Andy Worthington's Blog, page 141

Please Sign the Petition to President Obama: Close the Prison at Guantánamo Bay

Please sign the petition to President Obama, asking him to close Guantánamo now.

With a prison-wide hunger strike raging at Guantánamo, the world’s media — and people all around the world — have woken up to the fact that a chronic injustice is still ongoing at Guantánamo, and that nothing will be done about it unless serious pressure is exerted on President Obama and on Congress, who, between them, have ensured that none of the remaining prisoners at Guantánamo — 166 in total — can leave the prison alive under any circumstances.

This is a monstrous betrayal of all notions of justice and decency. The men at Guantánamo are indefinitely detained without charge or trial — a situation that is unacceptable under any circumstances — even though 86 of them were cleared for release at least thee years ago by a sober and responsible inter-agency task force that President Obama established when he took office in January 2009 — when, of course, he also promised to close Guantánamo within a year.

In the hope of persuading President Obama to take the necessary steps to resume releasing prisoners from Guantánamo, and to revisit his failed promise to close the prison once and for all, following the fine words he uttered at a press conference yesterday, my colleague Col. Morris Davis has launched a petition, via Change.org, entitled, “President Obama: Close Detention Facility at Guantanamo Bay,” which has gone viral, attracting over 65,000 signatures in less than 24 hours, a sure sign that the American people — and people around the world — have woken up to the horrors of Guantánamo, and do not intend to be brushed aside.

Col. Davis, who is one of the signatories on the mission statement of the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, which the attorney Tom Wilner and I established last January, is the former chief prosecutor of the military commissions at Guantánamo. He resigned in 2007 when he was placed in a chain of command under Pentagon General Counsel William J. Haynes, who advocated for the use of torture, and had been instrumental in formulating the Bush administration’s torture policy for so-called “high-value detainees” seized in the “war on terror.” I am honored to have shared a stage with Col. Davis at events in Washington D.C. marking the anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo for the last three years, and I commend him on his timing and his commitment to righting the wrong that is Guantánamo.

Col. Davis’s petition more or less echoes calls that I have been responsible for promoting on the “Close Guantánamo” website, and on my website, calling for President Obama to appoint someone to deal with the closure of Guantánamo, to drop his own ban on releasing cleared Yemenis, and to demand that Congress also drops its unjustifiable obstacles to the release of prisoners.

Specifically, Col. Davis calls for Chuck Hagel to “issue the certifications or national security waivers required by the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA 2013) to effect transfers from Guantánamo.” This is hugely important if Congress fails to be swayed by calls for lawmakers to drop their obstructions to the release of prisoners, as it allows the administration to bypass Congress if lawmakers fail to be swayed by the need to stop posturing and close Guantánamo once and for all.

Col. Davis also calls for the President to appoint someone to deal specifically with the closure of Guantánamo, and to commit to closing the prison, showing that he is serious by immediately releasing Shaker Aamer, the last British resident, and Djamel Ameziane, an Algerian represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights. These men are two of the many worthy candidates for release, but please look at this article if you want to know more about the prisoners cleared for release but still held.

Please, please, please sign the petition and forward it to everyone you know. As I explained when I signed it last night, “Every day this prison remains open the virus of injustice continues to eat away at America’s soul. Close it now, Mr. President!”

President Obama: Close Detention Facility at Guantánamo Bay

By Col. Morris Davis

I served 25 years in the US Air Force, I was the Chief Prosecutor for the Terrorism Trials at Guantanamo Bay for more than two years, and now I need your help.

I personally charged Osama Bin Laden’s driver Salim Hamdan, Australian David Hicks, and Canadian teen Omar Khadr. All three were convicted … and then they were released from Guantánamo. More than 160 men who have never been charged with any offense, much less convicted of a war crime, remain at Guantánamo with no end in sight. There is something fundamentally wrong with a system where not being charged with a war crime keeps you locked away indefinitely and a war crime conviction is your ticket home.

As of April 29, 2013 — 100 of the 166 men who remain in Guantánamo are engaged in a hunger strike in protest of their indefinite detention. Twenty-one of them are being force-fed and five are hospitalized. Some of the men have been in prison for more than eleven years without charge or trial. The United States has cleared a majority of the detainees for transfer out of Guantánamo, yet they remain in custody year after year because of their citizenship and ongoing political gamesmanship in the U.S.

That is why I am calling on Secretary of Defense Charles Hagel to use his authority to effect cleared transfers from Guantánamo and on President Obama to appoint an individual within the Administration to lead the effort to close Guantánamo. Obama announced on April 30 that he plans to do his part to close Guantánamo, but he has made this promise before. Now is the time to hold him to his promise and urge him to take the steps necessary to dismantle Guantánamo Bay Prison.

If any other country were treating prisoners the way we are treating those in Guantánamo we would roundly and rightly criticize that country. We can never retake the legal and moral high ground when we claim the right to do unto others that which we would vehemently condemn if done to one of us.

It is probably no surprise that human rights and activist groups like the Center For Constitutional Rights, Witness Against Torture and Amnesty International have been outspoken critics of Guantánamo. It may surprise you that a former military prosecutor and many other retired senior military officers and members of the intelligence community agree with them.

The Patriotic thing, the American thing, the Human thing to do here is to Close Guantánamo. Please join us in the fight by signing this petition.

The petition to President Obama: Close Guantánamo Now

To:

President Barack Obama

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW

Washington DC, 20500

Re: Concern about hunger strike and stalled efforts to close the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay

Dear President Obama,

I am writing to urge you to take immediate steps to end indefinite detention without charge and begin closing the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay. If ever there was a moment to act upon the promise you made more than four years ago to close Guantánamo and begin to restore America’s reputation as the champion of the rule of law, it is now.

For several weeks, major news outlets, attorneys for the detainees, and even military officials have reported that there is a hunger strike occurring among a significant number of the men detained at Guantánamo. As a detention facility official told reporters during their visit the week of April 15, “there will be more than one death.” The current situation is the predictable result of continuing to hold detainees indefinitely without charge for more than eleven years. Therefore, I urge you to begin working to transfer the remaining detained men to their home countries or other countries for resettlement, or to charge them in a court that comports with standards we would accept if it was Americans on trial. I also urge you to appoint an individual within your administration to lead the transfer effort.

Specifically, I ask that you:

1) Direct Secretary of Defense Charles Hagel to use his authority to issue the certifications or national security waivers required by the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA 2013) to effect transfers from Guantánamo.

2) Appoint an individual within your Administration to lead the effort to close Guantánamo.

3) Announce a concrete and specific plan to close the facility. As a first step and a clear signal that this is the beginning of a new chapter in Guantánamo’s legacy, you should immediately release Shaker Aamer and Djamel Ameziane.

I urge you to order the relevant authorities to take swift measures to humanely and lawfully address the immediate causes of the hunger strike in a manner consistent with international standards of medical ethics before irreparable harm occurs to the detainees. Moreover, I urge you to take steps to address the root of the problem by fulfilling your promise to close Guantánamo without further delay. While I stand ready to support the Administration’s efforts to close Guantánamo Bay in a manner consistent with its international legal obligations, this problem demands the leadership that only you as the President of the United States can provide. I urge you to act now.

Andy Worthington is 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. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed — and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr (my photos) and YouTube. Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in April 2012, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and please also consider joining the “Close Guantánamo campaign”, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

Andy Worthington Discusses the Guantánamo Hunger Strike on the BBC

Yesterday — April 30 — was a big day for Guantánamo coverage, as the BBC decided to provide extensive coverage of the ongoing hunger strike, now on its 84th day — and the ethical problems regarding the force-feeding of mentally competent prisoners — across a number of TV and radio shows.

I was contacted a few days ago by BBC World News, and asked to appear on the lunchtime news with George Alagiah, and on Monday evening I also received a request to appear on Newsday, on the World Service, at 7am. That show is available here (for the next six days) and my brief interview took place in a segment that began about 12 and a half minutes into the 90-minute show.

I then received another call, from World have Your Say, also on the World Service, asking me to appear on that show as well, and after I rolled up at the BBC at 11.30, I was shuttled around from the World Service to the rather roomy sound stage occupied by BBC World News, where I had a few minutes’ chat with George Alagiah. I can’t find that interview anywhere online, but the World Have Your Say interview is available here, in which Aisha Maniar of the London Guantánamo Campaign was also a guest, and our segment begins 19 minutes into the 26-minute show.

