
Dr. David Webb
Dr. Natalia Wielgosz
Prof. Hywel Williams
Dr. Lesley Wilson
Dr. Tom Yates
Prof. John Yudkin
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.
June 21, 2013
Memories of Youth and the Need for Dissent on the 29th Anniversary of the last Stonehenge Free Festival
Please note that my books Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield are both still available, and I also wholeheartedly recommend Travelling Daze: Words and Images from the UK’s New Travellers and Festivals, Late 1960s to the Here and Now, Alan Dearling’s epic review of the traveller scene (to which I was one of many contributors), which was published last year, and is essential reading for anyone interested in Britain’s traveller history.
Every year, on the summer solstice, I am confronted by two particular questions, as, I’m sure, are many people old enough to have spent their youth growing up under Margaret Thatcher, or in the years previously, under Ted Heath’s Tory government, and the Labour governments of Harold Wilson and Jim Callaghan, when an unofficial civil war was taking place in British society.
Those two questions are: what happened to my youth, and what happened to massive, widespread societal dissent?
The former of course, is an existential question, which only young people don’t understand. It’s 29 years since the last Stonehenge Free Festival, an annual anarchic jamboree that lasted for the whole of June, when Britain’s alternative society set up camp in the fields across the road from Stonehenge, and it’s 39 years since the first festival was established, by an eccentric young man named Phil Russell, or, as his friends and admirers remember him, Wally Hope.
I was 20, and a student, when I visited the Stonehenge Free Festival in 1983 — an eye-opening event that was literally life-changing, as it showed me an alternative to the hectoring world of order and greed that Margaret Thatcher was busy establishing, as she took the axe to the British state, to the trade unions, and to the spirit of the 60s, which had gone suburban in the 1970s and was eating away at the dull conformist straitjacket of Little England.
Tens of thousands of people — none of them supporters of Margaret Thatcher — were on Salisbury Plain, sticking two fingers up to the British establishment. There were wall-to-wall drugs, of course, including a couple of beaming elves beside a barrel — a literal barrel — of magic mushrooms, and the cries of “Acid! Speed! Hot knives!” rang through the sky. But there was much, much more. Street after street of wildly painted old vehicles — trucks and buses and coaches — and their inhabitants, refugees from the unemployment of Thatcher’s Britain, or visionaries actively seeking out an alternative — life on the road, not cooped up in ghettos, with visions of ecological solutions to society’s problems, of communes and cooperatives, of land reform, an end to nuclear proliferation and an end to society’s enthusiastic endorsement of nuclear power.
By 1984, as Thatcher declared war on the miners and George Orwell’s prophesies were ringing through everyone’s ears, life became darker, and in 1985 Margaret Thatcher brought the Stonehenge Free Festival to a violent end, and struck a savage blow to the viability of the travellers’ society, at what will forever be known as the Battle of the Beanfield, when 1,300 police from six counties and the MoD cornered the advance convoy heading to Stonehenge to set up what would have been the 12th festival, and decommissioned them with a brutality that is still shocking today. For further information, see my article from June 1, 2012, “Remember the Battle of the Beanfield: It’s the 27th Anniversary Today of Thatcher’s Brutal Suppression of Traveller Society,” which, I’m delighted to note, has had over 6,700 “likes” on Facebook.
This was not the end of dissent, of course. As though poetic justice were being exercised, within a few years ecstasy arrived on these shores, and, with new forms of electronic dance music, a massive new movement of dissent was created, with massive warehouse parties and raves in fields taking place up and down the land. State repression, and changes in the law killed off this movement too, between 1992, when a Stonehenge-sized festival took place at Castlemorton in Gloucestershire, and 1994, when the Criminal Justice Act was passed, the successor to the Public Order Act that was passed after the Beanfield, which finally criminalised any unauthorised gatherings of more than two people.
Fortunately, hedonism was not the only game in town in John Major’s Britain, because, as the young often fail to realise, it is not the same thing as political consciousness. While opportunistic businessmen circled the rave scene, hoping to make a fortune when it was castrated and subsequently licensed (as they did), other forms of dissent sprang up spontaneously — primarily the extraordinary road protest movement, a direct response to the clampdown on travellers, which transformed the nomadic impulse into one of occupation, as defenders of trees and wildlife — defenders of Mother Nature — occupied trees and invented new forms of front-line resistance to the wrecking crews sent out by the government to clear the way for numerous road-building projects that were ecologically ruinous, and that would only increase the self-obsessive tyranny of car use (as has, indeed, come to pass). Note: For the road protest movement in 2013, see this Guardian article.
The road protest movement spawned the wonderfully theatrical and confrontational Reclaim the Streets, and all of these impulses fed into the massive anti-globalization movement of the early 90s and the start of the 21st century, which was only finally suppressed with extreme violence, and the distractions — not uncoincidental — of terrorism and war.
While there is no easy answer to what getting older means and how to cope with the vanishing of youth, I do not believe the same is true of political dissent, which briefly flickered back into life with the Occupy movement in 2011. Horribly, the governments of Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron have continued to clamp down on our civil liberties in the most disgraceful manner, generally using “terrorism” as an excuse, and, beginning with Blair, we have also seen the final realisation of Thatcher’s dream — a world in which money is the only measurement of success and worth; politicians pimp the country and their constituencies for banks, corporations and the super-rich, who are all, very literally, out of control; the key aspects of life are relentless self-obsession, relentless materialism, increasing vacuousness, directly connected to the depoliticisation of life in general, and a creeping hatred of a demonised “other” — be it Muslims, immigrants, the unemployed, or the disabled.
We may not be able to turn back time to when we were all whippet thin, and full of the effervescence of youth, but we can continue to fight back against the dying of the light that is so horribly evident in the changes of the last decade and a half. Our current way of life — shallow, dead-eyed, self-obsessed, petty, spiteful, environmentally ruinous and driven remorselessly by greed and various false narratives of entitlement (especially amongst the rich and powerful) — is far more disastrous than the one we were fighting against in the 70s, the 80s and the 90s, and all of us who are conscious need to be aware that sitting back and putting up with it is no answer at all.
As 20,000 revellers return from the “managed open access” that English Heritage have successfully initiated since 2000 — after those 16 dreadful years of post-Beanfield exclusion, when, every year, Stonehenge was like a war zone — I wish you all a happy solstice, but I also urge you to remember the spirit of dissent that once permeated the veins and arteries of British life — and to do something, anything, to break some rules, to declare that property and the law are constructs, and to show that your life is your own.
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.
June 20, 2013
TV and Radio: Andy Worthington Discusses the Ongoing Guantánamo Hunger Strike on Press TV and on KBOO FM
On Tuesday evening, I responded to a last-minute request for a brief interview about Guantánamo, and the ongoing hunger strike that is now on its 135th day, with Press TV. That interview is available here, and below is a rather helpful transcript, produced by Press TV, to which I have made a few corrections.
I’d also like to take this opportunity to link to a radio interview I undertook last week with Linda Olson-Osterlund on her show A Deeper Look on KBOO FM, a community radio station in Portland, Oregon. Linda first approached me for an interview back in May 2008, and we have since spoken many times. It is always a pleasure to speak to her, as she is a well-informed host, passionate about exposing injustice. The half-hour show is available here, and the MP3 is here.
The show was entitled, “Guantánamo Bay Prison Camp: Will It ever Close?” and this is how Linda described it:
With 104 men on hunger strike, 41 of them being force fed and 4 hospitalized, White House officials and Senators Feinstein and McCain paid a surprise visit last Friday. At the same time there is a mini troop surge going on at the prison. Join me, Linda Olson-Osterlund, for A Deeper Look, this Thursday morning at 9:30am. My guest will be Andy Worthington, journalist and author of The Guantánamo Files. He’ll help make sense of the changing political landscape about the prison camp and bring us up to date on efforts to have men released.
