Andy Worthington's Blog, page 139

As Guantánamo Prisoners Send Pleas to President Obama, Media Reports Plans To Free 86 Men Long Cleared for Release

As President Obama prepares to make a major speech on national security issues at the National Defense University — including his plans for Guantánamo, where a prison-wide hunger strike has been raging for over three months — the London-based legal action charity Reprieve, whose lawyers represent 15 of the remaining 166 prisoners at Guantánamo, has today publicized messages for the President from three of the men calling for urgent action to release prisoners and take steps towards the necessary closure of the prison, in unclassified notes of meetings and phone calls with their lawyers. The three are amongst the 86 prisoners cleared for release at least three years ago by an inter-agency task force established by President Obama when he took office in January 2009 but still held because of Obama’s own inertia, and obstruction by Congress and the courts.

Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, whose reports from the hunger strike are here, here, here and here, said to the President, “You need to hand over the 86 people who have been cleared,” adding, “In the end this place has no solution except close it down.”

Reprieve added that Aamer is “among the approximately 140 detainees in the prison on hunger strike” — a higher count than the 130 regularly cited by lawyers for the prisoners — and also pointed out that the UK government “has repeatedly said that they want [him] returned to his family in London.”

Reprieve also noted, “Under his existing powers, Obama could order an authorization to be signed immediately that would allow prisoners cleared for release to be transferred out of the prison at once,” adding, “President Obama claims that the annually-renewed National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) is the reason he has been unable to close the prison — as he promised to do. Yet the NDAA allows Obama to waive the restrictions on transferring men out of the prison if it is in the US’s national security interests to do so. Obama has said before that transferring men out of the prison camp is in the interests of national security, saying that “[Guantánamo] is inefficient, it hurts us in terms of our international standing, it lessens co-operation with our allies on counter-terrorism efforts, it is a recruitment tool for extremists, it needs to be closed.”

Another prisoner represented by Reprieve, Nabil Hadjarab — cleared for release since 2007 — “takes issue with the President’s claims that Congress prevents him from taking action.” As Nabil asks, plaintively, “You say that Congress gives you no power? Are you not the President? In the end, the last word is yours.”

The third man quoted is Samir Mokbel, whose commentary about the hunger strike was published in the New York Times in April. Samir is one of 56 Yemenis (out of the 86 cleared prisoners) who are held because of an unreasonable ban imposed by President Obama in January 2010, following a failed bomb plot hatched in Yemen. During a phone call, Samir said, “For more than two months we have heard no suggestions or initiatives put forward by the American government to solve the issues of the prisoners nor have they given any instructions to solve the problem of the strike. We have only heard a statement from the [Department] of Defense that the number of strikers has increased and that there is a possibility of deaths in the future.”

Clive Stafford Smith, Reprieve’s director, said, “How can Obama refuse a waiver for Shaker? He can hardly say the UK is a terrorist state, and as we have long made clear Shaker agrees to any arrangements the US or UK wants to impose, as all he wants is to be back with his children. Obama can only refuse us if he is insincere.”

Ahead of the speech, the Wall Street Journal suggested that some of the men’s demands would be met. The newspaper reported that officials told them that the Obama administration “is set to restart transfers of detainees from Guantánamo … kick-starting a long-stalled drive to close the prison,” adding, “While he isn’t planning to detail how to speed up transfers from the prison, officials said the president in coming weeks plans to lift the administration’s prohibition on sending detainees to Yemen.”

The Wall Street Journal added that current and former officials said that the resumption of transfers “is likely to begin with some of the non-Yemeni detainees, which will give that nation’s government time to build up its rehabilitation and oversight program,” and one particular official added that the transfers to Yemen “would begin slowly, starting with two or three detainees, to ensure Yemen can keep track of the detainees and prevent them from joining militant groups.” The beginning of this process, the official said, “could still be months away.”

The Wall Street Journal also noted that the Obama administration “has been in talks with the Afghan government about transferring Afghan detainees from Guantánamo” (of whom 17 remain), adding, “Human-rights advocates believe these detainees could be among the first transferred.”

However, breaking the Yemen deadlock is clearly the most crucial component of any plans to move forward with closing the prison. This, the Wall Street Journal reported, “would be a multistep process. First the White House must issue orders rescinding its prohibition on transfers to the country. Next, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel must sign a national-security waiver asserting that the transfer is in the interests of the country and that the risk of recidivism has been mitigated. After the U.S. waiver is signed, the administration must notify Congress of its intent to transfer the detainees 30 days in advance.”

Fortunately, recent steps taken by the Yemeni government “may make it easier for the Pentagon to sign the waiver,” the article continued, explaining, “President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi’s government, which has increased counterterrorism cooperation with the US, has pledged to monitor the detainees closely and put them through an intensive rehabilitation program.”

The Wall Street Journal also noted, “US and Yemeni officials have held negotiations in recent weeks about restarting the transfers, including promising to share information about former detainees. The Yemeni government has said multiple ministries will monitor the ex-detainees to guard against activities that are potentially threatening to the US and to ensure they receive counseling, job training and other aid to help their reintegration into society.”

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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Published on May 23, 2013 07:01

Close Guantánamo: Hundreds of Thousands of People Sign Avaaz Petition Calling for Action from President Obama

Please sign the Avaaz petition calling for the closure of Guantánamo!