I didn’t have long to make my case in any of these appearances, but I was pleased that I had the opportunity to talk about the unacceptable injustice of Guantánamo, including the indefinite detention of 86 men cleared for release at least three years ago by President Obama’s own inter-agency task force, and the blunt truth that, unless action is taken by the President, all the men still held will die at the prison — in the near future, or decades from now — as there is no mechanism that can secure their release.

As I stated on World Have Your Say:

These are men who have been abandoned by every branch of the United States government — by President Obama, who promised to close the prison but then failed to do so; by Congress, which has raised obstacles; and by the US courts, which have also raised obstacles to prevent their release. They are trapped in Guantánamo. They very literally will die there, maybe decades from now, or maybe tomorrow given that they’re on a hunger strike.

But there is no way out for these men, and over half of them are men who were cleared for release by a task force that the President established when he came to office. The task force said these are not men that it is in the interests of the United States to carry on holding forever, and yet they’re all still there. So there are very obvious reasons why there is such a pervasive and prevailing sense of despair in the prison.

Andy Worthington is 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. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed — and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr (my photos) and YouTube. Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in April 2012, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and please also consider joining the “Close Guantánamo campaign”, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

Former US Navy Judge Advocates General Call for the Closure of Guantánamo

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.

The hunger strike at Guantánamo shows no sign of ending, and as a result we at “Close Guantánamo” fear, every day, that we will hear news of some unfortunate soul’s death at the prison. Every day we also wait, in vain, for President Obama to take leadership on the issue, and to pledge to release some of the 86 men (out of 166 in total), who were cleared for release at least three years ago by an inter-agency task force that the President established when he took office in 2009 – when, of course, he also promised to close Guantánamo within a year, but failed to do so.

We have been covering the hunger strike since it first surfaced, and we continue to monitor it, and to urge people to put pressure on President Obama and Chuck Hagel, the defense secretary, to bring it to an end the only way that is acceptable — not with lockdowns and the use of solitary confinement, but with political courage, and a sense of what is right and what is wrong.

Holding men who have been cleared for release by sober and sensible officials from the key government departments and the intelligence agencies is completely unacceptable, under any circumstances, and it demeans America for this situation to be ongoing, day after day, with the world’s media finally paying attention once more, after years of indifference.

President Obama needs to drop his ban on releasing any cleared Yemenis, and lawmakers need to acknowledge that their legislation preventing the release of prisoners and the closure of the prison is cruelly unjust and counter-productive.

With the military on Monday acknowledging that 100 prisoners are taking part in the hunger strike (edging ever closer to the figure of 130 that has long been cited by the prisoners themselves), and with additional medical personnel being flown out to Guantánamo to help out, the situation has, frankly, become intolerable.

Below, we’re posting an op-ed, dealing with just these issues, that was written for the Huffington Post by John Hutson and Donald J. Guter, former Judge Advocates General of the US Navy, who were signatories to our mission statement here at “Close Guantánamo,” when we launched this website and campaign back in January 2012.

The Guantánamo Mess

By John Hutson and Donald J. Guter, Huffington Post, April 23, 2013

The fundamental question of whether Guantánamo should even exist as a prison has been lost in the cacophony over hunger strikes, the prosecution’s access to defense client-privileged email, government eavesdropping on attorney-client conferences, and the overall abject failure of military commissions to prosecute alleged terrorists in any meaningful way.

Let’s look at the basic question of whether to keep Gitmo open at all. We stood behind the President on his second day in office along with over a dozen other retired admirals and generals as he signed an executive order directing that Gitmo be closed and the prisoners transferred to prisons in the U.S. That was five long years ago, yet with the support of Congress, it remains open in spite of the direct order of the Commander in Chief.

The heinous crime resulting in the tragedy in Boston doesn’t reframe the question. Justice still is America’s greatest asset and our greatest export. One way or the other, we will demonstrate our system of justice in a very real way that will capture the attention of the whole world. The Boston evildoer(s) can be prosecuted in Federal Court and imprisoned in the federal prison system. That would send a powerful message to the world about our values, our strength, and our courage. Or, we can imprison the perpetrator(s) in Gitmo and let them rot there forever. That would send a very different message — one of fear and retribution.

Gitmo costs the U.S. in many ways. One way and the easiest to quantify is that it costs upwards of $177M per year to maintain, and the Department of Defense has requested almost $200M more to renovate it. $177M is over a million dollars for each of the 166 detainees imprisoned there. There is a basic factual fallacy about Guantánamo — that these 166 men are all very bad guys who deserve whatever they get. That is not true. At most, twenty of the prisoners are accused terrorists who will be tried for war crimes. 86 of the 166 prisoners have been cleared for release. Indeed, they have been cleared for several years now.

The average cost to house a prisoner in a supermax prison in the U.S. is less than $30K. Try to imagine what we could buy with the savings if Gitmo were closed and the 86 detainees already cleared were in fact released, and the remaining prisoners were held in Federal Prison here instead. How many Marines, how many Navy Seals, how many bombs and bullets would those millions of dollars buy? How many veterans’ claims efficiently processed and paid? How many hot lunches for underprivileged school children? It is a terrible waste.

Gitmo also costs the United States dearly in terms of our international reputation. Courts in other countries have declined to render alleged terrorists to U.S. custody for fear they will be tried in military commissions in Guantánamo. Although the facility itself is adequate for a prison, it is largely viewed in the international community as America’s gulag. Supermax prisons, from which no one ever escapes, are no weekend spa to be sure, but Gitmo is an avoidable, self-inflicted wound.

As retired Navy officers, we also object to holding alleged terrorists in a military prison. This implies the status of “soldier” which they decidedly do not deserve. If the twenty or so accused terrorists at Guantánamo are guilty of what the prosecution apparently believes they have done, they are simply criminals, not soldiers. We should treat them like alleged criminals, without honor, and not elevate them to a higher, undeserved status.

The time is long past for Gitmo to close. Terrorists are successfully and safely prosecuted in courtrooms around the world including in the U.S. practically every week. What are we afraid of? We clearly want bad men to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Gitmo has impeded that effort, not facilitated it. The first step for successful prosecutions is to close Gitmo and bring them here to the United States for prosecution.

The president should appoint a person of unquestioned stature and experience to work within the Administration and Congress to effectuate his long standing Executive Order. No committees, no studies, no more analysis. Appoint someone to get it done.

The authors are former Judge Advocates General of the Navy. Mr. Guter is currently dean of South Texas College of Law/Houston and Mr. Hutson is dean emeritus of University of New Hampshire School of Law.

Andy Worthington is 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. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed — and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr (my photos) and YouTube. Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in April 2012, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and please also consider joining the “Close Guantánamo campaign”, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

The Prisoners Speak: Reports from the Hunger Strike in Guantánamo

On Friday, I received an alarming message from inside Guantánamo, from a reliable source who described the impact of the prison-wide hunger strike, now nearing the three-month mark, by stating that the the guards were “putting people in isolation and all day long making lots of noise by speaking loudly, running on the metal stairs and leaving their two-way radios on all day and night. People cannot sleep.”

The source added, “There are at least four people that are at the very edge and one named Khiali Gul from Afghanistan is in a bad shape and cannot move and cannot talk or eat or drink. When other detainees tell the guards about him, they say, ‘When he is completely unconscious, then we will take him.’ The chances are that he will die.”

I have been reporting on the hunger strike since it first became public knowledge in February, and it is reports like the one above, and the statements that have been featured in prominent newspapers — by Samir Moqbel, a Yemeni, in the New York Times, and Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo, in the Observer — that have helped to put the spotlight back on Guantánamo, after several years in which most people had lost interest.

President Obama took office in 2009 promising to close Guantánamo within a year, but when he failed to do so, through his own inaction and obstruction in Congress, the mainstream media and the American people largely moved on, even though the injustice of Guantánamo ought to become more pronounced rather than less the longer it is open.

Of the 166 men still held at Guantánamo, 86 were cleared for release by an inter-agency task force established by the President in 2009, but are still held with no end in sight to what is their indefinite detention — for the rest of their lives, unless there is a major change in the way America operates. If these men’s indefinite detention was not quite planned, 46 others have an executive order, issued by President Obama in March 2011, to thank for their predicament. Found to be too dangerous to release, even though no evidence exists that could be used in court (meaning that it is fundamentally unreliable), they were promised periodic reviews of their cases when they were consigned to life imprisonment without charge or trial, but those reviews have never materialized.