Below is the transcript of the Press TV interview:
Guantánamo awful for US human rights record: Andy Worthington
Press TV, June 19, 2013
Press TV has conducted an interview with Andy Worthington, with the Close Guantánamo campaign, about the hunger strike still continuing at Guantánamo Bay prison. What follows is a transcript of the interview.
Press TV: Mr. Worthington, first of all how does this particular case question America’s human rights record?
Andy Worthington: Well of course it is awful for America’s human rights record to be holding men without charge or trial, not to be holding them under any internationally accepted standards, and to be embroiled in the middle of this terrible situation whereby over 40 of the men in there are being force-fed and the majority of the prisoners are on a hunger strike and have been on a hunger strike for over four months.
Press TV: My question is: why doesn’t the United Nations or the European Union intervene?
Andy Worthington: They have done what they can. You know, the United Nations has spoken out on several occasions this year since the hunger strike started, very publicly. The European Parliament has passed a resolution calling for the prisoners to be treated well, calling for the hunger strike to be brought to an end, for Guantánamo to be closed. The thing is that no one can put pressure on the United States unless the United States wants that pressure to be exerted. Now it is certainly true that criticism hurts America but there’s no magic lever that anyone has to make them do anything.
What we have seen from President Obama are promises to deal with it and we actually had him appointing an envoy at the State Department who is going to help supposedly with the release of prisoners. So we are getting somewhere, but it is all happening very slowly and that is terrible for the men in Guantánamo who are literally starving themselves to death.
Press TV: Well, the situation is getting worse day by day. What if an inmate on hunger strike dies? What then?
Andy Worthington: Well, then it will be extremely bad PR for the United States government and that really is something that ought to be sharpening their resolve more than it is.
Unfortunately, they’ve demonstrated over the years that they are very good at keeping force-fed hunger strikers alive. There is a man at Guantánamo who has been on a hunger strike since the summer of 2005 — yes that’s right, nearly eight years. He has been force-fed since January 2006 when they first brought the restraint chairs, in which they strap them in there and then they put the tubes up their nose into their stomach.
He has been fed twice a day like this since January 2006, and he’s still alive. I can’t vouch for what his mental state would be, or in fact for how weakened his body must be as a result of all this, but he hasn’t died.
So I would imagine, at some cynical level, they are counting on the fact that they are able to keep people alive. The problem is that people are starving themselves in this way at Guantánamo because they don’t believe anymore in the value of their lives, trapped in this prison when they’re not being released. And this is men who — over half of them have been cleared for release by the government but have been trapped because they’re part of a game of cynical political football.
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.
June 19, 2013
Close Guantánamo: We Still Have Three Urgent Demands for President Obama
[image error]I wrote the following article for the “Close Guantánamo” website, which I established in January 2012 with US attorney Tom Wilner. Please join us — just an email address is required to be counted amongst those opposed to the ongoing existence of Guantánamo, and to receive updates of our activities by email.
On Monday, President Obama fulfilled the first of three promises he made a month ago to resume releasing prisoners from Guantánamo, by appointing an envoy at the State Department to deal with prisoner transfers.
In a speech on national security issues on May 23, in which the President spoke at length about Guantánamo, he made the following promises: “I am appointing a new, senior envoy at the State Department and Defense Department whose sole responsibility will be to achieve the transfer of detainees to third countries. I am lifting the moratorium on detainee transfers to Yemen, so we can review them on a case by case basis. To the greatest extent possible, we will transfer detainees who have been cleared to go to other countries.”
In fulfilling the first promise, President Obama has appointed Clifford Sloan, described by The Hill as “a veteran Washington attorney and civil servant.” He was “an associate counsel to former President Clinton and an assistant to the solicitor general in the first Bush administration,” and also “worked as associate counsel in the Office of Independent Counsel investigating the Iran-Contra affair and clerked for Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens.” More recently, he was the publisher of Slate magazine, and legal counsel for the Washington Post‘s online operations.
In a statement, Secretary of State John Kerry said, “I’ve known and respected Cliff Sloan for nearly ten years. His intellect and skill as a negotiator is respected across party lines, and he’s served presidents Republican and Democratic with equal skill. I appreciate his willingness to take on this challenge. Cliff and I share the President’s conviction that Guantánamo’s continued operation isn’t in our security interests.”
Kerry also accepted that closing Guantánamo “will not be easy, but if anyone can effectively navigate the space between agencies and branches of government, it’s Cliff. He’s someone respected by people as ideologically different as Kenneth Starr and Justice Stevens, and that’s the kind of bridge-builder we need to finish this job.”
An ongoing demand for President Obama to begin releasing the 86 cleared prisoners — both the Yemenis, and those from other countries
President Obama still has a second envoy to appoint, at the Pentagon, but this is good news. However, it is no time for complacency. The President urgently needs to fulfill the two other promises — releasing cleared Yemenis and releasing other cleared prisoners. 86 of the remaining 166 prisoners were cleared for release by the President’s inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force in January 2010, and 56 of those men are Yemenis. Although it is important that President Obama lifted the ban he himself imposed on releasing cleared Yemenis, following the failed airline bomb plot on Christmas Day 2009, which was hatched in Yemen, obstacles remain in Congress.
The appointment of Cliff Sloan may augur well for engagement with the parties necessary for the release of prisoners, but much work still remains to be done. On Friday, the House of Representatives voted to renew the restrictions on the release of prisoners that have been present in the National Defense Authorization Acts over the last two years, cynically adding a specific ban on the release of prisoners to Yemen.
The Yemen amendment, which prohibits using funds to transfer prisoners to Yemen, was put forward by Rep. Jackie Walorski (R-Ind.), and was passed by 236 votes to 188. Fundamentally misunderstanding the problems of endlessly holding men who have never been charged, tried or convicted of crimes, Rep. Walorski said, “It makes no sense to send terrorists to a country that has an active terrorist network,” even though, of course, the cleared prisoners are not, and have never been terrorists.
Democrats argued, as The Hill put it, that the Yemen government “has proved itself to be an ally in fighting the AQAP [Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula],” and that Congress “should not tie the president’s hands when the Pentagon already certifies that releasing detainees to another country is not a risk to national security.”
Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), the senior Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, who proposed a powerful amendment to secure the closure of the prison that was defeated, said, “We cannot warehouse these people forever. We need to give the president options, not restrict him.” In addition, Rep. Rob Andrews (D-N.J.) said that “the intelligence community and military had decided to clear the 56 detainees, and that Congress should not be overruling them.”
The Senate, where Democrats have a majority, will also debate its own version of the NDAA, and it is to be hoped that they will support the President’s plans, although whether enough pressure can be exerted to persuade lawmakers to drop all the restrictions remains to be seen. If not, the President will need to use a waiver in the NDAA that has existed since the restrictions were first imposed a year and a half ago, but which he has not yet used.
The restrictions imposed by lawmakers involve passages in the legislation preventing prisoners from being released if there is a single claim that anyone previously transferred to their home country “had subsequently engaged in any terrorist activity” (making the country in question a “recidivist country”) and also banning the release of prisoners to any other country unless the Secretary of Defense issues a certification personally “ensur[ing] that the individual [transferred] cannot engage or reengage in any terrorist activity.”
That, of course, is a certification that is impossible to make, but the waiver allows the President and the Secretary of Defense to bypass Congress and release prisoners if they state that it is “in the national security interests of the United States” to do so. Last month, Sen. Carl Levin, the powerful chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, sent a letter to President Obama, via his legal counsel, reminding him of his role in securing the waiver. “[M]ore than a year ago,” he wrote, “I successfully fought for a national security waiver that provides a clear route for the transfer of detainees to third countries in appropriate cases, i.e., to make sure the certification requirements do not constitute an effective prohibition.”
Last week, Daniel Klaidman reported for Newsweek that there was also progress on the Yemeni issue, when the government of Yemen announced that it “had begun to work with Saudi Arabia to develop a rehabilitation program” for released prisoners. Klaidman added that President Obama lifted his ban “contingent on assurances that they could be repatriated safely,” adding, “A rehab program could smooth the way for their return.”