Just hours before President Obama delivers a major speech on national security at the National Defense University, in which he will discuss the drone program and will also lay out his plans for Guantánamo, an international petition calling for the prison’s closure, launched by Avaaz, has secured over 400,000 signatures in just one day.

The petition calls on President Obama “to appoint a White House official whose responsibility it is to close down the prison, and to use the authority granted to you by the US Congress to immediately transfer the 86 men who have been cleared,” which is exactly the message that is required, so please, if you haven’t already signed it, do so now, and then circulate it to everyone you know.

For the first time since a prison-wide hunger strike began over three months ago, President Obama spoke about Guantánamo at a news conference three weeks ago, promising to tackle Congress, where lawmakers have passed legislation designed to prevent the release of prisoners and the closure of the prison, but refusing to acknowledge his own role in preventing the release of any of the 56 Yemeni prisoners, out of 86 prisoners cleared for release by his own inter-agency task force, and failing to mention that a waiver exists in the legislation relating to Guantánamo (the National Defense Authorization Act) that allows him to bypass Congress if he regards it as being “in the national security interests of the United States.”

Below is the text of the Avaaz petition. To reiterate, please sign it if you haven’t already, and then circulate it to as many people as possible.

Obama — Guantánamo Ends Now

To President Barack Obama:

As citizens from across the world, we urge you to respond urgently to the hunger strikes in Guantánamo. We specifically call on you to appoint a White House official whose responsibility it is to close down the prison, and to use the authority granted to you by the US Congress to immediately transfer the 86 men who have been cleared. This shameful complex is a scourge on humanity, is destroying lives, and fuels hate across our world. Close it down!

In hours, President Obama could finally move to close Guantánamo — the most notorious prison camp on earth.

With inmates on a 100-day hunger strike and massive calls for Obama to act, our president has been pushed to respond with a major speech about the prison. If enough of us demand a plan — he could free the prisoners already cleared for release, and appoint a White House official with one mission: close Guantánamo down!

We’re at a tipping point. Sign up to demand Obama close this shameful gulag down, and share the shocking facts below so others join this urgent call.

The facts speak for themselves:

• Detainees in Guantánamo now: 166

• Detainees facing active charges: 6

• Detainees cleared for immediate release, but stuck in the camp: 86

• Guantánamo inmates on hunger strike: 103

• Hunger strikers strapped down and force fed: 30

• Prisoners who have died in custody: 9

• Children the US has held at Guantánamo: 21 [at least]

• Detainees tried in civilian court: 1

• “Unreleasable” detainees who can’t be tried for lack of evidence or torture: 50

• Prisoners released by the Bush administration: 500+

• Prisoners released by the Obama administration: 72

• Current annual cost to US taxpayers: $150 million

• Days since Obama first pledged to close Gitmo: 1579

• Time since first prisoners arrived at Guantánamo:

11 years, 4 months, 11 days …

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.

View more on Andy Worthington's website »

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Published on May 23, 2013 05:26

European Parliament to Debate Motion Calling for Closure of Guantánamo

[image error]Tomorrow, just before President Obama delivers a major speech on national security issues — including his policy on Guantánamo, still gripped by a prison-wide hunger strike by men in despair at ever being released or receiving justice — the European Parliament will be discussing and voting on a resolution reiterating previous calls for President Obama to close Guantánamo as he promised when he took office in January 2009.

Delayed from last month, this arrives at a perfect time, reminding President Obama that his obligations towards the men abandoned at Guantánamo — by all three branches of the US government over the last three years — are not just a domestic matter, but an international one, and that further delays in addressing the complaints of the hunger strikers — are unconscionable.

In brief, 86 of the 166 men still held were cleared for release over three years ago by an inter-agency task force established by President Obama when he took office; 46 others were consigned to indefinite detention without charge or trial by President Obama in an executive order two years ago, when they were promised periodic reviews of their cases that have not taken place; and the rest were supposed to be put on trial, although only six have been charged. All the men, therefore, have legitimate reasons for feeling abandoned by their jailers, and for seeking immediate action to secure their release, a review of their cases, or fair trials.

As far as current action is concerned, involving European countries directly, the European Parliament resolution is noteworthy for its call for the coordination of “a joint EU Member States’ initiative” not only “to urge the US President to act” on revisiting his failed promise to close Guantánamo, but also to offer to “receive additional Guantánamo inmates on European soil, especially the approximately dozen men cleared for release who cannot return to their home countries.”

In my article last October examining the cases of the 86 prisoners cleared for release but still held, I estimated that as many as 15 of the 30 non-Yemenis cleared for release may need new homes, but whatever the exact number it is heartening that European Parliamentarians are calling for renewed engagement from Europe, where, in 2009 and 2010, dozens of prisoners unable to return to their home countries were resettled.

In April, when the motion was initially supposed to be debated, Cori Crider, the legal director of Reprieve, the London-based legal action charity whose lawyers represent prisoners held at Guantánamo, made a statement that is just as relevant now. She said: “Guantánamo is not just the US’s mess, but one for which Europe also bears great responsibility. European countries helped the US send men to the prison and provided interrogators. But all EU member states now have an opportunity to make this right. Many of those still detained grew up in, and feel a deep affinity with European countries. Whenever I talk with my client Nabil Hadjarab he speaks of the happiest time of his life: growing up in France. It is fantastic that the parliament is debating this issue at such a crucial time but they must pass the motion and help resettle cleared men to EU countries. My clients don’t want to die inside Guantánamo Bay; Europe can help to make sure this doesn’t happen.”