When these facts are known, the hunger strike becomes readily comprehensible, and now that some key parts of the mainstream media have woken up to the ongoing injustice of Guantánamo — and, fortunately, show no sign of giving up on it in the aftermath of the Boston bombings, which some dark forces within America wanted to use to stir up a whole new wave of Islamophobia — it remains crucial that the voices of the men continue to be heard.

Last week, Jason Leopold of Truthout helped to keep the spotlight on some of the men that the prisoners themselves claim are refusing food, through discussions with their lawyers. The US authorities, having initially responded to the news of the hunger strike by claiming that it didn’t exist, have steadily been acknowledging that it does, and have been revising their figures upwards of the numbers of prisoners taking part. As of April 26, the military stated that 97 prisoners are hunger strikers, that 19 are being force-fed, and that five have been hospitalized. Even this, however, fails to match the prisoners’ own claims that around 130 of the remaining prisoners are on the hunger strike

One of those on the hunger strike is Abdulsalam Al-Hela, a 45-year old Yemeni businessman kidnapped in Egypt in September 2002 and held in “black sites” before his transfer to Guantánamo in September 2004. As Leopold described it, he “does not understand why he and other Guantánamo prisoners reside in a perpetual state of legal limbo.” In a meeting in March, he asked his attorney, David Remes, “Can it really be true that US, with all its power, all over the world, can’t solve the problems of 100 men?”

Al-Hela has been on the hunger strike since the first day, February 6, and is “gaunt and weak” like most of the hunger strikers. Remes told Leopold that he “walks with the aid of an aluminum cane,” and “has lost more than 30 pounds” since the hunger strike began.

The hunger strike began in response to a change in the behavior of the guards. This apparently started last summer, when a new guard force arrived, and, as Leopold explained, “The Navy personnel who has previously patrolled the cellblocks were replaced by soldiers returning from tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. Prisoners complained to their lawyers bitterly and often about being ‘tormented’ and ‘provoked’ by the guards.”

Carlos Warner, an attorney with the Office of the Federal Defender for the Northern District of Ohio, who represents Fayiz al-Kandari, one of the last two Kuwaitis in the prison, “noted on March 20 that his client complained not only of guards ‘provoking’ the prisoners, but threatening to kill them — a claim that Pentagon and Guantánamo officials have vehemently denied in all cases.”

Fayiz has long been a resilient prisoner, regarded by the authorities as difficult because he had not been “broken” by years of interrogation, but he is now extremely weak, and, as his military defense team, led by Lt. Col. Barry Wingard, explained on April 14, “Reflecting on our latest trip to Guantánamo Bay, the picture of Fayiz keeps coming to our mind. Fayiz has become abnormally thin due to extreme loss of body weight. You could fit your hands around his waist with both hands touching.”

In Truthout, Jason Leopold also delved into an incident on January 2, a month before the hunger strike began, when non-lethal rounds were fired at a prisoner in the recreation yard for those in Camp 6, regarded as the most compliant and cooperative of the remaining prisoners, who were allowed to spend a lot of their time communally until a clampdown on April 13, when most of them were put in solitary confinement.

The authorities claimed that one prisoner tried to climb the fence and “a small crowd of detainees began throwing rocks at the guard tower,” after which the rounds were fired, and one Afghan was hit in the throat. However, Uthman Abdul Rahim Mohammed Uthman, a Yemeni, is one of several prisoners who said that “it wasn’t the prisoners who provoked the guard force, but a guard who overreacted” after a prisoner entered the recreation area against his wishes.

David Remes, who represents 13 Yemeni prisoners, provide unclassified notes of a meeting on March 7 with Uthman, which stated, “Detainee started shaking door (very common). Guard in tower pointed rifle at him. Brothers in yard started shouting. Guard swung around with his rifle and started shooting at them — just one bullet, which hit a detainee in the throat.”

Another Yemeni, Yasein Ismael, told Remes on March 5 that the prisoners were “surprised when a guard in a tower pointed a gun at detainees and shot into the group.” He said, “We were defenceless. We had no weapons.” He added that he spoke to the staff judge advocate, the people in the psychiatric ward, and the investigators, and said, “I told them I thought my life was in danger. I didn’t go out for a month because I thought I’d be killed by mistake or on purpose. They keep creating provocations, bringing Hummers with machine guns. No reason.”

Ismael, Remes said, weighed just 115 pounds when he saw him in March. He added that he “was unable to keep his balance and had to drink a ‘sugary water substance’ to remain alert.”

After the shooting incident, there was a five-day hunger strike. An officer in charge apparently met with the prisoners and apologized, but soon after legal papers were confiscated from the prisoners’ cells, and then came the Koran searches that caused the initial outrage amongst the prisoners, leading to the hunger strike that is still ongoing.

The trigger was apparently the death, last September, of Adnan Latif, who allegedly hoarded medication that he used to kill himself. Investigators thought he might have hidden it in his Koran, leading Col. John Bogdan, the commander of Guantánamo’s Joint Detention Group, to order the prisoners’ Korans to be searched, despite protestations from the prisoners.

Yasein Ismael described how certain guards tried to provoke the prisoners. “We thought they wanted us to react violent to give excuse for them to harm us,” he said, and Uthman Abdul Rahim Mohammed Uthman added that some prisoners “started breaking cameras in their cells.” Then came the Hummers. “[Three] groups, one with gun, one with sticks and one with shields,” Ismael said, adding, “Brothers tried to forestall attack by agreeing to be peaceful. A peaceful protest. We passed word to that block [that was attempting to dismantle surveillance cameras], who calmed down. So we foiled the Army’s plan. But the guards entered anyway. They used pepper spray on the men from large canister.”

Uthman explained, “That was the beginning of the [hunger] strike. We covered cameras, stopped attending classes, had sit-ins. Everyone went on the hunger strike.”

Noticeably, the prisoners “offered to surrender their Korans and end their hunger strike instead of having them searched,” as happened with a similar situation in 2006, but the authorities refused. Salman Rabeii, another Yemeni, said he “believes the offer was refused because Korans provide the prisoners with ‘spiritual strength, so you will kill yourselves if you take it away.’” He added that the authorities were afraid they would “look bad in the media” if they took the prisoners’ Korans away.

As the hunger strike has progressed, there have been several suicide attempts, largely dismissed by the authorities, and prisoners disappearing from Camp 6. As Leopold explained, “The lawyers’ notes exhaustively describe the accounts of prisoners who said they saw dozens of other detainees falling unconscious and being hauled off to the maximum-security camp [Camp 5] by medical personnel to be held in isolation as punishment for participating in the hunger strike, never to return to compliant Camp 6.”

Hussein Almerfedi, another Yemeni, told David Remes on March 5, “A detainee dropped unconscious. We do not know if he’s alive.” The day after, Abdulsalam Al-Hela said, “Brothers try to revive the one who lost consciousness to spare him camps [i.e. Camp 5]. More than 20 have been sent to Camp 5, isolation, for punishment.”

Yasein Ismael said that, “in an attempt to break the hunger strike, the temperature in the cells was lowered to 62 degrees,” as Leopold put it. Ismael added, “That’s very cold, especially for weak men.” Others “said they were prohibited from discussing the hunger strike during phone calls with their family members, and if they uttered a word about it their calls would be disconnected.”

Meetings between officials and the prisoners have led to nothing. One involved “the colonel” — presumably Col. Bogden — and Salman Rabeii told Remes on March 7 that the “chief doctor” also tried to negotiate, but all attempts to negotiate have failed. The prisoners want freedom and justice, but neither are on offer.

In a letter to David Remes on March 11, Yasein Ismael wrote that the hunger strike “is going toward the worst. I believe I am going to die in this hunger strike and this might be my last letter, or today is probably my last day in this world.”

Two week ago, Remes told Leopold, “Ismael fell unconscious in his cell in Camp 5 and was moved to a hospital,” where he is now one of the 19 prisoners being force-fed.

The words above only touch on the horrors of Guantánamo as the men still held hold out for death or justice, but I believe, given the way they have been so shamefully abandoned by the Obama administration, Congress, the courts and the American people, that their despair is justified, and that their actions are indeed the only way for their plight to be noticed. The main question now is whether President Obama will act before any more of the prisoners in Guantánamo join Adnan Latif in death.