Klaidman also noted that a visit to Guantánamo by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and Sen. John McCain, a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, was significant, especially as they were accompanied by White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough. As Klaidman stated, “The excursion was seen as a positive signal by those who want Obama to close Gitmo because it suggests that he is putting muscle behind his promise and that he understands he can succeed only by engaging Congress.”
Sen. McCain also spoke in support of closing Guantánamo, telling CNN’s “State of the Union” that, as the Huffington Post put it, “there is increasing public support for closing the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and moving detainees to a facility on the US mainland.” He said, “There’s renewed impetus. And I think that most Americans are more ready,” adding that he and Sen. Lindsey Graham “are working with the Obama administration on plans that could relocate detainees to a maximum-security prison in Illinois,” as the Huffington Post also described it. As McCain also said, “We’re going to have to look at the whole issue, including giving them more periodic review of their cases.”
Although these developments hint at progress, they are not, in and of themselves, sufficient to constitute the kind of significant activity that is necessary both to move definitively towards the closure of the prison, and, crucially, to reassure the prisoners still risking their lives on a prison-wide hunger strike that they have not been forgotten.
As Daniel Klaidman put it, “proponents of closing Guantánamo say the most important signal has yet to arrive: evidence that Obama is willing to spend significant political capital on the effort.” That, he added, “could come in the form of directing Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel to issue national-security waivers to bypass onerous restrictions Congress has imposed on transferring detainees from the prison.”
Klaidman also spoke to Carlos Warner, a federal public defender who represents eleven men still held at Guantánamo, who told him, “If Obama’s serious, he’ll start transferring men immediately using the authority he already has.”
On Monday, similar sentiments were expressed by Cori Crider, the strategic director at Reprieve, the London-based legal action charity whose lawyers (including Crider) represent 15 men still held at Guantánamo, including Shaker Aamer, the last British resident at the prison.
Crider said, “We’re glad that President Obama has re-opened the State Department office. It never should have been closed. But until the White House itself takes charge of its policy to close Guantánamo, and uses the power it has to get men who have been cleared for release home to US allies, people just are not going to move. Barack Obama could direct national security waivers to be signed tomorrow to send Shaker Aamer home to his family in the UK — this sort of thing doesn’t need a new appointment, it needs the President to show some spine.”
An ongoing demand for reviews to be initiated for the other prisoners
In the heading for this article, I mentioned three promises that President Obama needs to fulfill. In addition to releasing the Yemenis, and releasing other cleared prisoners (including Shaker Aamer), he needs to address the 46 other prisoners he designated for indefinite detention without charge or trial in an executive order in March 2011. He did so on the basis that the Guantánamo Review Task Force had concluded that they were too dangerous to release, but that the evidence against them couldn’t be used in a trial. What this means is that the information used to make these decisions is largely worthless — extracted from prisoners who were tortured or otherwise coerced, or from others who were bribed with better living conditions, or preyed on because they were mentally unstable.
The unfulfilled promise that President Obama made to these men is the promise to provide them with periodic reviews of their cases, which have not yet even begun, two years and three months after the promise was made. As Julian E. Barnes and Evan Perez noted in the Wall Street Journal last month, Army Lt. Col. Todd Breasseale, a Pentagon spokesman, told them, “The administration remains committed to fully implementing the PRB [Periodic Review Board] process as soon as possible and recently directed departments and agencies to resolve all remaining issues impeding full implementation so these reviews can begin in short order.”
An unidentified official was less convinced, telling them that “defense, intelligence and national-security officials have yet to agree on all the issues involved, including thorny questions of what information, including evidence against detainees, may be shared with the detainees during the reviews,” but other officials “predicted Mr. Obama’s speech would force the agencies to come to agreement and start the reviews.” One noted, “The president was extraordinarily direct.”
John Bellinger, a former legal adviser to the State Department in the Bush administration, told the journalists that, in his opinion, President Obama “ducked the hardest question about Gitmo” in his national security speech — “what to do with those who pose a significant threat but cannot be prosecuted,” but that is not strictly true, as that is the purpose of the review process.
What is necessary is for it to be genuinely objective, and for it to start from the presumption that, whatever advice President Obama was given back in 2010, it is unacceptable to hold 46 men for the rest of their lives without charge or trial, and 21 others, initially designated for trials by the task force, but who, as the military commissions’ chief prosecutor, Army Brig. Gen. Mark Martins, conceded last week, will never be tried.
For all of these men, we at “Close Guantánamo” share the sentiments of Raha Wala, a counsel at Human Rights First, who told the Wall Street Journal, “I expect the president will take the view that we can’t hold these individuals forever, even if we can’t try them.”
In the meantime, we will continue to monitor developments closely. We understand that the closure of the prison needs clear plans if lawmakers are ever to be persuaded to back proposals to bring it to an end. Some former officials who spoke to the Wall Street Journal’s reporters said they believe that the administration “will eventually back proposals to bring these detainees [the 80 not cleared for release] to an American maximum-security prison,” echoing John McCain’s comments at the weekend, which I mentioned above.
Noting that President Obama said in his speech that, as well as working towards releasing the 86 men cleared for release, he “would work with Congress on finding a suitable site in the US for holding judicial proceedings for others,” the reporters also stated that a senior administration official told them that “the most likely spot would be the US Navy brig in Charleston, S.C.”
Many advocates for the closure of Guantánamo find that disturbing, but at “Close Guantánamo” we have always believed that moving men to the US mainland will give them greater rights than they have at Guantánamo, and will enable new legal challenges to be made. For now, however, we hope that everyone concerned with closing the prison will keep pushing for the release of the 86 cleared prisoners, and will also keep pushing for the majority of the 80 others to be freed unless they are to be put on 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.
June 18, 2013
US Military Admits Only 2.5 Percent of All Prisoners Ever Held at Guantánamo Will Be Tried
So it’s official, then. Eleven and a half years after the “war on terror” prison opened at Guantánamo, the maximum number of prisoners that the US military intends to prosecute, or has already prosecuted, is 20 — or just 2.5 percent of the 779 men held at the prison since it opened in January 2002.
The news was announced on Monday June 10 by Army Brig. Gen. Mark Martins, the chief prosecutor for the military commissions at Guantánamo, and it is a humiliating climbdown for the authorities.
When President Obama appointed an inter-agency task force to review the cases of the remaining Guantánamo prisoners, which issued its report in January 2010, the task force recommended that 36 of the remaining prisoners should be tried.
Just five of the 36 have since been to trial — one in the US, and four through plea deals in their military commissions at Guantánamo. Another man — Ali Hamza al-Bahlul — had already been tried and convicted, in the dying days of George W. Bush’s second term, and two others had been sent home after their trials — David Hicks after a plea deal in March 2007, and Salim Hamdan after a trial in July 2008 — making a total of 39 prosecutions, or intended prosecutions, after eleven and a half years of the prison’s existence. That was just 5 percent of the men held throughout Guantánamo’s history, but now that figure, which was, in itself, an extremely poor reflection on the efficacy of the prison and its relationship to any acceptable notions of justice, has been halved.
As Reuters described it, Brig. Gen. Martins explained that the number set by the task force was “ambitious” in light of two rulings last October and in January this year by judges in the court of appeals in Washington D.C.
The first ruling, which I covered in my article, “Conservative Judges Demolish the False Legitimacy of Guantánamo’s Terror Trials,” involved Salim Hamdan, one of several drivers for Osama bin Laden, who took the job because he needed work, and who received a five and a half year sentence for providing material support for terrorism.
As the judges stated, “When Hamdan committed the conduct in question, the international law of war proscribed a variety of war crimes, including forms of terrorism. At that time, however, the international law of war did not proscribe material support for terrorism as a war crime.”
Hamdan’s judge included time served since he was first charged when sentencing him, so he was freed just five months later, but in January this year another ruling by the appeal court further undermined the commissions.