Below is the full text of the European Parliament resolution:

European Parliament resolution on Guantánamo: hunger strike by prisoners

May 21, 2013

The European Parliament,

– having regard to its previous resolutions on the Guantánamo prison camp, notably the one of 9 June 2011;

– having regard to its resolution of 11 September 2012 on alleged transportation and illegal detention of prisoners in European countries by the CIA: follow-up of the European Parliament TDIP Committee report;

– having regard to President Obama’s Executive Orders of January 22, 2009 in which he ordered the closure of Guantánamo Bay detention facility by January 22, 2010;

– having regard to the Joint Statement of the EU and its Member States and the USA on the Closure of the Guantánamo Bay Detention Facility, 15 June 2009, as well as the Conclusions of the Justice and Home Affairs Council of 4 June 2009 and information exchange mechanism;

– having regard to the Statement by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, on 5 April 2013 in which she declared that the Guantánamo detention regime is in “clear breach of international law” and should be closed;

– having regard to the declaration of the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Peter Maurer, on 11 April 2013 in which he expressed opposition to the force-feeding of prisoners staging a mass hunger strike at the Guantánamo prison camp and urging President Barack Obama to do more to resolve the “untenable” legal plight of inmates held there;

– having regard to the letter of 4 March 2013 by the Guantánamo prisoners’ defense, protesting over the new policy of the camp authorities to “confiscate detainees’ personal items, including blankets, sheets, towels, mats razors, toothbrushes, books, family photos, religious CDs, letters and legal mail”, “restricting their exercise” and “searching the men’s Qur’ans in ways that constitute desecration according to their religious beliefs”;

– having regard to the Emergency Petition by the attorneys of Prisoner Musa’ab Omar Al Madhwani of 26 March 2013 demanding to provide their client with drinking water and sufficient clothing to keep him warm;

– having regard to an Op-Ed published in the New York Times on 14 April 2013 by Prisoner Samir Mukbel in which he described the “painful and degrading” procedures he is undergoing in response to his decision to participate in the hunger strike;

– having regard to the 11th of April joint open letter signed by 26 international human rights NGOs urging the US President to fulfil his 2009 promise to close Guantánamo Bay;

– having regard to Rule 122 of its Rules of Procedure,

A. whereas since approximately the middle of February 2013 many of the remaining 166 inmates, still being held at Guantánamo Bay prison camp are participating in a hunger strike to protest their continued detention; whereas according to military authorities, 100 detainees are participating in the hunger strikes, 29 detainees are being force-fed and 5 are being treated in Hospital;

B. whereas according to testimony from the defense, since a new commander assumed control of the prison at the beginning of the year, conditions imposed on the inmates reverted back to the harsh treatment of the first years, and whereas there are credible allegations that the prison administration has been reacting to the hunger strike by denying proper drinking water and exposing the men to freezing;

C. whereas on 13 April 2013, shortly after a delegation of the International Committee of the Red Cross had left the camp after completing a visit to examine the prisoners and study the circumstances of the growing hunger strike and criticized the force-feeding of some inmates, riots broke out when guards forced prisoners living in communal housing to move to individual cells; whereas some prisoners reportedly resisted with improvised weapons and the security personnel used shot guns though no serious injuries occurred;

D. whereas 86 prisoners of war being held at Guantánamo Bay have been cleared for release, a majority being from Yemen, and another 46 are being held “without enough evidence” to prosecute, but are supposedly still” too dangerous to transfer”, while only six people are facing formal charges;

E. whereas an important reason for the hunger strike brought forward by defense lawyers and the ICRC is the inmates’ desolation over the lack of any perspective to being released, notably after President Obama in January renewed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for 2013, which included provisions which preserved Guantánamo Bay into foreseeable future, while shortly thereafter closing the State Department Office tasked with finding suitable, lawful locations to transfer the Guantánamo detainees;

F. whereas the NDAA has made it virtually impossible for inmates to return home, stating detainees cannot return to a country where a “threat that is likely to substantially affect” the government’s ability to “exercise control” over the repatriated individual may exist;

G. whereas the US Congress has on the other hand enacted legislation blocking the transfer of detainees at Guantánamo to the United States;

H. whereas in the case of the five alleged “high value detainees” for whom proceedings are already underway, confidentiality of the defense has been completely compromised, with material and thousands of emails disappearing from computers and listening devices being disguised as smoke detectors; whereas — as a result — the proceedings have been postponed indefinitely by the responsible judge;

I. whereas there is now only one civilian flight into Guantánamo, which operates on a severely curtailed schedule, thus limiting the access of the press, lawyers, and human rights workers,

J. whereas President Obama and Vice-President Biden have both acknowledged that Guantánamo is the “greatest propaganda tool that exists for recruiting of terrorists around the world”;

1. re-iterates its position that all states should comply with the rule of law and respect the obligations under international human rights law, refugee law and humanitarian law;

2. deeply regrets that the US administration has not honored its decision of 2009 to close Guantánamo and that President Obama has not used his presidential powers to its fullest in order to end the indefinite, arbitrary detention without charge of over 160 prisoners of war;

3. expresses its grave concern over the mental and physical conditions of the detainees, most of whom — if not all — have been submitted to torture and inhumane and degrading treatment, while the majority, far from having any terror intentions happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and had been sold to the US forces for a bounty;