Andy Worthington is 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. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed — and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr (my photos) and YouTube. Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in April 2012, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and please also consider joining the “Close Guantánamo campaign”, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

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

Return Shaker Aamer from Guantánamo: The Full Text of the Parliamentary Debate, April 24, 2013 (Part Two of Two)

This is the second part of the transcript of a Parliamentary debate that took place last Wednesday, April 24, 2013, eleven years, two months and ten days after Shaker Aamer, a British resident, arrived at Guantánamo, six years after he was told that the Bush administration no longer wanted to hold him, nearly six years after his return to the UK was first requested by the British government (under Gordon Brown), and over three years since he was officially cleared for release by the inter-agency task force that President Obama established after he took office in January 2009.

That he is still held — as are 85 other men cleared for release by the task force — is so monstrously unjust that is is unsurprising that many of the men, including Shaker, are part of a prison-wide hunger strike, which has been ongoing for nearly three months, to draw attention to their plight.

The men have been failed by all three branches of the US government — by President Obama, who promised to close the prison within a year when he took office; by Congress, where cynical lawmakers have imposed almost insurmountable obstacles to their release; and by the courts, where a handful of judges (in the DC Circuit Court) have gutted habeas corpus of all meaning for the men held in Guantánamo, and have been allowed to do so by the Supreme Court.

In addition to the 86 cleared prisoners, the 80 other men held in Guantánamo are also entitled to believe that they will never receive anything resembling justice. 46 were designated for indefinite detention without charge or trial in an executive order issued by President Obama two years ago, on the basis that they are supposedly too dangerous to release, even though insufficient evidence exists to put them on trial. This was a disgraceful move on the President’s part, as the reasons that the evidence is insufficient to put the men on trial is because it consists largely of worthless statements extracted using torture or other abusive means. Moreover, the men have never received the reviews of their cases that President Obama promised two years ago.

For the other prisoners, there is also no hope, as trials have essentially stalled, with Congress blocking federal court trials, and judges ruling that, in the military commissions, men have been tried and convicted for war crimes that do not exist, and were invented by Congress.

As I explained when I posted the first part of the debate on Saturday, the trigger for the Parliamentary debate was an e-petition to the British government, calling on ministers to “undertake urgent new initiatives to achieve the immediate transfer of Shaker Aamer to the UK from continuing indefinite detention in Guantánamo Bay,” which secured over 100,000 signatures, through the tireless work of numerous campaigners, making it eligible for a discussion in Parliament.

Jane Ellison, the Conservative MP for Battersea, Shaker’s constituency, requested the debate, which took place in Westminster Hall, and it will, hopefully, be followed sometime next month by a full debate in the House of Commons.

As I explained when I posted photos from a demonstration in Parliament Square that followed the debate, the MPs who spoke made “an unassailable case for Shaker’s immediate release,” as is clear from the extensive statements made by MPs in the first part of the debate  — primarily, Jane Ellison, the Green MP Caroline Lucas, and the Labour MPs John McDonnell, Jeremy Corbyn, Kerry McCarthy and Yasmin Qureshi.

This second part is a less inspiring read, although it is of great importance, as it features Alistair Burt, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, attempting to explain why Shaker is still held, even though the UK still has a “special relationship” with the US, and was America’s closest ally in the “war on terror,” and could, if the political will existed, prioritize Shaker’s return as a key policy.

Clearly, that hasn’t happened, and nor is it likely to happen, unless millions of us get out in the streets to demand his freedom, although that doesn’t, of course, mean that Shaker won’t be released. I happen to believe that, even with the British government’s fudging — with Burt stating that the government is committed to securing Shaker’s release, but is unable to sway US opinion — Shaker’s release remains the key to unlocking the stalled release of prisoners from Guantánamo.

Unless President Obama is genuinely content not to release any more prisoners, and to be judged as a colossal failure on Guantánamo — the man who promised to close it, but then failed to do so because it was politically inconvenient — he needs to find a way to revive the process of releasing prisoners.

One way is by directly challenging Congress, where lawmakers are preventing the release of prisoners to countries they regard as dangerous, through sections of the National Defense Authorization Act, which also stipulate that the Secretary of Defense must certify that anyone the administration intends to release must be unable to engage in any activities that threaten the US — and this is, of course, an impossible guarantee. Another route would be for the President and the Secretary of Defense to use a waiver that exists in the National Defense Authorization Act, allowing them to bypass the obstacles raised by Congress if it is in America’s best interests.

The UK is a thoroughly safe country to release a prisoner to — and efforts from the UK to frame Shaker’s release as an opportunity to help President Obama to overcome his difficulties, to revisit his failed promise to close Guantánamo, and to secure his legacy are surely worthwhile, and of mutual benefit to both the US and the UK.

One other problem, of course, which Alistair Burt touched on, is that the US seems only to have officially approved Shaker for transfer to Saudi Arabia (where, of course, this eloquent and knowledgeable man would be silenced), although clearly there is no way that the UK can accept this, as Shaker was given indefinite leave to remain in the UK, and his wife and children are all British citizens, and, in any case, sending him to Saudi Arabia would provoke huge and politically damaging indignation in the UK. It is, therefore, another point on which the UK can push to help President Obama.

I hope you have time to read the transcript, and to share it if you find it worthwhile.

Commons Debate on Shaker Aamer, Westminster Hall, April 24, 2013: The government’s response

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Alistair Burt):

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Jane Ellison) for raising this issue and for her work in supporting Shaker Aamer’s family, which she has done consistently since she was elected. She has done all she can to raise his case, including through conversations with me at the Foreign Office.

I also acknowledge the work of the right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan), whom parliamentary convention prevents from speaking in the debate. He has been an advocate and a concerned Member of Parliament for other parts of the family. We fully appreciate his presence and the reasons why he cannot speak. I also thank colleagues who have made interventions and speeches during the debate.

I will do my best to deal with as many of the questions that have been raised as possible. I would like to put some remarks on the record first and then to deal with some of the issues that have been raised in questions. I will not be able to deal with all the questions. Some refer to confidential discussions we have with the United States, which we cannot go into. Some deal with intelligence matters, which no Government discuss in public. I do not have the answers to one or two of the questions with me, including some of those asked by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas). I thought I might deal with her list of questions by writing to her and putting a copy of the letter in the Library so that other Members can see it. However, let me deal as best as I can with some of the issues that have been raised.

For absolute clarity, let me say that the Government’s consistent position is no different from that of our predecessor. It is the long-standing policy of the Government that we should seek the release and return of those UK nationals and former legal residents who have been held at Guantánamo Bay and, in so doing, assist the US Administration in their efforts to close the detention facility. There is no change in Government policy; our policy is to support efforts in the United States to close Guantánamo and to seek the return of UK residents and nationals―that now comes down to Mr Shaker Aamer.

As Members will be aware, Shaker Aamer was part of an exceptional request in 2007 by the then Foreign Secretary for the release and return of all former legal UK residents held in Guantánamo Bay. Securing the release and return of Mr Aamer, the last remaining former British legal resident, remains a high priority for the Government. It remains the Government’s understanding that Mr Aamer has only ever been cleared for transfer, and not release. The US authorities have not charged him with any crime, and nor do they intend to prosecute him. It is the Government’s belief that it is Mr Aamer’s wish to return to the United Kingdom to be reunited with his wife and family. We therefore continue to make it clear to the US that seeing Mr Aamer released and returned to the United Kingdom is a priority for us.

Mr Aamer’s case has been repeatedly raised by the Foreign and Defence Secretaries with their US counterparts. That level of engagement has been undertaken on the understanding that the US Secretaries of Defence and State, in consultation with the director of national intelligence, have the authority to affect Mr Aamer’s release and return. It is the Government’s intention to raise Mr Aamer’s case with new office holders as soon as is practical. In support of that ministerial level engagement, I raised Mr Aamer’s case with Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns just a week ago last Monday, at a face-to-face meeting in Washington. In addition, senior officials continue to discuss Mr Aamer’s case with their US counterparts.