This second ruling involved Ali Hamza al-Bahlul, a Yemeni who is still held, and who had made a promotional video for al-Qaeda. As noted above, al-Bahlul received a life sentence in November 2008, after a brief and one-sided trial in which he refused to mount a defense. He was convicted for providing material support for terrorism, conspiracy, and another charge, solicitation, but when the Court of Appeals vacated his conviction, the judges cited a supplemental brief filed by the government, advising the Court that it took the “position that Hamdan requires reversal of Bahlul’s convictions by military commission.”
That second ruling is currently on appeal with the Supreme Court, and while it is uncertain why the government appealed, having previously backed down, the Hamdan decision alone has led to what Reuters described as the “drastic scaling back of the Guantánamo prosecutions” announced by Brig. Gen. Martins.
As Reuters also described it, Brig. Gen. Martins said that the Hamdan ruling “dissuaded prosecutors from pursuing cases against other prisoners they had considered charging with providing material support to al-Qaeda.”
Brig. Gen. Martins also made it clear that the total of 20 men includes the seven men who have been tried or have reached plea deals in their military commissions, and six others facing pre-trial hearings this week and next. It also seems to include Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, the only man to be transferred to the US mainland to face a trial, before Congress imposed restrictions preventing it, who was tried and convicted and received a life sentence in January 2011 for his role in the 1998 African Embassy bombings.
However, with the convictions of Salim Hamdan and Ali Hamza al-Bahlul overturned, even that figure of 20 looks optimistic, casting doubts on how secure the plea deals are in the cases of all the other men except Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani (who, just to reiterate, was the only one successfully prosecuted in a federal court) — David Hicks and Ibrahim al-Qosi (both freed), Omar Khadr (repatriated to further imprisonment in Canada), and Noor Uthman Muhammed and Majid Khan, who are both still held.
Furthermore, whilst the six men facing pre-trial hearings are known — Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others accused of involvement with the 9/11 attacks, and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, accused of involvement with the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000 — it is by no means certain that a case can be made against six others.
One already charged is Ahmed al-Darbi, a Saudi accused of plotting terrorist attacks, who was seized in Azerbaijan and tortured in CIA “black sites” before being sent to Guantánamo, and another, as Brig. Gen. Martins explained on Monday, is Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, one of the last prisoners to arrive at Guantánamo, in 2007.
According to the Pentagon’s press release, al-Hadi was “a senior member of al-Qaeda,” who “conspired with and led others in a series of perfidious attacks and related offenses in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2004.” The DoD also explained:
“Perfidy” is an offense triable by military commission in which those who are the targets of attack are killed, injured, or captured after the attackers have “invit[ed] the confidence or belief … that [the attackers] were entitled to … protection under the laws of war.”
Whether “perfidy” survives as a viable charge remains to be seen, although it is likely that it will take many years before any trial begins.
As for the others to be charged, Reuters noted that Brig. Gen. Martins “did not identify the handful of other prisoners he still wanted to charge but said he would concentrate on those linked to the most serious crimes.”
The Hamdan ruling ought to make sure that the various insignificant prisoners charged over the years — including a number of Afghans — are no longer charged, and it ought to increase the pressure on the Obama administration to make sure that these men receive reviews of their cases to explain why they should still be held.
These reviews are also needed for the 46 men who were designated for indefinite detention without charge or trial by President Obama, in an executive order in March 2011, following the recommendations made by his task force, who concluded that they were too dangerous to release, but that the information used to decide this could not be used in a trial. At the time, the President promised periodic reviews of these men’s cases, but those reviews have not yet materialized.
That means, of course, that the supposed evidence is fundamentally untrustworthy, produced through the use of torture or other forms of coercion, or consisting of intelligence reports regarded by the authorities as accurate, even though they may not be reliable at all. As this is a problem that permeates the Guantánamo prisoners’ cases like the poison it is, it is hard to see how Brig. Gen. Martins has located four other men to be tried, but there are 15 “high-value detainees” in Guantánamo, and while six of them are in pre-trial hearings, one has just been charged, one reached a plea deal last year, and one was convicted in New York, that does leave six to choose from.
The question, therefore, might be: whose torture is so severe that no trial is possible under any circumstances? I think that one answer is Abu Zubaydah, the guinea pig for the Bush administration’s entire “high-value detainee program” of “black sites” and torture, who was never part of al-Qaeda, as the Bush administration initially alleged, and whose health is so ruined by his torture that he regularly has seizures.
Then again, the authorities are not renowned for being able to ascertain the significance — or the lack of it — of the prisoners in their custody at Guantánamo, so it may be that even Abu Zubaydah will one day be wheeled out to face the shambolic proceedings that pass for trials at Guantánamo.
In the meantime, though, as 86 cleared prisoners at Guantánamo await release, I think it is important that, of the 80 other men still held, 65 others — the 46 designated for indefinite detention, plus 19 others recommended for trials, but who will not be tried, according to Brig. Gen. Martins — deserve to be told why they too should continue to be held.
Note: This article was written before the release, through FOIA legislation, of the full list of the Guantánamo Review Task Force’s decisions regarding who should be released, who should be held indefinitely , and who should be put forward for trials, in which Abu Zubaydah was indeed one of the 36 prisoners recommended for trials. This list was released on Monday June 17, and I will be covering it imminently.
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.
June 17, 2013
EXCLUSIVE: Former Guantánamo Prisoner Shamil Khaziev Detained in Holland
In news that has reached me exclusively via John Walls, an attorney at law in the town of Prinsenbeek, in the Netherlands, it transpires that a former Guantánamo prisoner, Shamil Khaziev, a Russian citizen, is imprisoned in Amsterdam, as the Dutch authorities try to strip him of his right to remain in the Netherlands. This was granted under the Geneva Convention in 2007, after he successfully sought asylum following his persecution in Russia.
A Tatar from Bashkortostan, north of Kazakhstan, and a former police lieutenant, Khaziev was seized in Afghanistan in November 2001, and survived a notorious US-led massacre at Qala-i-Janghi, a fortress used as a prison, which was precipitated by an uprising amongst a number of the prisoners, who feared that their captors meant to kill them. He was released from Guantánamo, where he was mistakenly identified as Almasm Rabilavich Sharipov, in February 2004, but sought and was granted asylum in Holland in 2007 after being persecuted by the authorities in his home country.
After being repatriated from Guantánamo, he was imprisoned in Russia until June 2004, and then, as as Human Rights Watch explained:
[He] returned to Uchali, a small town in the Russian republic of Bashkortostan, where his family lived. Human rights activist Alexandra Zernova, who met with Khazhiev on several occasions, said that he was repeatedly questioned by local FSB and UBOP officials after his return, and was briefly detained in Ufa, the Bashkortostan capital, in December 2004, on suspicion of membership in Hizb ut-Tahrir. He was released without charge. In September 2005, while riding on a train, he was questioned by UBOP officials from Samara. According to Zernova, Khazhiev has been unable to secure employment since his return from Guantánamo. He left Russia in March 2007.
In a report in February 2009, Human Rights Watch noted that he then “sought refuge in the Netherlands,” adding that the Dutch authorities “subsequently granted [him] political asylum based on the harassment and abuse he suffered at the hands of the Russian intelligence services upon his return to Russia from Guantánamo.”
Last week, however, John Walls wrote to me to tell me that Mr. Khazhiev is now in Schiphol Prison in Amsterdam, after his permit to stay in the Netherlands was annulled on the basis of secret information provided by AIVD, the Dutch secret service, which has alleged that he is engaged in fundamentalist activities and is a threat to national security. He told me that his client “has instructed me to go public.”
At present, it is not possible to ascertain whether there is any truth in the allegations, although it seems unlikely. As John Walls explained, “Originally in Russia he was harassed and falsely accused of being active for Hezb-e-Tahrir. I would not be surprised if the Dutch are ‘recycling’ this accusation, since the USA has him on the list of ex-GTMOers that are active ‘again’ based on this same information.”