4. supports the position of the ICRC to reject force-feeding as a violation of basic freedoms of the individual, is dismayed to see that instead of showing serious intentions to improve the situation for the illegally detained, the authorities at Guantánamo are reacting with repression and imposing additional hardship and suffering;

5. calls on the US government to order the relevant authorities to react swiftly, lawfully and humanely in a manner consistent with international standards of medical ethics with the aim to remedy the immediate causes of the hunger strike before irreparable harm occurs to the prisoners;

6. calls on President Obama to put an end to the 11-year aberration from the rule of law in Guantánamo Bay and to start repatriating the remaining men to their home countries or other countries for resettlement or to charge them in a court that fulfils fair trial standards; requests President Obama to appoint an individual within his Administration who is specifically empowered to oversee the closing of Guantánamo, with practical authority;

7. recalls the EU Member States’ readiness to help the US close down the Guantánamo prison and calls on the VP/HR to coordinate a joint EU Member States’ initiative to urge the US President to act as well as offering to receive additional Guantánamo inmates on European soil, especially the approximately dozen men cleared for release who cannot return to their home countries;

8. calls on the EU to ensure that its Member States, associates and partners which have agreed to host former Guantánamo detainees actually afford them full support as regards living conditions, efforts to facilitate their integration into society, medical treatment including psychological recovery, access to identification and travel documents, the exercise of the right to family reunification and all other fundamental rights granted to people holding political asylum status;

9. welcomes the willingness of the United States to contribute to the costs incurred by EU Member States in relation to receiving ex-detainees as stipulated in the Joint EU-US statement of 15 June 2009 and calls on the American administration to live up to the responsibility to support former detainees not only during the resettlement phase but also thereafter;

10. calls on its Delegation with the United States to urge their Congressional counterparts to remove the restrictions on transfers from Guantánamo in the National Defense Authorization Act 2014;

11. calls on the EU Member States to ensure that full and independent investigation is carried out concerning violations of international and human rights law on European soil in the remit of the so-called war against terrorism;

12. calls on the US to secure accountability for any abuses it has practiced, to ensure that relevant domestic and international law is applied with a view to ending legal black holes, to end military trials, to apply criminal law fully to terrorist suspects and to restore review of detention, habeas corpus, due process, freedom from torture and non-discrimination between foreign and US citizens;

13. recalls the 2009 commitment of the United States to develop a new and more sustainable approach to security-related issues and expresses its great disappointment that President Obama who had promised to stop the rendition and secret detention programs of his predecessor is not only continuing the policy of arbitrary detentions but has combined it with an enhanced program of extrajudicial killings;

14. instructs its President to forward this resolution to HR/VP For Foreign and Security Policy, the Commission, the governments and parliaments of the member states, the UN Commissioner for Human Rights, the President of the ICRC, and the Government and Congress of the United States of America.

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

To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Also see the 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.

View more on Andy Worthington's website »

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Published on May 22, 2013 12:09

Guantánamo Hunger Strike: Obama Administration Hints at Progress on Releasing Yemenis

100 days after the majority of the remaining 166 prisoners in Guantánamo embarked on a hunger strike, and after a weekend of actions in the US, the UK and elsewhere to highlight the continuing injustice of the prison, the world is waiting — again — to hear from President Obama.

As news of the hunger strike filtered out of the prison in late February, and, throughout March, spread like wildfire throughout the world’s media, attracting criticism of the administration from the International Committee of the Red Cross and the United Nations, as well as critical coverage in the US, President Obama remained silent.

Three weeks ago, President Obama finally broke his silence, delivering a speech at a news conference in which, as I explained here, he eloquently explained why Guantánamo is such an abomination, but failed to accept his own responsibility for the prison’s continued existence, blaming Congress and claiming that all he could do was to go back to lawmakers to seek their cooperation.

Whilst it is certainly true that lawmakers have raised huge obstacles to prevent the release of prisoners and the closure of the prison, it is also true that President Obama personally imposed a ban on releasing any of the cleared Yemenis who make up 56 of the 86 men still held whose release was recommended by the President’s own inter-agency task force back in January 2010, following a failed airline bomb plot on Christmas Day 2009, which was hatched in Yemen.

In addition, although lawmakers have imposed a seemingly insurmountable restriction on the release of prisoners in the last two National Defense Authorization Acts, at the end of 2011 and 2012 — insisting that the Secretary of Defense certifies that any released prisoners will not be able to pose a threat to the US in future — there is a waiver in the legislation, which allows the administration to bypass Congress if officials regard it as being “in the national security interests of the United States.”

In the NDAA (following previous successful actions to stop prisoners from being transferred to the US mainland for any reason, even to face federal court trials), lawmakers enacted legislation to prevent prisoners from being released if there was 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 issued a certification personally “ensur[ing] that the individual [transferred] cannot engage or reengage in any terrorist activity.”

The waiver — allowing the release of prisoners if the President and the Secretary of Defense regard it as being “in the national security interests of the United States” — was introduced specifically by Sen. Carl Levin, the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who, on May 9, sent a letter to President Obama, via his legal counsel, reminding him of this fact.

“[M]ore than a year ago,” Sen. Levin 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.”