Despite the high level of public and parliamentary interest in Mr Aamer’s case, it remains necessary for the Government to keep the details of diplomatic discussions with the United States Administration confidential. Any breach of their expectation of confidentiality would likely hinder UK efforts to secure Mr Aamer’s release and return. Confidentiality aside, we welcome the continued engagement of Members of the House who share our common vision to see Mr Aamer returned to his family in the United Kingdom. We remain committed to offering assistance to those parliamentarians who wish to raise his case directly with figures in the United States. We also welcome the degree of interest from the public and the signing of the petition, which led directly to my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea raising this issue today.

Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab):

I am sure the Minister is absolutely sincere in what he is trying to do. I appreciate what he says about confidentiality. A lot of constituents regularly raise this matter with me, and they cannot understand why, given the special relationship with the United States, it is not possible to get a more positive response. Is there anything further the Minister can say about the reasons he is being given by US officials?

Alistair Burt:

Let me deal with that when I respond to the remarks and questions from the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) on that subject. There is a limited amount I can say, because, ultimately, it is the United States that is holding Mr Aamer, not us. There is only so much we know about the reasons, but I will say a little more about that later.

I reiterate that the Government continue to support President Obama’s commitment to closing the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay. We understand the requirement for detainee transfers and releases to satisfy US legislation. Previous legislation passed by the United States Congress — namely, the 2011 National Defence Authorisation Act — all but precluded transfers out of Guantánamo Bay. That legislation was renewed by the US Government for 2012 in largely the same terms, but it allowed for the US Secretary of Defence to exercise a waiver should stringent conditions be met.

Despite our best endeavours, Mr Aamer was not released in 2012. Indeed, no detainees were released from Guantánamo Bay in 2012 [Note: none were released under the NDAA, but four were freed in 2012 -- two as a result of a court order, and two others as a result of plea deals in their military commissions]. The National Defence Authorisation Act was renewed in January 2013. All Guantánamo Bay detainees cleared for transfer or release now require a waiver under the Act before they can be transferred or released from the detention facility, regardless of their destination country. The Government continue to work with US counterparts to consider the implications of the NDAA 2013 for Mr Aamer’s release. Notwithstanding that, any decision regarding Mr Aamer’s release ultimately remains in the hands of the United States Government. I will have a little more to say about that in a moment.

Let me deal briefly with welfare issues and then return to some of the questions colleagues raised in the debate. We continue to take concerns about Mr Aamer’s welfare very seriously. The US Department of Defence has confirmed to us that Mr Aamer is participating in the current hunger strike at Guantánamo Bay.

Notwithstanding that, the US authorities have assured us that he is in a stable condition, that he is not in solitary confinement and that he is being offered medical treatment. In addition, the FCO has asked the US Department of Defence substantively to respond to specific allegations that have been made. We have no reason not to believe the welfare assurances we have been given by United States authorities. I should add that the International Committee of the Red Cross has access to Guantanamo detainees.

Yasmin Qureshi:

Has anybody from the Foreign Office actually visited Guantánamo Bay and seen for themselves the condition of Shaker Aamer? If they saw him, there would be independent evidence to say that he was fine and that he was being treated properly, and we would not worry so much. If it is being said he is being treated well, has any effort been made to go to see him? If not, has permission been refused?

Alistair Burt:

The reason is that we cannot offer a non-British national, which is Mr Aamer’s status, consular assistance. Consular access and responsibilities are afforded to states only in respect of their nationals. Our consular policy towards non-British nationals is clear; we cannot help non-nationals, no matter how long they have lived in the UK, and regardless of their connections to the UK. However, although we are not able to visit him in Guantánamo Bay, we routinely inquire about Mr Aamer’s welfare, and we always follow up allegations of poor health, as a matter of priority. We are confident that the assurances that we receive from the US are accurate and credible, and have no reason to believe otherwise.

Yasmin Qureshi:

I appreciate that because Mr Aamer is not a British national he cannot technically or legally speaking be given consular assistance, but bearing in mind the fact that the British Government are making representations on his behalf for him to be released back here it would not be that difficult for someone independently to go and speak to him, and then come back and say, “He’s okay; the suggestion that he is being tortured or treated badly is all wrong.” That would shut people up if they are wrong in saying he has been treated badly. That is all. It is just common sense.

Alistair Burt:

As far as I am aware, there is independent access to Guantánamo detainees through the ICRC. That provides exactly the independent reference that the hon. Lady would look for. Our consular policy is clear.

Jane Ellison:

On the point about the ICRC, I suspect that the Minister will not be able to answer now, but will he, having inquired of the ICRC, write to me and other hon. Members to tell us when it last visited and whether there was a chance to meet Mr Aamer and make an assessment? If that was possible, could that be put on the record?

Alistair Burt:

I can certainly do that, and am happy to write to my hon. Friend; but I want to make it clear that we take the allegations extremely seriously. We have asked the US Department of Defence to respond to specific allegations about treatment and we will continue to do so. As I say, we think independent access, through the facilities that are available, is important; but I will happily respond to my hon. Friend in due course.

Eric Joyce (Falkirk) (Ind):

I take the Minister’s point about the issues to do with mistreatment or otherwise, but does he agree that there is not really a precedent for holding someone, ostensibly as a prisoner of war, for 11 years? The only precedent that I can think of is the gulags after the second world war; that is not something that we would care to accept as a common practice.

Alistair Burt:

Let me now deal with some of the questions that colleagues have raised in the debate, starting with why Mr Aamer is in Guantánamo Bay, which is the central question. I will say what I said before: he is not being held by the United Kingdom, so we do not have a reason why he is detained. In our view the detention is wrong and he should not be there. I make that very clear. The United States must satisfy itself that it has reasons.

It is genuinely very difficult to comment on why the United States might think that Mr Aamer is rightly in Guantánamo Bay. We have to discuss the detail with the US to seek to secure his release. That is sensitive, and we do not discuss intelligence matters. We have always held the view that indefinite detention without review or fair trial is unacceptable. We welcome the President’s continuing commitment to closing the detention facility and to maintaining a lawful, sustainable and principled regime for the handling of detainees there. Beyond our making it clear that we do not consider the detention of Mr Aamer to be right or correct, the United States plainly has a different point of view. The process of our arguing for Mr Aamer’s release is seeking to persuade the US; to a certain extent the parliamentary and public pressure in the United Kingdom adds to that sense of persuasion that the detention is not right or appropriate. That remains the Government’s view.

Jeremy Corbyn:

Will the Minister tell us exactly what the US Secretary for Defence says about why Mr Aamer is in Guantánamo Bay at all? What reason do the US offer for putting someone who was legally resident in this country in prison for so long, with no legal process?

Alistair Burt:

Forgive me; that is one of the questions that I cannot answer in direct terms, because that forms part of the confidential discussions that we need to have with the United States in relation to this matter. A breach of its confidentiality in relation to it would damage the efforts that we are continuing to undertake in relation to Mr Aamer’s release. Although I fully understand the reason for asking the question, and the degree of frustration about my not being able to give a response, those are my reasons for not going into it. Plainly, there is an obvious difference of opinion.

Caroline Lucas:

The debate is becoming increasingly Kafkaesque; it is like a nightmare. Can the Minister at least tell us whether he knows why the US will not release Mr Aamer? It is one thing not being able to tell us; but can he tell us whether he knows why? Can he indicate his assessment of what the US tells him?

Alistair Burt:

In all fairness, we are getting into the same sort of area. I do not make light of this. Plainly, I have a supposition about why the United States might want to retain Mr Aamer. It is inconsequential in terms of the United Kingdom’s position on his release from detention, and whether we think the detention is wrong. We do. It is clear we have a difference of opinion with the United States in relation to this; but going into the detail of what we think and what they think is part of the confidential discussion we need to have on his behalf, in order to seek his release. Going into that detail here is not something I can do, understandable though it would be to Parliament, as it is an intelligence matter, which a previous Government would understand well, and would deal with in exactly the same terms.

Yasmin Qureshi:

I understand that the Minister cannot tell us the details of the discussions that have been happening, but when he next has a chance to discuss the matter, can he raise something with the US authorities? Mr Aamer’s lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, has said that he has access to classified material from MI6, which he cannot share — a bit like the Minister — even with his client. However, he is able to give some information from the documents, and he can say that the British security services are actively misleading their US counterparts to ensure that he is never allowed to return to Britain; and that they have gone round bad-mouthing Mr Aamer and saying things that are simply false. Not only were they part of his abuse, but they falsified evidence against him.