That latter point is a reference to reports describing the alleged “recidivism” of released Guantánamo prisoners that have been emanating from the Department of Defense, and from the office of the Director of National Intelligence, throughout President Obama’s time in office. These monstrously unreliable reports refer to former prisoners who are both “confirmed’ and “suspected” of engaging in terrorism, and the report that included Mr. Khaziev, described as “Almasm Rabilavich Sharipov,” claimed that he was “suspected” of “Association with terrorist group Hezb-e-Tahrir.”
What is particularly important in reading these reports is to note how the very definitions of “confirmed” and “suspected” do not provide proof of the alleged wrong-doing. “Confirmed,” for example, only relates to a “preponderance of evidence — fingerprints, DNA, conclusive photographic match, or reliable verified, or well-corroborated intelligence reporting — [which] identifies a specific former Guantánamo detainee as directly engaged in terrorist activities,” and “suspected” is disturbingly vague. “Significant reporting,” the DoD explains, “indicates an individual is involved in terrorist activities and analysis of that reporting indicates the individual’s identity matches that of a specific former Guantánamo detainee” — or “unverified, or single-source, but plausible reporting indicates a specific former detainee is involved in terrorists activities.”
Sadly, however, far too many mainstream media outlets — and lawmakers and pundits dedicated to keeping Guantánamo open – have parroted the claims as true, with the most unreliable conflating the “confirmed” and “suspected” figures. In recent years, many mainstream media outlets have continued to parrot the official line even when no reports have been issued at all, just statements made in press conferences.
In relating the details of Shamil Khaziev’s current predicament, John Walls explained to me that, following the withdrawing of his client’s resident’s permit, an entry ban was declared and his social support was ended. As a result, he saw no other option but to leave Holland, and tried to reach friends in Turkey, but was stopped at Istanbul Airport. An entry ban was also given by Turkey, and he was put back on a plane back to Holland, where he was refused entry and is now a refugee in orbit.
Mr. Walls also explained that he is now fighting in the courts for his client, whose case is in three courts at the same time: an expulsion detention case in Haarlem, a case relating to the revocation of his permit in Den Bosch, and a case before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
On June 12, he told me that the judge ruling on the expulsion detention case has “decided that Mr. Khazhiev may be held in prison while the Dutch reconsider their viewpoint that he cannot be expelled to Russia, so he is still in jail,” and at the time of writing he confirmed to me that, because “the Haarlem court judged the detention according to law, that case is now in appeal with the Administrative Division of the State Council (Raad van State).”
For further information, please contact John Walls.
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.
June 15, 2013
From Guantánamo, Shaker Aamer Speaks, As His Lawyers Urge Cameron to Ask Obama for His Return at the G8
Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo, needs your help. Please write to the British Prime Minister David Cameron, via Twitter, or via the 10 Downing Street website, asking him to urgently raise Shaker’s case with President Obama when they meet at the G8 Summit in Northern Ireland next week.
Despite being cleared for release under President Bush in 2007, and again under President Obama in January 2010, when a sober and responsible inter-agency task force of government officials and representatives of the intelligence agencies included him in its recommendations to release 156 of the 240 prisoners held at the time, he is still imprisoned, and still in solitary confinement, and is on a hunger strike, along with the majority of the 166 men still held. Even according to the US authorities, whose figures have failed to match those given by the prisoners themselves, 104 prisoners are taking part in the hunger strike, and 43 of those men are being force-fed. The prisoners state that the true total of those taking part in the hunger strike is around 130.
Of the 156 prisoners cleared for release by President Obama’s Guantánamo Review Task Force, 86 remain. The rest were freed — mostly in 2009 and 2010, before restrictions on the release of prisoners were raised by President Obama himself and by Congress. Obama banned the release of any cleared Yemenis after a failed bomb plot in December 2009, which had been hatched in Yemen, and Congress has also passed onerous restrictions on his ability to free prisoners — a ban on the release of prisoners to any country where even a single individual has allegedly engaged in “recidivism” (returning to the battlefield), and a demand that the secretary of defense must certify that, if released to a country that is not banned, a prisoner will not, in future, engage in terrorism.
This, of course, is an impossible demand, but there is a waiver in the legislation that allows him to bypass Congress and release prisoners if he regards it as being “in the national security interests of the United States.”
President Obama needs to use that waiver now, and David Cameron needs to tell him that the continued imprisonment of Shaker Aamer is a disgrace that tarnishes the reputations of both the US and the UK as countries that claim to respect the rule of law. See below for a letter to David Cameron written by Clive Stafford Smith, the director of the London-based legal action charity Reprieve, whose lawyers represent 15 Guantánamo prisoners, including Shaker, and below that is a new article written by Shaker, published in the Guardian yesterday, and dictated to Clive Stafford Smith by phone on June 10.
Clive Stafford Smith’s letter to David Cameron regarding Shaker Aamer
Dear Prime Minister,
I write as the US lawyer for Shaker Aamer, who as you may know is a UK resident with a British wife and British children who continues to be held in Guantánamo Bay, despite having been cleared for release.
I am sure you are aware of his plight as your Government — including the Foreign and Defence Secretaries — has repeatedly raised his case, and the UK’s desire to see him returned home to Britain, with the US. However, to summarise, he has been held at Guantánamo since early 2002, and in all that time has never been charged with any crime, let alone tried. Furthermore, he has been cleared for release — the result of a complex, multi-agency assessment by US authorities — under both the Bush and Obama administrations.
I write to you as Prime Minister as it appears clear that, despite the repeated efforts in good faith made by the Foreign and Defence Secretaries, the US is still refusing to release Mr. Aamer. I would therefore ask that you, personally, raise this with President Obama at the next possible opportunity, in order to demonstrate the strength of feeling in the UK regarding this case.
Ultimately, it is President Obama that has the power to release Mr. Aamer. He could sign the necessary waivers tomorrow to allow him to be released to the UK. Recent media reports have raised the possibility that the US has not taken Britain’s requests on this issue seriously — a direct appeal from our Prime Minister to the US President would surely put that beyond the shadow of a doubt.
Finally, I would like to remind you that time is pressing. The ongoing hunger-strike, and the heavy-handed tactics being used by the prison authorities in an attempt to break it, mean that the well-being of Mr. Aamer — and his fellow inmates — is worse than ever. I would therefore ask that you raise his case with Mr. Obama as soon as is possible.
If you have any questions about the case I would of course be happy to provide further information.
I look forward to hearing from you,
Yours sincerely,
Clive A. Stafford Smith
Director, Reprieve
My fight for justice in Guantánamo
By Shaker Aamer, The Guardian, June 14, 2013
Killing innocent people for an idea, whether on London’s streets or from the skies of Pakistan, is always wrong
Here I am in Guantánamo Bay. I was meant to be a Muslim extremist, one of the “worst of the worst”, according to the former United States defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Indeed, because I am still here and 613 detainees have left, you might think that I am the worst of the worst of the worst — although perhaps the fact that I was cleared for release six years ago would give you pause for thought.
As I sit alone in my cell, I learn about acts of terrorism that take place around the world. Because the censors here do not let us have the news any more as a punishment for being on hunger strike, I have only heard the bare bones of what happened in Woolwich but, even without knowing all the facts, it is easy for me to condemn it. Just yesterday I was talking to another detainee about the murder of Lee Rigby. Neither of us could understand how anyone could think such an act was consistent with Islam. I condemn it regardless of the men’s motive. I don’t know what they thought might be achieved by it. Perhaps they were just mentally ill.
The same is true of the attack on the Boston Marathon in April. Maybe those who killed the innocent thought somehow that their attack was going to strike a blow against those who were fighting Muslims in Afghanistan or Iraq, or the Americans who were killing innocent children with drones in Pakistan and Yemen. But their actions were just plain wrong. You do not kill innocent people on the streets of London or Boston and say that is a jihad for justice.