Sen. Levin added, “I urge the President to appoint an official inside the White House to spearhead an interagency effort to determine which of the more than eighty detainees who have already been cleared for transfer by the Guantanamo Detainee Review Task Force meet the certification (and waiver) requirements, and to actively work for their transfer. High level leadership on detainee transfers is critical to advancing the goal of closing GITMO.”

On Thursday, in a major speech at the National Defense University, President Obama will lay out his plans for Guantánamo in a speech that, as the Washington Post described it, will explain “how he intends to bring his counterterrorism policies, including the drone program and the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in line with the legal framework he promised after taking office.”

On Saturday, a White House official specifically told the Post that President Obama will “discuss our broad counterterrorism policy, including our military, diplomatic, intelligence and legal efforts.,” and that, as part of that discussion, “he will review our detention policy and efforts to close the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay.”

Whilst it would be unwise to try and guess what the President will say, it is to be hoped that he will have taken Sen Levin’s advice about the need to appoint a high-level official to deal with Guantánamo, and the need to release cleared prisoners.

Similar encouragement was provided last month by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who wrote to National Security Director Tom Donilon on April 25 urging the Obama administration to “renew its efforts to transfer out the 86 detainees at the Guantanamo Bay who were cleared for transfer by the Executive Branch’s interagency Guantanamo Review Task Force over three years ago,” and also called for an official to be appointed “with the specific responsibility to achieve the conditions necessary to close Guantanamo.”

One reason to be cautiously optimistic is that, last Tuesday, Attorney General Eric Holder told a news conference that, as Reuters reported it, the government “intends to revive a vacant position coordinating policy” for the prison at Guantánamo Bay. “We’re in the process of working on that now. We’re looking at candidates,” he said.

The day after, Eric Holder went further. As the Guardian explained, he “hinted” that the Obama administration “may be planning to act on Yemeni prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay.” This, the Guardian noted, “would make a big dent in the overall number of Guantánamo detainees,” adding, “The failure to free Guantánamo prisoners who have been cleared for release is one of the main reasons for the continuing hunger strike.”

In a hearing on Capitol Hill on May 15, when Holder was asked about Guantánamo, he stated that “his preference remained to close the facility but that Congress had blocked that option” — the standard response that shields the administration from blame — but, significantly, he also “said the Obama administration was looking at sending detainees who have been cleared back to their own countries and declared that the block on Yemenis was under review.”

This welcome piece of news suggests a U-turn on the moratorium on releasing Yemenis, issued three years and four months ago, which officials said, just three weeks ago, remains in place, even though it is one of the most disgraceful aspects of Obama’s detention policy at Guantánamo — holding men cleared for release by his own task force simply on the basis that their home country is regarded as dangerous, and imprisoning them indefinitely to prevent what they may do at some point in future.

Last weekend, Eric Holder also criticized Congress for blocking the transfer of prisoners from Guantánamo to the US to face trials, perhaps indicating a move to abandon military commissions (recently discredited by Conservative judges in the Court of Appeals in Washington D.C.) and push for federal court trials for the small number of prisoners who can be charged with crimes. Holder was a passionate advocate of federal court trials for the alleged 9/11 co-conspirators and a few other other alleged terrorists held at Guantánamo until the plan was derailed in 2011, when the President bowed to pressure and dropped the planned 9/11 trial in New York.

Delivering a commencement address at the University of California Berkeley School of Law last weekend, Holder criticized lawmakers who “placed unwise and unwarranted restrictions on where certain detainees could be housed, charged and prosecuted” He added, “Let me be clear: those who claim that our federal courts are incapable of handling terrorism cases are not registering a dissenting opinion. They are simply wrong.”

Note: As we wait for President Obama’s speech, please keep up the pressure on the administration. Sign and share the petition on Change.org, which already has over 200,000 signatures. Please also call the White House (202-456-1111, 202-456-1414), US Southern Command (305-437-1213) and the Department of Defense (703-571-3343). You can say, “I support closing the prison at Guantánamo Bay. President Obama can and should resume transfers, today, for the 86 cleared prisoners who are still held. Indefinite detention without charge or trial is a human rights violation.” You can also call or e-mail your congressperson and senator to ask them to support swift executive action to close Guantánamo, and you can also send a letter to a prisoner.

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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Published on May 21, 2013 12:53

Video: 100 Days of the Guantánamo Hunger Strike – Andy Worthington Speaks to RT and Press TV, as Global Actions Take Place

On the 100th day of the prison-wide hunger strike at Guantánamo, please ask the US authorities to free prisoners and take concrete steps towards finally closing the prison. Call the White House (202-456-1111, 202-456-1414), US Southern Command (305-437-1213) and the Department of Defense (703-571-3343). You can say, “I support closing the prison at Guantánamo Bay. President Obama can and should resume transfers, today, for the 86 cleared prisoners who are still held. Indefinite detention without charge or trial is a human rights violation.” You can also call or e-mail your congressperson and senator to ask them to support swift executive action to close Guantánamo, and you can also send a letter to a prisoner.

To mark 100 days of the prison-wide hunger strike at Guantánamo, events are — or have been — taking place in the US, the UK and worldwide, involving, amongst others, my friends and colleagues in Witness Against Torture, Amnesty International, the Center for Constitutional Rights, World Can’t Wait and the National Religious Campaign Against Torture in the US, and the London Guantánamo Campaign and the Save Shaker Aamer Campaign in the UK.