Alistair Burt:

I understand the point fully, and, again, the answer is partly the same that I would have given a moment ago, in terms of allegations made against British security forces and the like. However, I will say two things in response. I can say clearly that we are using, and will continue to use, our best endeavours to secure Shaker Aamer’s release. I am aware of the allegations that have been made, and want to make it clear that all parts of Government are pulling in the same direction, for Mr Shaker Aamer’s release.

Also, as to the Government’s response to allegations of wrongdoing in the past by British security services, and our attempts to open things up and to give compensation where things have been wrong, the Prime Minister has said explicitly that torture and rendition are not part of British security activity, whether or not they have been in the past. We have opened that up and offered compensation where things have been wrong. I think that the hon. Lady will appreciate that it is not in our interest, having gone so far in relation to other cases, to seek to do something contrary now. I give an assurance that all parts of the British Government system are pulling in the same direction, for the return of Mr Shaker Aamer.

Stephen Timms:

I am grateful for that assurance about the activities of all parts of the UK Government. Can the Minister shed any light on the point that we discussed earlier about the reason for the change on the part of the US authorities from apparently clearing Mr Aamer for release, to clearing him only for release to Saudi Arabia?

Alistair Burt:

As far as I am aware — I checked with officials during the debate — our understanding is that he has only ever been cleared for transfer. I am not aware that he has been cleared only for transfer to one place. [Interruption.] He has been cleared for transfer to Saudi Arabia; but it is our understanding that he has always been cleared for transfer to Saudi Arabia. That does not, of course, prevent the United Kingdom from seeking to get him returned to the United Kingdom. We believe Shaker Aamer should be returned here, to his family and everything else. Our understanding is that the United States has not changed its position and that it has always been the case — he is cleared for transfer to Saudi Arabia.

John McDonnell:

It is bizarre that the very people who could find themselves in the dock as a result of this witness’s evidence are preventing the Minister from telling us why that witness cannot be released. That is extraordinary.

The level of seriousness with which the American Government will treat this matter depends on the level at which it is raised by this Government. I fully accept that Ministers, including the Minister himself, have raised it consistently, but that means that the Prime Minister, at some stage, has to come into play. After this debate, will the Minister communicate to the Prime Minister that the House now feels it is time for him to intervene personally in the matter by using his relationship with Barack Obama?

Alistair Burt:

I hear what the hon. Gentleman says, and, of course, the Prime Minister will be made aware of the substance of this debate and the strength of feeling, which I know he understands. I cannot make a commitment on the Prime Minister’s behalf to raise particular issues, but I make it very clear that I think the debate should be read widely. Besides the United Kingdom, I hope the debate will influence opinion elsewhere. The matter has been raised with the US Secretary of State and Defence Secretary, and the reason for raising it at that level is, of course, that we believe they are the chief interlocutors who have responsibility under the Act and, ultimately, will need to respond to Congress. We will continue to use our best efforts to get the result we are seeking, but I fully take and understand the hon. Gentleman’s point, and I am quite sure that it will be further considered.

One or two questions have been asked on other issues. My hon. Friend the Member for Battersea asked whether the FCO is considering the new provisions in the NDAA to identify obstacles and opportunities for Shaker Aamer’s release. She asked what progress has been made. The NDAA 2012 allows for the US Defence Secretary to exercise a waiver should stringent conditions be met. We have tried, as I have said, to use our best endeavour to ensure that that happens. We are continuing to work with counterparts to try to understand the implications of the NDAA 2013 for Mr Aamer’s release, but so far that has not been successful. We understand that no detainees were released last year. Ultimately, that remains in their hands, but we are continuing to press.

My hon. Friend and other hon. Members asked for details on any guarantees or securities that we could give on our behalf in relation to Shaker Aamer’s return to the United Kingdom and any onward activity. I cannot give an answer to that, because, again, it clearly forms part of the confidential discussions we must have. I have to rely on previous intelligence assurances given to the House about our not being able to comment in detail on that.

Jane Ellison:

This will be a brief intervention. Have the British Government reiterated the UK’s excellent track record on previous returners from Guantánamo? Stating that would seem to me to be entirely legitimate and not within the bounds of confidential intelligence discussions.

Alistair Burt:

I can state that the subsequent activities and conduct of those who have been released from Guantánamo Bay to the United Kingdom and elsewhere is clearly one of the considerations that we would expect the United States Administration to take into account. My hon. Friend’s point is well made.

A question was also asked about the business of this law of war and how long it is likely to last. Again, we have had no indication from the United States about the length of time that that particular provision might cover. It is a matter for them, but, again, we have made it clear, as a number of colleagues have said, that it does not address the fundamental issues of detention without charge or trial that are at the heart and root of the matter.

The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion raised a number of serious issues in relation to letters from Shaker Aamer to the Foreign Secretary. I do not have those details at the moment, but she has a list of questions, and I will deal with them in the manner I suggested by putting a letter in the Library and writing directly to her.

The hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) raised issues about the intelligence services, to which I have responded. If not in his terms, I have been able to answer them fully. We take the allegations very seriously. As I have said, the Government’s record of dealing with allegations against the intelligence services in the past has been, I believe, good. Our record of uncovering things that we believe to have been wrong in the past, from Bloody Sunday to Hillsborough, is also good. It is against the Government’s spirit to seek again to be complicit in anything that we believe to be wrong. I hope I have given a clear enough assurance on our views on the detention of Mr Shaker Aamer and our clear determination to have him returned.

The hon. Member for Islington North raised similar issues, and he particularly asked why Mr Aamer was detained. Again, I have given the best answer I can at this stage, but none the less, in relation to whatever reason the United States may have, the United Kingdom will continue to argue that his detention is wrong and that he should be returned.

Anas Sarwar (Glasgow Central) (Lab):

The Minister is very generous in giving way. If it was the other way around — if the UK had detained a US resident — would we be getting the same response, and would we accept it?

Alistair Burt:

That is a hypothetical question. As far as I am aware, we do not have anyone detained in the UK who is not going through what we believe to be the appropriate court processes, some of which are very difficult, as we have seen with Mr Abu Qatada. We can be challenged at any time. We do not have any comparable facility. Would we seek to respond? Yes, of course we would. We would respond to legitimate requests from another Government in relation to one of their residents. We would always put our own security first, and we are very clear about that. This is a big political issue in the United States, as we know. This is not just about the President and the Administration; it is about Congress, too.

I will conclude by saying something about that. There is no MP in this room who does not understand or sympathise with the people of the United States and their profound sense of shock after 9/11, in which, of course, a larger number of UK citizens lost their lives than in any other terrorist incident. Certainly, none of us opposes a state’s right to protect itself against terrorism. Parliament debates that regularly and agonises over how to legislate in a complex field to balance security with the very rights and freedoms that are at the heart of what our security is designed to protect. The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion mentioned the Justice and Security Bill, which profoundly concerns those dilemmas and difficulties.

Over the years, we have all come to do our best to understand the complex interplay of motives of those who would cause us harm, and we have sought to defuse them with action directed against those actively engaged in planning or carrying out acts of terrorism, while also doing all we can to de-radicalise those who might be influenced by others or turned in the wrong direction by any action of the UK Government, however unfairly judged — if efforts to protect ourselves are deliberately misinterpreted so as to suggest that a section of the community is being targeted by the state in a manner that denies their rights or discriminates against them, for example. Against such a background in the United Kingdom, the United Kingdom Government simply believe that the continued detention of Shaker Aamer is wrong without charge or trial, and we will continue to do all in our power to seek to return him to the United Kingdom.

Andy Worthington is 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. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed — and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr (my photos) and YouTube. Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in April 2012, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and please also consider joining the “Close Guantánamo campaign”, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

This was the Week the NHS Died, and No One Cares

Save the NHS: A Protest Outside Parliament, and a Public Meeting in Lewisham, a set on Flickr.

On Wednesday April 24, the House of Lords voted by 254 votes to 146 to dismiss a motion, proposed by the Labour peer Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, a shadow health minister, to prevent the passage of regulations relating to Section 75 of the Health and Social Care Act (the Tories’ wretched legislation for NHS reform, passed last year), which was sprung on an unsuspecting public back in February.

The reason I call this the week that the NHS died is because the regulations enforce competition on almost all NHS business, paving the way for private companies to swiftly and effectively dismantle it, cherry-picking services they can easily make profits out of, and cowing the newly appointed Clinical Commissioning Groups (the GPs responsible for 80 percent of the NHS budget), who will be afraid of ruinously expensive legal challenges if they dare to take on the private sector.

