Andy Worthington's Blog, page 158

“Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo”: Amnesty Screening in Lewes with Andy Worthington, Omar Deghayes, Caroline Lucas and Norman Baker, October 21, 2012

[image error]On Sunday October 21, 2012, almost three years since it first premiered in London, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo,” the documentary film I co-directed with Polly Nash, is being screened by Lewes Amnesty International Group, in a high-profile event that involves a panel discussion after the screening with myself, former Guantánamo prisoner Omar Deghayes, Caroline Lucas, the Green MP for Brighton Pavilion, and Norman Baker, the Liberal Democrat MP for Lewes. The event is at All Saints Community Centre, on Friars Walk in Lewes, and begins at 7 pm. Entry is free.

Although this was planned many months ago, the timing is particularly apt, because  it was recently confirmed publicly, for the first time ever, that Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo, whose story features in the film, was by President Obama’s interagency Guantánamo Review Task Force, which consisted of officials and lawyers from the relevant government departments and the intelligence agencies.

Anecdotally, it has been known since 2007 that Shaker was cleared for release — at the time under President  Bush — and also that he was cleared under Obama, but such is the secrecy imposed on Guantánamo, and on lawyers for the prisoners, that his legal team were not allowed to speak about it until a month ago, when, unexpectedly, the US Justice Department, for the first time, , as part of a court case — a list that featured Shaker.

In campaigning for Shaker Aamer’s release, his lawyers, his family and his supporters have come up with various approaches, which we have all been publicising to the best of our ability — a petition to the British government (for which only British citizens and residents are eligible) calling for his immediate return to the UK, for which 100,000 signatures are sought by April 2013, to be eligible for a Parliamentary debate, and an international petition, via the Care 2 petition site, to be delivered to both the US and the UK governments, for which 10,000 signatures are sought.

We will be pushing these petitions on Sunday evening, of course, but I also hope that Caroline Lucas and Norman Baker have some ideas about how we can confront David Cameron, Theresa May and William Hague to demand Shaker’s immediate return, as there are no conceivable excuses to prevent him from being released, to be reunited with his British wife and his four British children, the youngest of whom was born after his capture nearly eleven years ago.

The urgent need for Shaker’s return is not just because — as with the 85 other cleared prisoners — holding men cleared for release makes a mockery of all pretence that there is such a thing as justice at Guantánamo, but also because, as I explained last week in an exclusive article based on notes from a meeting with Ramzi Kassem, one of his lawyers, in May this year, Shaker is held in isolation, as he has been for much of his time at Guantánamo, and is abused every day, by the team of guards who punish all rule-breaking with violence, for protesting about the conditions of his detention, which he does by refusing to return to his cell after his brief daily period of recreation.

As he explained to Ramzi Kassem, and as I described it in my article:

[W]hen a delegation of senior officials in the Obama administration met with him three years ago, he reacted negatively when they said that they “wanted to ensure his comfort,” telling them, “This isn’t comfort to me. It’s about freedom and justice!”

Freedom and justice, indeed. On Sunday we’ll be talking about both, and hoping that we can exert enough pressure on two recalcitrant government to finally bring Shaker Aamer’s long and horribly unjust ordeal to an end.

About the film

“‘Outside the Law’ is a powerful film that has helped ensure that Guantánamo and the men unlawfully held there have not been forgotten.”

Kate Allen, Director, Amnesty International UK

“[T]his is a strong movie examining the imprisonment and subsequent torture of those falsely accused of anti-American conspiracy.”

Joe Burnham, Time Out

As featured on  Democracy Now! ,  ABC News  and  Truthout . Buy the DVD  here  (£10 + £2 postage in the UK, and worldwide) or  here  if in the US ($10 post free).

“Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” is a documentary film, directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, telling the story of Guantánamo (and including sections on extraordinary rendition and secret prisons) with a particular focus on how the Bush administration turned its back on domestic and international laws, how prisoners were rounded up in Afghanistan and Pakistan without adequate screening (and often for bounty payments), and why some of these men may have been in Afghanistan or Pakistan for reasons unconnected with militancy or terrorism (as missionaries or humanitarian aid workers, for example).

The film is based around interviews with former prisoners (Moazzam Begg and, in his first major interview, Omar Deghayes, who was released in December 2007), lawyers for the prisoners (Clive Stafford Smith in the UK and Tom Wilner in the US), and journalist and author Andy Worthington, and also includes appearances from Guantánamo’s former Muslim chaplain James Yee, Shakeel Begg, a London-based Imam, and the British human rights lawyer Gareth Peirce.