In the US, the various groups delivered petitions to the White House containing over 370,000 signatures, including, in particular, the petition on Change.org initiated by Col. Morris Davis, which currently has over 200,000 signatures, and is still ongoing. In London, campaigners will be performing street theatre outside the US Embassy tomorrow (Saturday May 18) at 2pm. For further information, including other actions you can engage in, see the Witness Against Torture website, and Amnesty International’s Facebook page. Also see the video for “Hunger Strike Song” by the Peace Poets and Witness Against Torture.

Following the action in Washington D.C., the National Religious Campaign Against Torture sent out a press release, in which executive director Rev. Richard Killmer stated, “Years of detention without charge or trial have created a sense of desperation and hopelessness among the men at Guantánamo, which has led over 100 of them to join a hunger strike. The human crisis in Guantánamo is a moral one that needs to end immediately. The faith community calls on the President to close Guantánamo. It is the right thing to do.”

The campaigners, who included Col. Morris Davis, called on President Obama to undertake the following four actions immediately:

Direct Secretary of Defense Hagel to use existing certification procedures to repatriate and resettle abroad all prisoners who have been cleared for transfer.
Lift the self-imposed ban on transferring detainees back to Yemen. Of the 86 prisoners cleared for release from the prison, 56 are Yemenis. Obama imposed the ban after the “underwear bomber,” a Nigerian trained in Yemen, tried to detonate explosives on a plane headed for Detroit in 2009. The ban, at this point, does more harm than good.
Work with the Yemeni government, a strong ally in the US fight against al-Qaida affiliates, to provide assistance, security measures, and rehabilitation programs that would allow the United States to more safely transfer Yemeni prisoners back to their country.
Appoint a senior White House official to be responsible for transferring all detainees back to their home countries or to a third country, and for closing the prison. In February, the administration closed the State Department office charged with closing the facility.

To mark 100 days of the hunger strike, I was interviewed by RT and Press TV, which are posted below — video of the RT interview, followed by a transcript, and a telephone interview with Press TV. I also appeared by Skype on Press TV’s news broadcast, and hope to make that available soon.

‘Political football’: Gitmo detainees ‘abandoned’ by US government

RT, May 16, 2013

Left in legal limbo, desperation continues to drive the Guantánamo hunger strike on its 100th day. Facing a chronic lack of political will from Washington, the fate of the prisoners remains ambiguous, investigative journalist Andy Worthington argues.

On Thursday the number of Guantánamo’s 166 prisoners now taking part in the mass hunger strike reached 102. Thirty of the detainees are being force-fed, and three are being observed in the detainee hospital.

In the eleven and a half years that the prisoners have been held in the detention camp, some 90 per cent of them have not been charged with a crime. That, coupled with the fact that many of the detainees were already cleared for release but have faced stiff resistance from Congress and equivocation from the White House, has forced the prisoners to risk life and health to be heard, Worthington told RT.

RT: You’ve been gathering information on the inmates. What can you tell us about the conditions for them now.

Andy Worthington: Well the conditions for them are terrible in the sense that they have literally been abandoned by all three branches of the United States government. So since President Obama failed to keep his promise to close the prison within a year — that was in January 2010 — they have been unable to see any future for themselves apart from staying in Guantánamo forever.

And what underpins the horror of all of this is that half of these men were cleared by an interagency task force which the president himself established. But he then imposed a ban on releasing two-thirds of them because they’re Yemenis, after a failed bomb plot in Christmas 2009 [which was initiated in Yemen]. And the rest of the men, in fact all of the men have had their release blocked or made extremely difficult by Congress.

So it’s become a game of political football. Cynically, I think, lawmakers are preventing prisoners from being released, and the president himself has been unwilling to expend political capital on an issue that isn’t popular enough with the voters. So it’s taken the hunger strike for the prisoners to get noticed.

RT: These men are now taking desperate measures, but we’ve seen hunger strikes there before. So will this one have any significant impact?

Andy Worthington: Well, I think it has to, because it’s such a long time the prison has been open. It’s not as though anyone legitimately is claiming that there is any reason [for most of] these men to be held apart from the fact that it’s proven difficult to close the facility down and to release the majority of them.

So I think the pressing question is: how is the administration going to go about particularly resolving the issue of the prisoners that its task force said the US no longer wanted to hold. Those men have to be released, and there have been good signs this week from [Attorney General] Eric Holder saying that — following what President Obama said two weeks ago, that they are looking to appoint someone to oversee the Guantanamo issue and yesterday hinting that this ban on the Yemenis, which officials reinforced just a few weeks ago — maybe they are thinking of lifting the ban. They have to lift the ban. It’s absolutely critical that these 56 Yemenis are sent home.

RT: And even Hillary Clinton said yesterday that the 86 who are being held without charge should be released, so in effect there could be a turn of the tide. At the same time, let’s concentrate on conditions for those prisoners at the moment, because it seems that they are getting worse and that the authorities there are really putting further pressure on them. That’s according to reports from the prisoners themselves.

Andy Worthington: Absolutely. I agree with all of the experts who find the force feeding of prisoners deplorable, but that said, there really is no way the United States government is going to allow prisoners to die at Guantánamo if they can help it, whether they should be allowing them to or not.

RT: So what are the consequences if the prisoners die? Would that really be a turning point if that did happen?