It is not strictly true, of course, that no one cares, but I stand by the necessity of such a provocative headline. In fact, a 38 Degrees petition was signed by over 360,000 people, but millions should have been on the streets since the Tories first announced their intentions to destroy the NHS. That, however, has never happened. On the night of the Section 75 motion last week, despite furious lobbying of peers, and some great speeches in support of the NHS (by Lords Hunt and Owen in particular), the last chance to block the legislation was lost.

This was a particular betrayal by the Lib Dem peers, not one of whom voted to save the NHS. As the Daily Mirror explained, “The move to throw out the regulations was backed by 114 Labour peers, 23 crossbenchers, six others and the Bishops of Bath and Wells and Bristol. The Government was supported by 173 Tories, 63 Lib Dems, 15 crossbenchers, the Bishop of Exeter, Ulster Unionist Lord Empey and Labour’s former health minister Lord Warner. Later analysis of division lists showed there were no Government rebels.”

Disgracefully, the Daily Mirror was one of the few media outlets in the UK that even bothered to cover the debate, quoting from Lord Owen (David Owen), an independent crossbench peer who was a foreign secretary in the Labour government in the 1970s, who, as the Mirror put it, warned that “the regulations were part of the erosion of the traditional NHS,” and that they “would leave the NHS unrecognisable within 20 years.”

As he told peers, “Don’t think this is a minor step. If this goes through the National Health Service as we have seen it, as we have believed in it, as we have persuaded the electorate that we support it, will be massively changed. It will take five, 10, 15, maybe 20 years, but unless we pull back from this whole attitude there will be no National Health Service that any of us can recognise.”

He added, “I for one feel tonight one feeling only — overwhelming sadness.”

Lord Hunt told peers that the regulations “could not be in the interests of patients,” as the Mirror put it. “Every day up and down the country a market is unfolding in the NHS,” he said, adding, as the BBC put it (in one of the only other reports in the British media) that the problem is that “they hold open the door to a competitive, marketised service in which I am afraid that … the interests of patients will be not first but last.” The Mirror also described how he “warned of the ‘fragmentation’ of NHS services and said the regulations removed the ‘discretion’ of commissioners to decide when to offer services out to tender.”

As he explained, “I believe we face the prospect of NHS services being placed in the middle of a costly bidding war with private companies, discrete services cherry-picked for profit while the NHS is left to run the more complex and expensive services but with less money.” He added, “How can that possibly be in the best interests of patients? It cannot — I believe we should reject this order.”

In response, health minister Earl Howe tried to claim that the law relating to competitive tendering had not changed “one iota,” and said that the regulations were designed to provide “safeguards,” and Lord Clement-Jones of the Liberal Democrats accused Lord Hunt of promoting “conspiracy theories,” but their protestations are unconvincing. Shamefully, far too many Lords have interests in the very companies that stand to make a financial killing from the privatisation of the NHS, and cannot be trusted. As the investigative journalist Andrew Robertson asked on Open Democracy on Wednesday, “Why, considering their extensive conflicts of interest, are many of these Lords not barred from voting?” The same question should also be asked of MPs.

Despite the apologists for Section 75 trying their best to hoodwink the public, the medical profession and their colleagues, the BMA (the British Medical Association) is one of numerous organisations that are unconvinced. Before the vote, the BMA stated that the regulations need to be replaced with new rules that “unambiguously reflect Government assurances that commissioners will not be forced to use competition when making their commissioning decisions.”

After the vote, Andy Burnham, the shadow health secretary, said, “It is sad that in this, the 65th anniversary year of the NHS, the unelected House has voted to undermine its founding principles and plant the free market at the heart of the NHS. David Cameron promised to put GPs in charge, but has instead forced them to carve open the NHS to full competition. He has put the NHS up for sale — without the permission of the British public. Labour will never give up this fight for the NHS and serves notice tonight on the Prime Minister that we will continue to oppose his NHS privatisation plans on the ground in every community. He cynically used the NHS to get into Downing Street but it becomes clearer by the day that it is simply not safe in his hands.”

Unfortunately, there is, as yet, no guarantee that, even if the Labour Party wins the next election, they will reverse the Tories’ butchering of the NHS, although I fully believe that, ravaged by the Tories — and by senior NHS management — in the years running up to the next election, the NHS will be a huge campaigning issue in 2015 as the cuts begin to bite.

*****

On Thursday, the day after the Lords vote, campaigners in Lewisham delivered an antidote to the bad news from the Lords, with a public meeting in the Great Hall of Goldsmith’s College, in New Cross, put together by the Save Lewisham Hospital campaign. The meeting was packed out, with hundreds of local campaigners turning up to have their say, and to listen to the speakers, Professor Colin Leys, an expert on the NHS and the co-author of The Plot Against the NHS, Dr. John Lister (of Health Emergency), Dr. Louise Irvine, the chair of the Save Lewisham Hospital campaign, Rachel Maskell of Unite, and Pat Smith of the Labour Party, who got a resolution to save the NHS passed at the Labour conference in October, and whose conference speech is here.

Despite health minister Jeremy Hunt approving plans to severely downgrade Lewisham Hospital in January this year, as part of outrageous proposals to bail out a neighbouring NHS trust, two judicial reviews challenging the legality of the decision are underway — one launched by Lewisham Council and the other by the Save Lewisham Hospital campaign. Further actions are also planned — the Hunt for Hunt, a trip to Jeremy Hunt’s Surrey constituency on June 15, and A Lewisham People’s Commission of Enquiry on June 29, chaired by Michael Mansfield QC.

Before that, however, there is a London-wide demonstration in support of the NHS taking place on Saturday May 18, which I hope people will attend. The demonstration begins at 12 noon in Jubilee Gardens (by the London Eye), followed by a march to the Department of Health and Parliament (sign up on the Facebook page here).

Note: For other opinions on Section 75, see these articles by Dr. Kailash Chand and Randeep Ramesh in the Guardian, and the concerns of a number of charities here on the website of Marie Curie Cancer Care. I hope to have time to look into other aspects of healthcare reform, but if I don’t get the opportunity, please check out this article on GP Online about how other existing legislation might help GPs defeat Section 75, and this Guardian article about the failings of Serco, a private contractor that has £300m worth of contracts in the health sector, which raises important questions about accountability.

Andy Worthington is 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. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed — and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr (my photos) and YouTube. Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in April 2012, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and please also consider joining the “Close Guantánamo campaign”, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

EXCLUSIVE: A Warning from Guantánamo – Four Prisoners Are Close to Death, and the Authorities Don’t Care

I have just received a brief message from a credible source inside Guantánamo, about the situation in the prison today, which I wanted to make available because it exposes how four prisoners are close to death, as a result of the prison-wide hunger strike that is on its 80th day, and yet the guard force are behaving with brutality and indifference.

The source stated that it “looks like GTMO is going backward,” with the guards “putting people in isolation and all day long making lots of noise by speaking loudly, running on the metal stairs and leaving their two-way radios on all day and night. People cannot sleep.”

The source added, “There are at least four people that are at the very edge and one named Khiali Gul from Afghanistan is in a bad shape and cannot move and cannot talk or eat or drink. When other detainees tell the guards about him, they say, ‘When he is completely unconscious, then we will take him.’ The chances are that he will die.”

The source also explained that he has been trying to get an Afghan lawyer “to notify his family to at least call him and they might have a chance to talk to him for the last time.”

The source also stated, “There is such an arrogance inside the camp,” that, while a prisoner was meeting with his legal team, “a guard came and knocked on the door and said, ‘Your time is up.’ One of the lawyers said, ‘OK, can we have a few minutes to clean up?’ and the guard said, ‘No, your time is up.’ He kicked us out.”

Khiali Gul (aka Khi Ali Gul), who is 49 or 50 years old, is one of the 86 cleared prisoners still held because of President Obama’s inertia and the cynical obstructions raised by Congress, designed to prevent the release of any of the prisoners. He is an Afghan who should never have been detained in the first place, as I explained last July, when I wrote about discussions between Presidents Obama and Karzai regarding the possibility of transferring some or all of the remaining 17 Afghan prisoners back to Afghanistan.