Focusing on the stories of three particular prisoners – Shaker Aamer (who is still held, despite being cleared for release), Binyam Mohamed (who was released in February 2009) and Omar Deghayes — “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” provides a powerful rebuke to those who believe that Guantánamo holds “the worst of the worst” and that the Bush administration was justified in responding to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 by holding men neither as prisoners of war, protected by the Geneva Conventions, nor as criminal suspects with habeas corpus rights, but as “illegal enemy combatants” with no rights whatsoever.

For further information, interviews, or to inquire about broadcasting, distributing or showing “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo,” please contact Andy Worthington or Polly Nash, and please see below for the first five minutes of the film:

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, Digg, 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 new “Close Guantánamo campaign,” and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

Beautiful Dereliction: Photos of the Thames Shoreline by Convoys Wharf, Deptford

Beautiful Dereliction: The Thames Shoreline by Convoys Wharf, Deptford, a set on Flickr.

Regular readers might recall that, three weeks ago, I posted a set of photos of Deptford, the lively, historically important and frequently maligned area of south east London, between Greenwich and Rotherhithe along the River Thames, and also reaching inland up the River Ravensbourne (which is known, as it nears the Thames, as Deptford Creek). The set was entitled, “Deptford: A Life By The River Thames,” and in it I had the opportunity to discuss Convoys Wharf, a vast, derelict riverside site (40 acres, or 16 hectares) of huge historic importance, which, for the last ten years, has seen developers queuing up to turn it into some kind of inappropriate high-rise housing development for bankers and international investors, intended to include over 3,500 new homes for 9,000 people with the money required to buy into a project that is estimated to cost a billion pounds.

In that set, I also included a handful of photos from the shoreline in front of Convoys Wharf, where there is a listed pier, incorporated in the plans for the site, but only to be tarted up as though it were new , and — as has already been proposed — to serve as the location for a ferry to Canary Wharf, where many of those who would live in Convoys Wharf would, presumably, be working.

The problems with the Convoys Wharf plans, as I outline below, involve: 1) their lack of concern for the area’s historical significance; 2) the lack of affordable housing for people with more of a claim to the area (established residents of Deptford, for example); 3) the outrageous height of the towers; 4) the inability of the area to incorporate a huge increase in traffic; and 5) the cleansing of this stretch of the riverside of its wonderful desolate charm.

On a more personal basis, I would like to see the site redeveloped to revolve around its significant maritime history, and encourage those interested in this to see the local campaign here on the “Deptford Is” website, and also the new “Build the Lenox” campaign, which is calling for a replica of the Restoration warship Lenox to be built in the dockyard where she was originally constructed. Another campaign, “Sayes Court Garden,” aims to restore the writer, gardener and diarist John Evelyn’s garden at Sayes Court, which occupies part of the Convoys Wharf site, and which, as the organisers state, “was one of the most famous and revolutionary gardens of its time.”

For myself, I’d also rather have the site given over only to low-rise social housing (once the historical importance of the site has been recognised and celebrated), because I’m sick of London’s grossly distorted housing market, with high-rise glass and steel towers and other “luxury” developments rising up everywhere, funded by the same banks who crashed the global economy in 2008. Bailed out by taxpayers and by quantitative easing, they are now back investing in the London property bubble, building properties designed to appeal either to the very richest members of society, or to the foreign investors who are constantly being encouraged to buy up British property — and London property in particular.

Primarily, though, what I love about Convoys Wharf is the beautiful dereliction — and desolation — of the shoreline in front of Convoys Wharf, where there is nothing but the weathered pier, the huge river walls, pebbles, stones, the remains of the wharf’s industrial history, the detritus of the Thames and the sounds of the river too — the gulls, the lapping tide, and the wind rattling through the pier. It may be that I’m an old school Romantic, drawn to the wilderness and to places of emotional resonance in which chaos and nature are more attractive than order and places fashioned by man, but I know that I’m not alone in this, even if greed is still the only game in town.

Strictly speaking, of course, Convoys Wharf is a decaying, abandoned place rather than a wilderness, but my appreciation of it is the same, especially as almost every other stretch of shoreline in inner city London that can be developed has been — their history, mystery and poetry wiped out, and replaced with marketable “river views,” and, in many cases, a ferry or otter transport connections to Canary Wharf and the City of London.