Andy Worthington: Well, I think the turning point that needs to happen is the political turning point. You know, the reason the men are doing this is because they are in despair. The reason they are doing this is because half of them were told they were going home and haven’t gone anywhere. So it needs resolving on that basis. As soon as there is motion on that, I suspect that the repercussions in the prison will bring that issue down a little bit. At the moment it seems to be very much [that] the prison is a kind of terrible bubble within which the authorities have been trying to regain the upper hand over the prisoners and have resorted to isolating them, which is a terrible thing for these men who are already despairing, and having to force feed them in this manner. If the politics takes the lead, we’ll actually see some improvement.

RT: If politics takes the lead and let’s say the prison is closed down, won’t we see another one opening up in its place?

Andy Worthington: I don’t think we’re close to seeing this one close down. We have to get the 86 cleared prisoners released. We then have 80 men left at Guantánamo. Some of these men are supposed to face trial, [although] those of course have been very, very slow in happening, and 46 of them were designated for indefinite detention without charge or trial by President Obama in an executive order two years ago. Now at the time, the only thing that made this notion even vaguely palatable to lawyers and human rights groups was that he promised there would be periodic reviews of these men’s cases to establish whether they remain a threat. Those reviews haven’t happened at all, so they need to happen, and there needs to be a genuine, objective analysis of quite how many really dangerous prisoners there are or ever have been in Guantánamo, and these people must be tried. Everything that we’ve seen over the years, and these are reports from the inside, suggest that this is no more than a few dozen of the 166 men who are still being held.

*****

Also see the Press TV interview, in which I said that it is “absolutely critical” that President Barack Obama revisits his promise to close Guantánamo. I said, “These men are starving themselves to death because they feel so abandoned by all three branches of the United States government and particularly by President Obama who promised to close the prison and then found that it was politically difficult to do so.”

I added that the solution to what is happening in Guantánamo is “action from the administration to pick up and revisit this failed promise with the intention this time of following through on it.”

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.

View more on Andy Worthington's website »

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Published on May 17, 2013 12:53

Defend London’s NHS Protest on May 18 Coincides with Savage Cuts and Possible Collapse of A&E Departments

Please attend the march at 12 noon on Saturday May 18, 2013, from Jubilee Gardens (on Concert Hall Approach near the South Bank Centre) to Whitehall, where there will be a rally outside Downing Street at 2pm. The marchers will cross Waterloo Bridge and walk up The Strand to Whitehall, and NHS campaigners, politicians and union representatives will address the crowd from an open-topped bus. See the Facebook page here and the website here.

The irony could hardly be starker. Across London, and countrywide, cuts begun under the Labour government and aggressively continued under the Tories are wreaking havoc on the NHS. Nor it is only politicians who are to blame, as the cuts are enthusiastically endorsed by senior NHS officials.

As I have been reporting here since October, when plans to disembowel Lewisham Hospital were first announced, across the capital A&E Departments face closure or downgrading, even though the need for them has never been greater. In addition, the closure or downgrading of A&E will have a horrendous knock-on effect for the millions of people affected — as frontline services also close, and, to give just one example, maternity services are cut savagely, as only births regarded as safe can take place in hospitals without emergency services.

This is what is planned for Lewisham, where the recently refurbished A&E Department is to be closed, leaving just one A&E Department, at the distant and already overstretched Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich, to deal with the 750,000 inhabitants of three London boroughs — Lewisham, Greenwich and Bexley — including, of course, babies and children as well as adults.

In addition, 90 percent of the 4,400 mothers in a borough of 270,000 people (the same population as Brighton, Hull and Newcastle) are being told that there is no money for them to give birth in their home borough, and they will have to go elsewhere, even though there is no spare capacity at any of the neighbouring facilities. For my archive of articles about the campaign to save Lewisham Hospital, see here, here and here, and also see the website of the Save Lewisham Hospital campaign, and the Facebook page.

The plans for Lewisham also involve selling off 60 percent of its buildings and land, and although the assault on Lewisham is specifically to pay for the debts at a neighbouring NHS Trust that went bust in part because of crippling PFI deals that ought to have been illegal, the same pattern of closures, downgrading and sell-offs is being repeated across London as part of general plans for reorganising the NHS in London.

Four of the nine A&Es in west London are to close — Ealing, Hammersmith, Central Middlesex and Charing Cross, the Whittington Hospital in Archway faces savage cuts, the St. Helier and Epsom hospitals in south west London face downgrades, and it has just been announced that A&E and maternity services at Croydon University Hospital (formerly Croydon Mayday Hospital) are also under threat. Across the country, as the Mail on Sunday reported on October 28, 2012, 32 A&E Departments are under threat of being closed or downgraded.

The Mail on Sunday‘s coverage has been excellent. On April 14, they reported, “Shock 250% rise in patients waiting more than 4 hours in A&E: Six-month total soars by 146,000 — as Labour says crisis is worst in 20 years,” and on May 11, in an article focused on what happened in Newark after its A&E Department closed two years ago, their headline was, “Shocking proof A&E closures cost lives: Death rate jumps more than a THIRD after department closes.”

On Wednesday, the problems were finally acknowledged by the government after a storm of criticism. As the Independent explained, “A survey of 131 hospital emergency departments says that A&E units are struggling to cope with ‘unsustainable workloads’ and lack of staff as new figures show the number of patients has increased by more than a million in just one year. Experts warned that the emergency care system could collapse in six months as a result of rising demand.”