I first declared Khi Ali Gul innocent in my book The Guantánamo Files, published in 2007, and can say with confidence that I came to regard him as an innocent man wrongly detained while researching the prisoners’ stories in the summer of 2006. In my article last July, drawing on my analysis of his story in my book, I wrote:

[Gul] was captured in Khost and accused of taking part in a bomb plot and being part of a Taliban assassination team. During his long years in Guantánamo, he has stated that he fought with US forces in Tora Bora, and described one occasion when “the Americans were sleeping and we were guarding them.” He added, “If I were their enemy, I would have killed them all.” He was captured at a checkpoint, where, he said, “there were some people that I had a dispute with,” and he added that they “told the American soldiers a lie,” and he was then arrested.

Last September, another cleared prisoner, Adnan Latif, died in Guantánamo, allegedly by committing suicide. President Obama needs to act immediately, so that other cleared prisoners, like Khiali Gul, do not die.

The President needs to understand that the hunger strike is a result of despair, and cannot be seen in the narrow context of the need to restore order in the prison, and, as commander in chief, he needs to rein in the guard force.

Most of all, though, he needs to release those like Khiali Gul who were told, at least three years and three months ago, in January 2010, when President Obama’s inter-agency task force issued its report recommending prisoners for transfer, indefinite detention or trials, “On January 22 2009, the President of the United States ordered a new review of the status of each detainee in Guantánamo. As a result of that review you have been cleared for transfer out of Guantánamo … The US Government intends to transfer you as soon as possible …”

Act now, President Obama, or these tragic and unacceptable deaths will be on your conscience.

Andy Worthington is 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. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed — and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr (my photos) and YouTube. Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in April 2012, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and please also consider joining the “Close Guantánamo campaign”, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

Free Shaker Aamer from Guantánamo: Photos of a Protest Outside Parliament, April 24, 2013

Free Shaker Aamer from Guantánamo: Protest Outside Parliament, April 24, 2013, a set on Flickr.

On April 24, 2013, campaigners calling for the release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, held a demonstration outside Parliament following a Parliamentary debate in Westminster Hall from 9.30 to 11 am. Shaker, who has a British wife and four British children, is one of 86 prisoners cleared for release by an inter-agency task force established by President Obama in 2009 but still held, and, in recent weeks, his story has finally become prominent in the mainstream British media, as he is part of the prison-wide hunger strike that began on February 6, and there are fears for his life (see my recent reports here and here).

The Parliamentary debate followed a successful e-petition, calling on the British government to “undertake urgent new initiatives to achieve the immediate transfer of Shaker Aamer to the UK from continuing indefinite detention in Guantánamo Bay,” which secured over 100,000 signatures, through the tireless work of numerous campaigners, making it eligible for a discussion in Parliament. Please note that an international petition for Shaker is still ongoing.

The debate was introduced by Jane Ellison, the Conservative MP for Battersea, Shaker’s home constituency, where his wife and family live, and it was supported by other MPs including Caroline Lucas (Green, Brighton Pavilion), the Labour MPs John McDonnell, Jeremy Corbyn, Kerry McCarthy, Jim Cunningham, Stephen Timms, John Woodcock, Russell Brown, Yasmin Qureshi, Gavin Shukur, Andy Slaughter and Anas Sarwar, the Conservative MP Mike Freer, Mark Durkan of the SDLP and the Independent MP Eric Joyce.

Jane Ellison, Caroline Lucas, John McDonnell, Jeremy Corbyn and Yasmin Qureshi gave powerful speeches, and I will, tomorrow, be posting the full transcript of the debate, which makes an unassailable case for Shaker’s immediate release.

On the day, however, the government — via Alistair Burt, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs — was unable to provide assurances that ministers would be able to secure Shaker’s release. Mr. Burt wheeled out the usual claim that “It is the long-standing policy of the Government that we should seek the release and return of those UK nationals and former legal residents who have been held at Guantánamo Bay and, in so doing, assist the US Administration in their efforts to close the detention facility.” However, he also noted that “any decision regarding Mr Aamer’s release ultimately remains in the hands of the United States Government.”

Campaigners — myself included — believe that if the pressure from the UK was high-level enough, President Obama would not only respond, but would also be able to use the release of Shaker to break the deadlock at the prison. Since President Obama banned the release of any cleared Yemenis (who make up two-thirds of the cleared prisoners) in January 2010, following a failed bomb plot hatched in Yemen, and lawmakers imposed restrictions on the release of prisoners in the National Defense Authorization Acts at the end of 2011 and 2012, no cleared prisoners have been released, and the handful of men who have left the prison either had their release ordered many years ago by a US court, or cut plea deals in the trials by military commissions — or left in coffins.

While campaigners for Shaker Aamer await news of a follow-up to yesterday’s debate — a motion in the House of Commons –  we will, of course, continue to work to exert pressure on the British and American governments to secure Shaker Aamer’s release, with the particular aim of demonstrating to President Obama that the release of Shaker Aamer, to a safe and friendly government and America’s staunchest ally, is the best way forward — because he knows he needs to make significant progress towards closing Guantánamo before he leaves office, or will otherwise be remembered as the President who failed to keep his promise to deal with the abomination he inherited from George W. Bush.

Otherwise, the road to his Presidential retirement will be strewn with the coffins of men held in indefinite detention, without charge or trial, who died in the tomb that Guantánamo has now become, and as men die and the world averts its eyes, the British government’s protestations will seem increasingly hollow.

Shaker Aamer should be on a plane home tomorrow — and he can be, if the political will can be found, on both sides of the Atlantic, to make it happen.

As I explained in an article a few days ago:

Please support Shaker Aamer if you can. This injustice must be brought to an end — before Shaker dies, and before any of the other prisoners die. President Obama has 86 men that he needs to release immediately, and Shaker is only one of them, but for those in the UK who are opposed to the existence of Guantánamo, putting pressure on the British government is a process that can achieve the desired result if we continue to attract support for Shaker. As well as signing the international petition, please write urgent emails calling for the return of Shaker Aamer from Guantánamo to foreign secretary William Hague and to Alistair Burt, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office.

Andy Worthington is 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. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed — and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr (my photos) and YouTube. Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in April 2012, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and please also consider joining the “Close Guantánamo campaign”, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

“It is Indisputable that the United States Engaged in Torture”: So When Do the Prosecutions Begin?

[image error]Future of Freedom Foundation.

Photos: A Bright Morning on Chesil Beach in Dorset

A Bright Morning on Chesil Beach in Dorset, a set on Flickr.

From April 9 to 12, 2013, I escaped London for a brief but thoroughly refreshing family holiday in Dorset, on England’s south coast, far enough away from London to escape the greed and pretension that is sadly so dominant in the capital.

In two previous sets, “A Rainy Easter: Chesil Beach in Dorset,” and “Fog, Prison and the Sea: The Isle of Portland at Night,” I posted photos from the first day of the holiday, as the weather veered from overcast to foggy. None of this mattered, as the house we were staying in — a converted former chapel and former fisherman’s store — was a wonderful, inspiring place, as the first few photos in this set hopefully show, and we were, in any case, staying somewhere that was enchanting whatever the weather.

That location was the Isle of Portland, right beside the eastern end of Chesil Beach, the 18-mile long shingle beach that is one of the wonders of the English shoreline, and the combination of the beach, the sea (mostly violent, but sometimes calm), the changing sky and the cliffs along the shore was so engrossing that we could easily have stayed for far longer than four days if holidays were fantasies and not just short breaks to heal ourselves of the stresses and strains of modern life.

On the morning of the second day, when most of these photos were taken, the weather was radiant, and although it had changed within a few hours, as the clouds and the rain returned, I hope to have captured something of the joys of a bright spring morning on Chesil Beach. I certainly found that it left a deep impression on me, and I would love to return in the not too distant future.

I have three more sets of photos to publish from this trip, although I am also aware that it has been some time since I have published anything from my ongoing project to photograph the whole of London by bike — to which I am constantly adding photos, so that my archive now contains around 10,000 unpublished photos. I also have other sets that I’d like to make available from earlier in the year — one from Brighton, and eleven from New York and Washington D.C., when I visited the US to campaign for the closure of Guantánamo on the 11th anniversary of the opening of the prison.

I hope you will stay with me on these various journeys, but for now I hope that you’re enjoying this break in Dorset.

Andy Worthington is 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. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed — and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr (my photos) and YouTube. Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in April 2012, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and please also consider joining the “Close Guantánamo campaign”, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.