Below, for further information, is the story of Convoys Wharf, from 1513 to the present day.

Visible here and here in its current derelict state, Convoys Wharf was the site of Deptford Dockyard (also known as the King’s Yard), which was the first of the Royal Dockyards, established in 1513 under King Henry VIII to build ships for the Royal Navy. As the Evening Standard explained in October 2011, “It was the harbour to royal yachts, where Francis Drake was knighted aboard the Golden Hinde in 1581, and where Elizabeth I’s Spanish Armada-defeating fleet was built. It is a place of astonishing, nationally important historical significance.”

After its glory days under the Tudors, the dockyard still found its place in the history books — in 1768, for example, when Captain James Cook set sail for Australia. The final ship built on the site was the HMS Druid, a screw corvette, which was launched on March 13, 1869. The docks continued as a victualling yard making and storing food, drink, clothing and furniture for the Navy until 1961, when they closed down, and the site remained abandoned until 1980, when it was bought by Rupert Murdoch’s News International, and was used until 2000 for the import of paper for newsprint from Finland.

In 2002, News International applied to Lewisham Council for planning permission for 3,500 homes on the site, and commissioned Richard Rodgers to produce a masterplan, which can be seen here (and also in the photo to the left — click to enlarge). In 2005, NI sold the site to Hutchison Whampoa and Cheung Kong Holdings, companies based in Hong Kong, but seven years later — and with just one year to go until the 500th anniversary of the original Royal Dockyard — it is unclear when, if ever, the £1 billion scheme — intended to include 3,541 residential units for 9,000 people — will go ahead. One particular problem for the developers involves the designation of the site as a “protected wharf,” whereby half of it is supposed to be safeguarded for freight use, following a decision to protect London’s remaining freight wharves that was taken by the last Tory government in 1997 (for information about Convoys Wharf’s safeguarded wharf status, see pages 59-63 of this GLA report). Perhaps even more troubling for the developers, however, is the opposition of numerous respectable organisations and protest groups.

Insufficient regard for the site’s historical importance

In a letter to Lewisham Council in November 2011, for example, English Heritage complained about the developers’ refusal to acknowledge sufficiently the site’s history, stating that they were “particularly disappointed that the opportunity to re-engage with the site’s outstanding historic significance has not been grasped.” As the East London Lines blog explained, “They say the importance of the remaining features of the wharf, including the large basin that connects the river and a Victorian warehouse, are sidelined, and that the history of the former Royal Dockyard, built by Henry VIII, was not considered in the creative process.” A spokesperson said, “The form and scale as currently proposed in this application fails to take account of the context and location. The current approach does not offer a legible link with the river and the former activity of the site.” In addition, in a letter to Hutchison Whampoa, Lewisham Council’s head of planning pointed out that the plans are “not, by a long way, a sufficient response to the history of the site and associated areas of historical significance.”

Lack of affordable housing

Another problem with the planned development is its lack of affordable housing. As the East London Lines blog reported in November 2011, of the 3,541 residential units in total, only 500, or 14 per cent, are designated as “affordable.” As the blog explained, “Campaigners say that this falls far short of Lewisham Council’s own target of 50 per cent total affordable homes on new developments in the borough, and fails to meet local housing needs.” Julian Kingston of “Deptford Is” said, “There is not enough housing provided for local people’s needs. I think it shows the colour and character of the current development and sums up what the developers are all about. Personally, I would like to see different uses of the site — with more space dedicated to employment and less housing overall, but with a higher proportion that is affordable.”

The disproportionate height of the towers

Another major problem is the height of the towers. As the Crossfields blog explained in September 2011, “There are three towers proposed for Convoys Wharf — Tower A is 148m tall with 46 storeys, Tower D is 124m with 38 storeys, and Tower I is 106m with 32 storeys.” In addition, some of the buildings around the towers are planed to be as high as 60m.” In comparison, the Aragon Tower on the Pepys Estate nearby, which dominates the skyline currently, is 92m tall. In English Heritage’s complaint in November 2011, they also criticised the plans, expressing their opposition to “proposals to include three towers of over thirty storeys, which would obscure the panoramic view from Greenwich Park,” as well as the “rectilinear, grid-like planning,” and a spokesperson said, “We believe the development should have a relationship with the local scale of Deptford and Greenwich and not to the metropolitan scale of, for example, the City or Canary Wharf.” See the Deptford Dame blog for an excellent article incorporating various views of what the development would look like from Greenwich, Deptford High Street, the Isle of Dogs and elsewhere.