It is important to recognise that the Americans do evil things as well. They say their motivation is to fight terrorism, and fighting terror is something I wholeheartedly support. But while their intentions may be good, their actions are also very wrong — when they kill a small child with a drone missile in Pakistan, or when they lock people up without trial in Guantánamo Bay. These actions are very unwise, too. They anger people who might before have been reasonable, so that more of them turn to extremism. They feed terrorism, just as once the denial of legal rights to those suspected of being Irish terrorists drew disaffected people to the IRA banner.
I was very pleased to hear this week that the prime minister, David Cameron, read the letter my daughter, Johina, sent him. I hope one day soon I will be back in the UK and I will be able to talk with politicians about how to reduce extremism — whether it is Muslims who misinterpret the Holy Qur’an, or members of the English Defence League who misinterpret Muslims.
We cannot establish justice by committing injustice. Evil begets evil.
But at the same time, goodwill brings goodwill. Misguided people will always commit misguided acts, but we do not need to live as if it might happen to each of us every day. Yet the US is still living the 9/11 nightmare. Guards on my block here in Guantánamo, who were just eight years old at the time of the attacks, now treat me as if I blew up the World Trade Centre. Why have we passed this nightmare to the next generation? They have been taught to hate. This is driving the world away from reconciliation. Our children are being taught to live in the past, not the future.
No matter who we are, we must bear in mind what we are fighting for. Right now, I am on a hunger strike for justice. To me, it is worth suffering for that goal, and I will continue my personal struggle one way or another till justice prevails. I am deeply grateful to those in Britain and the US who support us: I am particularly grateful to Jane Ellison, my MP. Maybe some people think that a Conservative MP would have no sympathy for someone like me, but she sees past the prejudice. And so do I. Our prophet teaches us that if we do not thank others, we do not thank our God.
When we combat terrorism, we are in a struggle to maintain our principles — ideas that terrorists and EDL members have apparently long forgotten. We must always ensure that we do not make our principles, and our respect for others, the first victims in the fight.
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.
June 13, 2013
Guantánamo Stories: 19 of the 43 Men Being Force-Fed in the Prison-Wide Hunger Strike
Please support my work!
This is my 2000th post since I began writing articles about Guantánamo on a full-time basis as a freelance investigative journalist and commentator six years ago. Please donate to support my work if you appreciate what I do.
As the prison-wide hunger strike at Guantánamo reaches its 128th day, we are still awaiting action from President Obama, who promised three weeks ago to resume the release of cleared prisoners (who make up 86 out of the remaining 166 prisoners), and to appoint new envoys in the State Department and the Pentagon to deal with the resettlement of prisoners.
In the meantime, conditions in Guantánamo are harsher than they have been at any time since President Obama took office, nearly four and a half years ago. Two months ago, the authorities staged a violent dawn raid on Camp 6, where the majority of the prisoners are held, and where they had been allowed to spend much of their time communally, and locked everyone up in solitary confinement.
Militarily, this may have restored order, but it has not broken the hunger strike, and morally and ethically it is a disgrace. The reason the men are on a hunger strike is not to inconvenience the guard force, but to protest about their ongoing imprisonment — in almost all cases without charge or trial, and literally with no end in sight, after their abandonment by all three branches of the US government. As a result, a lockdown, which involves isolating these men from one another while they starve themselves, and while many of them are force-fed, is the cruellest way to proceed.
President Obama needs to act to address the hunger strike, primarily by fulfilling the promises he made three weeks ago, with a sense of urgency that he has never demonstrated.
According to the authorities, 104 prisoners are taking part in the hunger strike, and 43 of those men are being force-fed. To add pressure on President Obama, and on the authorities at Guantánamo, three American doctors — Dr. George Annas, Dr. Sondra Crosby and Dr. Leonard Glantz, all senior medical professors at Boston University — have just had an article published in the in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, in which they urge military physicians at Guantánamo to refuse to be involved in the force-feeding of prisoners.
“Military physicians should refuse to participate in any act that unambiguously violates medical ethics,” they write, adding, “Military physicians who refuse to follow orders that violate medical ethics should be actively and strongly supported … Guantánamo has been described as a ‘legal black hole’. As it increasingly also becomes a medical ethics free zone, we believe it’s time for the medical profession to take constructive political action.”
Adding a poignant analysis from within Guantánamo, Shaker Aamer, the last British resident, who is one of the 86 men cleared for release three and a half years ago by President Obama’s inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force, said in a phone call to Clive Stafford Smith, the director of Reprieve, and one of his lawyers, that “force-feeding now takes place 24/7 in Guantánamo, using new metal-tipped tubes to cause extra pain,” and that “15 prisoners now weigh between 85 and 102 pounds.” According to Shaker, “they look like starving Biafrans.”
Shaker also had some words to describe the recent visits to Guantánamo by Sen. John McCain and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, accompanied by White House Chief of Staff Dennis McDonough, and by journalists arriving to cover the latest pre-trial hearings in the military commissions. “Gitmo visitors,” he said, are “shown the buildings, which are still standing; they do not see the detainees, who are falling down.”
In my 2000th post, I hope to shed some light on the men taking part in the hunger strike at Guantánamo by following up on a list of 19 of the 43 prisoners being force-fed, which was published in the Miami Herald. Primarily through the work of Carol Rosenberg, the Miami Herald has consistently provided excellent reporting on Guantánamo, and this list is a good example of that.
As the introduction to the list explains, “Guantánamo prison spokesmen refuse to identify the hunger strikers. But the Justice Department has been notifying the attorneys of captives who have become so malnourished that they require forced-feedings. Nineteen prisoners’ attorneys or family members have, in turn, notified the Miami Herald of their identities.”
As my main aim, for the last seven years of researching and writing about Guantánamo, has been to tell the stories of the prisoners, to humanize them and to break through the black propaganda that was used to describe them, when the prison first opened, as “the worst of the worst,” I’m delighted to publish below my version of the list, with descriptions of the prisoners based on my research and my published work.
19 of the 43 Men Being Force-Fed in the Prison-Wide Hunger Strike at Guantánamo
The cleared prisoners
Nabil Hadjarab (ISN 238, Algeria) 33 years old, he is one of the 56 prisoners (and one of four Algerians) on a list of prisoners cleared for release by the inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force, established by President Obama, which issued its recommendations in a report in January 2010. The list was made publicly available by the Justice Department in a court case last September. An orphan who has extended family in France, he was first cleared for release under the Bush administration in June 2007, and I wrote about his case last year in an article entitled, “Nabil Habjarab, the ‘Sweet Kid’ in Guantánamo, Was Cleared in 2007 But Is Still Held.” For further information, see his page on the website of Reprieve, the London-based legal action charity whose lawyers represent him. Also see this newly released animated video about him (in which his words are read by the British actor David Morrissey), and sign the petition to the French government on Change.org.
Mohammed al-Hamiri (ISN 249, Yemen) Now in his 30s, he is one of the 56 prisoners on a list of prisoners cleared for release by the inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force, established by President Obama, which issued its recommendations in a report in January 2010. The list was made publicly available by the Justice Department in a court case last September. 26 of these 56 men are Yemenis, and 30 others — all Yemenis — were also cleared for release, but were placed in “conditional detention” by the task force, to be freed only when it was somehow decided that the security situation in Yemen had improved. He was first cleared for release under the Bush administration in April 2007, and is represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York. In January, Omar Farah, a staff attorney at CCR, wrote an article about him which I made available, with my own commentary, here.
Ahmed Belbacha (ISN 290, Algeria) 44 years old, he is one of the 56 prisoners (and one of four Algerians) on a list of prisoners cleared for release by the inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force, established by President Obama, which issued its recommendations in a report in January 2010. The list was made publicly available by the Justice Department in a court case last September. A former footballer who had fled Algeria because of persecution by extremists, Belbacha fought a long legal battle to prevent his enforced repatriation, after being first cleared for release under the Bush administration in 2006. He had lived briefly in the UK, although the British government has shown no interest in offering him a new home, and communities in the US have agreed to offer him a new home — if political opposition to such a plan could be overcome. For further information, see his page on the website of Reprieve, the London-based legal action charity whose lawyers represent him, and my archive here.