The criticisms came from the College of Emergency Medicine (CEM), who “called for ‘fundamental change’ in the way emergency care is run, warning that A&E units are facing their biggest challenge in more than a decade as departments grapple with ‘unsustainable workloads’ and lack of staff,” and the Foundation Trust Network, which represents more than 200 health trusts in England, who “warned that A&E services were in danger of collapse in six months time as a result of ‘huge pressure.’”

Forced to respond, Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, “said changes to the way GPs provide out-of-hours care have had a ‘huge impact’ on accident and emergency services,” and “admitted there were ‘huge pressures’ on accident and emergency services including a rising number of frail elderly patients with dementia.”

Hunt told ITV’s Daybreak that he partly blamed Labour for removing “responsibility for out-of-hours care from GPs,” in 2004, prompting an outcry from GPs’ representatives. Dr Clare Gerada, the chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners, said she was “aghast at the constant denigration of my profession.”

However, Chris Hopson, the chief executive of the Foundation Trust Network, who warned that, “Although performance is now stabilising, there is a danger the system will fall over in six months’ time unless we plan effectively for next winter,” broadly defended Hunt’s comments. He said A&E units “were facing rising numbers of patients including more frail elderly patients with complex conditions leading to more hospital admissions,” as the Independent put it, and added, “The wider NHS system isn’t working effectively. Patients can’t get the GP appointments they need, many doctors’ out of hours services aren’t working in the way they should and patients simply don’t know where they should be going to get the right emergency care. So up to 30 per cent of people in A&E shouldn’t even be there in the first place.”

However, he also pointed out the absurd new rules, initiated by the Tories, which financially punish hospitals facing an increase in A&E admissions, even though that is a perceived problem that is beyond their control. As he said, “Under current rules, if a hospital admits more A&E patients than it did five years ago, they only get paid 30 per cent of the cost of treating those patients. Two-thirds of hospitals are admitting more patients than they did five years ago, some as many as 40 per cent more. This means reopening wards and employing more staff to cope with this extra demand. Yet hospitals only get paid 30 per cent of these costs. Some are losing more than £5 million a year as a result, on top of the 5 per cent savings they’re already being required to make.”

The answers, he said, “include relooking at the GP contract, reconfiguring some hospital A&E departments and investing more in community facilities,” but in the meantime it is clear that more money is needed. Plans to persuade people not to attend A&E if they don’t need to may work in the long run but they are not in place now. The College of Emergency Medicine report stated, as the Independent described it, that “despite many initiatives to reduce the demand on services in the last decade, attendance rates continue to rise.”

The CEM report also made some important recommendations for the government and for health officials, which are, of course, completely at odds with the A&E closure programme that is currently underway. These include “setting minimum consultant numbers in emergency wards.” As the Independent noted, “At present, the average ward has seven full-time consultants but the College recommends that there must be at least 10 on normal wards and 16 on large wards to provide ‘sustainable cover.’”

The CEM report also “recommended that there should be a GP service at the hospital which would be more suitable for catering for as much as 30 per cent of the current traffic which is presently seen in emergency departments”; in other words, an urgent care system that would run alongside A&E rather than trying– and failing — to replace it.

I hope that the CEM report and the opinions of Chris Hopson — and the coverage they received this week — will encourage people to attend Saturday’s protest in significant numbers.

Those needing further encouragement should pay heed to the words of Dr. Louise Irvine, a Lewisham GP and the chair the Save Lewisham Hospital campaign, who said this week, “We are facing an unprecedented danger to the NHS. The threat to almost 50% of the capital’s A&E services, to maternity units, to ICU [Intensive Care Unit] places and to ambulance provision as well as opening up the NHS to privatisation, presents us with a grave risk to Londoners of all ages in every community.”

Speaking of the proposed cuts in north west London (although his words apply across the NHS as a whole), Professor Simon Shorvon, Professor in Clinical Neurology and Clinical Sub-dean at the Institute of Neurology at UCL, and Consultant Neurologist at the National Hospital for Neurology & Neurosurgery, said, “As a doctor living in West London, I am appalled by the decision to close four of our A&E’s. It will leave a huge swathe of residents far from a local casualty. Time matters in an emergency situation and being stuck in an ambulance after a coronary or stroke or life-threatening accident, in a traffic jam on the A4 or A40 trying to reach the remaining casualties — which are anyway already at capacity, will play havoc with survival and recovery rates. Furthermore, in the meantime there is no doubt planning blight and de-motivation will infect all the threatened hospitals. This is a disgraceful decision, made on grounds of cost saving only with no regard to the health or safety of the local population. The local health authority should be ashamed.”

Not just the local authority, but central government, MPs and peers, and senior healthcare officials — the medical directors whose key role in dismantling the NHS I have chronicled previously. The battle to save the NHS is real and it urgently needs support. Please attend the protest on Saturday if you can.

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.

View more on Andy Worthington's website »

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Published on May 16, 2013 13:19

Defend London’s NHS Protest on April 18 Coincides with Savage Cuts and Possible Collapse of A&E Departments

Please attend the march at 12 noon on Saturday March 18, 2013, from Jubilee Gardens (on Concert Hall Approach near the South Bank Centre) to Whitehall, where there will be a rally outside Downing Street at 2pm. The marchers will cross Waterloo Bridge and walk up The Strand to Whitehall, and NHS campaigners, politicians and union representatives will address the crowd from an open-topped bus. See the Facebook page here and the website here.