Traffic problems

There are understandable concerns that Deptford’s transport infrastructure will be unable to cope with the cars owned by 3,500 new residents. As the Deptford Dame blog explained after the latest public consultation in July 2012, “Around 1,800 car parking spaces are proposed, and this has a number of implications for the development and its neighbouring estates. Firstly the fact that those cars have to get in and out of Convoys Wharf, and local roads are ill-equipped to allow this. Moreover, in excess of 300 spaces are proposed for non-residential use.”

In July, the developers held a public consultation regarding their plans, which the “Deptford Is” campaign analysed in detail here. There was supposed to be a follow-up in September, but that didn’t happen, although I will provide updates if there is any further information. The latest news from the “Deptford Is” campaign is here.

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, Digg, 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 new “Close Guantánamo campaign,” and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

Video: Andy Worthington Asks Supporters to Sign UK Petition Calling for the Release of Shaker Aamer from Guantánamo

Sign the petition for Shaker Aamer! (UK only — an international petition is here)

Last week, I recorded a brief video message of support for Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo, urging everyone who cares about Shaker’s plight to sign the petition to the British government calling for his immediate return to the UK. As the petition states, “The Foreign Secretary and the Foreign Office must undertake urgent new initiatives to achieve the immediate transfer of Shaker Aamer to the UK from continuing indefinite detention in Guantánamo Bay.”

Due to concerted efforts by Shaker’s many supporters, the petition has secured thousands of signatures in the last week, and I hope that this video helps, as, I hope, my exclusive report last week, “A Demand for ‘Freedom and Justice’ from Shaker Aamer in Guantánamo,” was also useful. 100,000 signatures are needed by April 2013, for his case to be eligible for Parliamentary debate.

The message is below, and please feel free to circulate it as widely as possible:

As I explained in that article — and as I explain in my video — Shaker is still suffering, held in isolation and abused every day, even though it was officially revealed a month ago that he was cleared for release three years ago, on a list of 55 prisoners who have been cleared for release but still held, which was provided by the US government in a court case.

This is in addition to him being told in 2007, under George W. Bush, that the US authorities no longer wanted to hold him, but although his status has been known about for all this time, the inclusion of Shaker’s name on the list was the first time ever that the US government has acknowledged officially that Shaker is free to leave.

The ball, then, is in the British government’s court, and we should all be asking why he is not already back in London with his wife and children, and why, given that he is not, he will not be on a plane back home tomorrow?

The time for excuses is long gone. Nearly eleven years since Shaker was first picked up and sold by bounty hunters in Afghanistan, he must be freed immediately. For years, those of us following his case have maintained that he continues to be held because, as an eloquent man and a principled defender of the prisoners’ rights, he is someone who knows too much about the horrors that have occurred, and is unlikely to stay quiet about what he knows. That has never been a good reason for not releasing him, as it implies that what he knows is evidence of crimes by senior government officials on both sides of the Atlantic, and the longer he remains detained, now that his status as a prisoner cleared for release is known, the more those suspicions will grow — that he is being sacrificed so politicians past and present can avoid having to answer for their crimes.

Enough is enough! Bring Shaker Aamer home now!

Note: I recorded the video for the Save Shaker Aamer campaign, and would like to thank Emraj Ali and Ahtisham Aziz of Blackstone Media, who made the video.

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, Digg, 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 new “Close Guantánamo campaign,” and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

Kick This Government Out! March for “A Future That Works” in London on October 20

[image error]For everyone sickened and enraged by the lies, distortions, malevolence and idiocy emanating from the Tory-led government, Saturday’s march and rally in central London, “A Future That Works,” is an important opportunity for us to show our anger and our indignation at how our country is being wrecked, and our people punished, for other people’s crimes — the near-fatal crashing of the global economy in 2008, through bankers’ greed on a mind-boggling scale, aided and abetted by the politicians with their mania for deregulation, and the alleged economist experts who almost all failed to notice what was going on.

The resultant bailouts for the banks, and the job losses and the subsequent drop in tax revenues played a key role in triggering the subsequent and ongoing recession  — unless you’re one of David Cameron’s Tories, in which case it created an opportunity to use the crisis as an excuse for remaking the country as a savage dystopia for all but the rich and super-rich, who continue to enjoy their ill-gotten gains as much as they did before the bankers crashed the world four years ago.