Jalal Bin Amer (ISN 564, Yemen) Also identified as Jalal Bin Amer Awad, he is 40 years old, and is one of the 56 prisoners on a list of prisoners cleared for release by the inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force, established by President Obama, which issued its recommendations in a report in January 2010. The list was made publicly available by the Justice Department in a court case last September. 26 of these 56 men are Yemenis, and 30 others — all Yemenis — were also cleared for release, but were placed in “conditional detention” by the task force, to be freed only when it was somehow decided that the security situation in Yemen had improved. He is represented by lawyers at Killmer, Lane & Newman in Denver, Colorado. As I explained in an article in February 2011, “The 11-Year Old American Girl Who Knows More About Guantánamo Than Most US Lawmakers,” when Sammie Killmer, the 11-year old daughter of one of the lawyers, Darold Killmer, wrote about Guantánamo for a school project, and came up with short descriptions for each of her father’s firm’s clients, which were wonderfully descriptive. Sammie was told that Jalal “talks very fast and likes pictures of very beautiful animals.”
Abu Wa’el Dihab (ISN 722, Syria) Also identified as Jihad Diyab, he is 41 years old, and is one of the 56 prisoners (and one of four Syrians) on a list of prisoners cleared for release by the inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force, established by President Obama, which issued its recommendations in a report in January 2010. The list was made publicly available by the Justice Department in a court case last September. After moving with his family to Afghanistan, where he ran a food import business (mainly involving honey), he moved to Lahore, Pakistan after 9/11, where he was seized on April 1, 2012. Disturbingly, his health is so poor that he is confined to a wheelchair, and is profoundly depressed, and it is, therefore, particularly troubling that he is being force-fed. For further information, see his page on the website of Reprieve, the London-based legal action charity whose lawyers represent him.
The long-term hunger strikers
Abdul Rahman Shalabi (ISN 42, Saudi Arabia) 35 years old, he has been on a hunger strike for nearly eight years. He began his hunger strike in August 2005, as part of the largest hunger strike in the prison’s history. He weighed 124 pounds when he arrived at Guantánamo in January 2002, but has rarely weighed more than 110 pounds since. At one point, in November 2005, he weighed just 100 pounds, and when the authorities took harsh steps to bring the strike under control in January 2006, importing a number of restraint chairs to make sure that it “wasn’t convenient” for the strikers to continue (as Gen. Bantz J. Craddock, the head of the US Southern Command, explained to the New York Times), Shalabi, Tarek Baada (see below) and another Saudi, Ahmed Zuhair (who was released in June 2009), refused to give up. In September 2009, after four years of being force-fed daily, Shalabi weighed just 108 pounds, and wrote a distressing letter to his lawyers, in which he stated, “I am a human who is being treated like an animal.” In November 2009, when his letter was included in a court submission, one of his lawyers, Julia Tarver Mason, stated, “He’s two pounds away from organ failure and death.” For further information, see my article from October 2010, “Secrecy Still Shrouds Guantánamo’s Five-Year Hunger Striker.”
Tarek Baada (ISN 178, Yemen) Also identified as Tariq Ba’Awda or Tareq Baada, he is represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights, where staff attorney Omar Farah explained, as the Miami Herald put it, that his client “has been on an uninterrupted hunger strike since February 2007.” In a letter in April, he wrote, “I haven’t tasted food for over six years. The feeding tube has been introduced into my nose and snaked into my stomach thousands and thousands of times.” He was previously part of the prison-wide hunger strike that began in the summer of 2005, and as I ascertained through an analysis of the weight records released by the Pentagon in 2007, he weighed 121 pounds on arrival at the prison, but in January 2006, when he was one of a handful of hunger strikers to continue after the prison-wide strike of 2005 was largely halted, he weighed just 94 pounds.
The others, not cleared for release
Uthman Abdul Rahim Mohammed Uthman (ISN 27, Yemen) He is 32 years old, and, although he is not one of the 56 prisoners cleared for immediate release from the prison by President Obama’s inter-agency task force in January 2010, it is not known if he is amongst the 30 additional Yemenis cleared for release but held in “conditional detention,” to be freed only when it was somehow decided that the security situation in Yemen had improved. He had his habeas corpus petition granted in February 2010, but had that successful ruling overturned on appeal in March 2011. I analyzed those rulings in articles entitled, “Judge Rules Yemeni’s Detention at Guantánamo Based Solely on Torture” and “Mocking the Law, Judges Rule that Evidence Is Not Necessary to Hold Insignificant Guantánamo Prisoners for the Rest of Their Lives.”
Muaz al-Alawi (ISN 28, Yemen) Also identified as Moath al-Alwi, he is about 35 years old, and, although he is not one of the 56 prisoners cleared for immediate release from the prison by President Obama’s inter-agency task force in January 2010, it is not known if he is amongst the 30 additional Yemenis cleared for release but held in “conditional detention,” to be freed only when it was somehow decided that the security situation in Yemen had improved. His lawyer Ramzi Kassem has explained that he was injured during the dawn raid on Camp Six in Guantánamo on April 13, after which those who had been able to spend communal time together were placed in solitary confinement. Ramzi Kassem also explained that his client “was shot in the chest with rubber bullet pellets,” as the Miami Herald described it. In December 2008, al-Alawi had his habeas corpus petition denied, in a ruling that I analysed in an article entitled, “No End in Sight for the “Enemy Combatants” of Guantánamo.” He also lost his appeal in July 2011, which I mentioned in my article, “Guantánamo and the Death of Habeas Corpus.”
Samir Moqbel (ISN 43, Yemen) Also identified as Samir Mukbel, he is in his 30s, and his plight — and that of the hunger strikers in general — gained a wide audience in April 2013 when “Gitmo Is Killing Me,” an op-ed he wrote, with assistance from his lawyers, was published in the New York Times. He has always stated that he was tricked into going to Afghanistan, and as I noted, in Guantánamo, in response to allegations that he was a bodyguard for bin Laden, and that he fought with the Taliban in various locations, he stated, “These accusations make you laugh. These accusations are like a movie. Me, a bodyguard for bin Laden, then do operations against Americans and Afghanis and make trips in Afghanistan? I don’t believe any human being could do all these things … This is me? I have watched a lot of American movies like Rambo and Superman, but I believe that I am better than them. I went to Pakistan and Afghanistan a month before the Americans got there … How can a person do all these operations in only a month?” He is not one of the 56 prisoners cleared for immediate release from the prison by President Obama’s inter-agency task force in January 2010, but it is not known if he is amongst the 30 additional Yemenis cleared for release but held in “conditional detention,” to be freed only when it was somehow decided that the security situation in Yemen had improved.
Mohammed Ghanem (ISN 44, Yemen) Also identified as Mohammed Ghanim, he is in his late 30s. Although he is not one of the 56 prisoners cleared for immediate release from the prison by President Obama’s inter-agency task force in January 2010, it is not known if he is amongst the 30 additional Yemenis cleared for release but held in “conditional detention,” to be freed only when it was somehow decided that the security situation in Yemen had improved. In a report from a former prisoner published many years ago by Cageprisoners, it was stated that Ghanim was subjected to prolonged sleep deprivation in Guantánamo, as part of what was euphemistically termed “the frequent flier program,” and was also denied medical treatment: “Every two hours he would get moved from cell to cell, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, sometimes cell to cell, sometimes block to block, over a period of eight months. He was deprived of sleep because of this and he was also deprived of medical attention. He had lost a lot of weight. He had a painful medical problem, haemorrhoids, and that treatment was refused unless he cooperated. He said he would cooperate and had an operation. However, the operation was not performed correctly and he still had problems. He would not cooperate. [H]e was [then] put in Romeo Block where the prisoners would be made to stand naked. It was then left to the discretion of the interrogators whether a prisoner was allowed clothes or not.”
Fawzi al-Odah (ISN 232, Kuwait) 36 years old, al-Odah is one of the last two Kuwaiti prisoners in Guantánamo. He does not currently have legal representation, but the Miami Herald explained that, his father Khalid “said his son told him via a Red Cross video teleconference on May 21 that he was being force fed twice daily.” The Herald added, “Defense lawyers say other detainees have confirmed this as well, although without a lawyer of record the Justice Department has not sent notification.” I know the cases of the remaining two Kuwaiti prisoners very well (and visited Kuwait to campaign for them in February 2012 — see here, here and here), and I believe that neither man is a threat to the US. I was disappointed when, in August 2009, al-Odah had his habeas corpus petition denied, which I wrote about in an article entitled, “No Escape From Guantánamo: The Latest Habeas Rulings.”
Abdulatif Nasir (ISN 244, Morocco) Also identified as Abdul Latif Nassir, or Abdulatif Nasser, he is 48 years old. According to his lawyers, he had worked as a small-scale businessman in Libya and Sudan, and had also spent time in Yemen and Pakistan. In Guantánamo, he has experienced particularly harsh treatment, because he has stood up for the rights of his fellow prisoners, and has refused to stay silent in the face of injustice. I presume that he is one of the 46 prisoners designated for indefinite detention without charge or trial by President Obama in the executive order he issued in March 2011, even though there appears to be no reason for him to be regarded as a threat to the United States.
Mohammed Haidel (ISN 498, Yemen) Also identified as Mohammed Haydar, he is about 35 years old. A long-term hunger striker at Guantánamo, he weighed just 105 pounds on arrival in May 2002. In November 2002, his weight dropped to just 90 pounds, and at the time that the Pentagon’s declassified weight records – publicly released in March 2007 — came to an end, in November 2006, he weighed just 102 pounds. He is not one of the 56 prisoners cleared for immediate release from the prison by President Obama’s inter-agency task force in January 2010, but it is not known if he is amongst the 30 additional Yemenis cleared for release but held in “conditional detention,” to be freed only when it was somehow decided that the security situation in Yemen had improved.
Yasin Ismail (ISN 522, Yemen) Also identified as Yasin Ismael, he is in his 30s. He lost his habeas corpus petition in April 2020, and that decision was upheld on appeal in April 2011. For my responses to these rulings, see, “An Insignificant Yemeni at Guantánamo Loses His Habeas Petition” and “More Judicial Interference on Guantánamo.” He is not one of the 56 prisoners cleared for immediate release from the prison by President Obama’s inter-agency task force in January 2010, but it is not known if he is amongst the 30 additional Yemenis cleared for release but held in “conditional detention,” to be freed only when it was somehow decided that the security situation in Yemen had improved.
Fayiz al-Kandari (ISN 552, Kuwait) Also identified as Fayez al-Kandari, he recently turned 35 in Guantánamo. I know the cases of the remaining two Kuwaiti prisoners very well (and visited Kuwait to campaign for them in February 2012 — see here, here and here), and I am dismayed that the US regards Fayiz as a threat, as there is no evidence that he was ever involved in terrorism or any kind of militant or military activity. Despite this, he was put forward for a trial by military commission under the Bush administration in 2008 (although those charges never proceeded to a trial), and his habeas corpus petition was denied in September 2010. See my articles, “Resisting Injustice In Guantánamo: The Story Of Fayiz Al-Kandari” and “Fayiz Al-Kandari, A Kuwaiti Aid Worker in Guantánamo, Loses His Habeas Petition.”
Zohair al-Shorabi (ISN 569, Yemen) Also identified as Suhail Abdo Anam Shorabi, he is about 35 years old. In January 2011, he was described as being on a hunger strike, and being force-fed, by his lawyers, at Killmer, Lane & Newman in Denver, Colorado, who also explained that he “likes to read books about all different cultures.” He is not one of the 56 prisoners cleared for immediate release from the prison by President Obama’s inter-agency task force in January 2010, but it is not known if he is amongst the 30 additional Yemenis cleared for release but held in “conditional detention,” to be freed only when it was somehow decided that the security situation in Yemen had improved.
Zahir Bin Hamdoun (ISN 576, Yemen) Also identified as Zahir Hamdoun, he is 33 years old. His attorney, John Chandler, “said he was previously a long-term hunger strike who was force fed for more than a year since 2006.” He is not one of the 56 prisoners cleared for immediate release from the prison by President Obama’s inter-agency task force in January 2010, but it is not known if he is amongst the 30 additional Yemenis cleared for release but held in “conditional detention,” to be freed only when it was somehow decided that the security situation in Yemen had improved.
Hayil al-Mithali (ISN 840, Yemen) Also identified as Ha’il al-Maythali, he is 36 years old, and is one of six men still held who were seized in a house raid in Karachi, Pakistan on September 11, 2002, on the same day that, in another, apparently unconnected location, the “high-value detainee” Ramzi bin al-Shibh was also seized. Before he was sent to Guantánamo, he was taken to the CIA-run “Dark Prison” in Afghanistan, where, he said, “there was very bad torture conducted on people,” including himself, which was “so bad that he knew by making up and agreeing to the training it would stop the torture.” He added that “his testicles were disfigured to the point where they cannot be repaired.”
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.
June 12, 2013
Quarterly Fundraiser Day 3: $2000 Still Need to Support My Guantánamo Work
Please support my work!
Thanks to the generosity of nine friends and supporters, I have so far received just over $400 in my quarterly fundraising appeal for donations to support my ongoing work on Guantánamo as a freelance investigative journalist and a campaigner for the prison’s closure.
I am still hoping to raise $2500 for the next three months — which works out at just $200 a week — as I rely on your donations to make this work even vaguely feasible.
All contributions are welcome, whether it’s $25, $100 or $500 — or, of course, the equivalent in pounds sterling or any other currency. Readers can pay via PayPal from anywhere in the world, but if you’re in the UK and want to help without using PayPal, you can send me a cheque (address here — scroll down to the bottom of the page), and if you’re not a PayPal user and want to send a check from the US (or from anywhere else in the world, for that matter), please feel free to do so, but bear in mind that I have to pay a $10/£6.50 processing fee on every transaction. Securely packaged cash is also an option!
Six years ago, when I began writing articles on a full-time basis about Guantánamo (following the 14 months I spent researching and writing my book The Guantánamo Files), I didn’t set out to be an independent researcher and commentator on the prison, and the men held there, but I realized early on that the internet provided a unique opportunity to reach out to an ever-increasing audience of people dissatisfied with the mainstream media’s inability or refusal to focus relentlessly on issues of enormous significance (like Guantánamo).
I also realized that working independently was the only way that I could work full-time on Guantánamo, creating the biggest online archive about the prison and the men held there, and making sure that it couldn’t be forgotten — another point where I diverged from the mainstream media (and especially the liberal media), which clings to its obsession with “objectivity” as a virtue, when, in fact, all it does it empower the dark forces in positions of power and authority who have no interested in providing both sides of the story.
In addition, as I have maintained from the very beginning, Guantánamo is such a monstrous aberration from the accepted standards regarding the detention of prisoners that it needs to be campaigned against on a full-time basis, especially as those who set it up — with their cynical talk of the prison holding “the worst of the worst” — created a powerful piece of black propaganda that has proven extremely resilient in a world where we are permanently encouraged to live in fear — and, specifically, in fear of terrorists.
Although I have been extremely busy with Guantánamo since my last fundraiser three months ago, as the prison-wide hunger strike woke the media to what is happening at Guantánamo, and how the 166 men still held — including the 86 cleared for release by President Obama’s inter-agency task force — have been abandoned by all three branches of the US government, the struggle for them to be freed or tried, and for the prison to be shut down, is far from over.
I will continue to work to get the prison shut down, and to make President Obama fulfill his promises, but to do so I continue to need your help.
Any donation you can give, however large or small, will help me to achieve this.
With thanks for your support, as ever,
Andy Worthington
London, June 12, 2013
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.
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