We are suffering from a collision of bankrupt ideologies, the first being the false notion that savage austerity cuts will somehow stimulate the economy, when all the evidence from history — and I mean all of it — shows that all austerity creates is an economic death spiral, as the so-called experts of the IMF are finally beginning to realise. Just last week, as Paul Mason explained for the BBC, IMF boss Christine Lagarde “called for a slowdown in the austerity measures being implemented across the world, including in Greece” after Chief Economist Olivier Blanchard “admitted the Fund’s calculations of the impact of austerity had been seriously wrong.”

The second bankrupt ideology is the equally false notion that a functional society can be maintained if the state provision of services is eradicated, leaving private sector opportunists to run almost every aspect of our lives. For the Tories, this particularly means our hospitals (the privatisation of the NHS, already underway) and our schools (via Michael Gove’s plans, should the Tories happen to secure a second term in office through some collective madness) — as well as almost everything else that hasn’t been privatised over the last 30 years, apart from the salaries of the politicians themselves (still to be paid for by taxpayers), and, presumably, a few aspects of the courts, the military and the police, although even those aren’t sacred, as was revealed in plans for the police just a few months ago.

The result will be to turn the clock back to the 18th century at the very latest, which no doubt suits the Etonians who have inveigled their way into Downing Street, and their crooked corporate chums, international bankers and global tax avoiders, but it is a disaster for the rest of us, as has become increasingly apparent over the last two years and five months, since these clowns first seized the reins of power through their wretched coalition with the Liberal Democrats. Under Nick Clegg, the Lib Dems, it transpired, were so hungry for power that they were prepared to sacrifice everything that they claimed to believe in, just to play second fiddle to the Tories.

The march and rally on Saturday (October 20), which is organised by the TUC, begins with people assembling along Victoria Embankment on the north bank of the River Thames from 11am onwards, setting off at noon for Hyde Park, where there will be speakers and other events until 4 pm, when the event ends. The organisers have stated, “We are approaching a mix of trades unionists and public figures to speak about how austerity isn’t working, the need to invest in jobs and growth and to defend quality public services.”

Although “A Future That Works” is organised by the TUC, the umbrella organisation representing most of Britain’s 6.4 million unionised workers, it also has the support of numerous other organisations, as is appropriate, because no part of British society is unaffected by the government’s cuts, apart from the rich and the super-rich. I’m disappointed, frankly, that the TUC waited a year and a half to follow up on the “March for the Alternative” in March 2011, when half a million people turned up, and that the unions spent most of the intervening 18 months obsessing about their pensions, when the government’s policies are so evidently an assault on all but the most wealthy — not just unionised workers, and especially the poorly paid, but also those unable to join unions, schoolchildren, students, the old, the ill, the homeless, the unemployed and the disabled.

The scale of the government’s assault on the people of Britain is so huge that everyone affected should have been meeting on a regular basis to protest and show solidarity with each other — as well as to network and focus on future campaigning — several times a year rather than this being the second major protest in the government’s lamentable 29-month history.

That said, it is now time to do what we can to make Saturday’s march and rally into a howl of anger and disgust that the government cannot ignore. Please check out the website for further information, follow “A Future That Works” on Facebook and Twitter. Also please check out the excellent False Economy website, which has been at the forefront of those campaigning against the cuts since the coalition government was formed (its motto is, “Why cuts are the wrong cure”), and also check out the TUC’s “Going to Work” website, whose aim is “to unite people who want to see greater fairness and more common sense in the way we work for our economy, and the ways our economy works for us.”

And finally, for now, if you’re making a placard or banner for the march and rally on Saturday, check out the examples made by those protesting on the “Make the March” website, and feel free to add your own.

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, Digg, 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 new “Close Guantánamo campaign,” and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

Photos of Limehouse, Shadwell and Wapping: Art, History and the Summer Sun

Limehouse, Shadwell and Wapping: Art, History and the Summer Sun, a set on Flickr.

This is the 44th set of photos in my ongoing project to photograph the whole of London by bike, and is the second set recording a journey I made, one sunny Sunday in July, with my wife and son from our home in south east London, through the Greenwich Foot Tunnel, up the western shore of the Isle of Dogs, which is infested with high-rise housing developments, and on to Limehouse, Shadwell and Wapping. Here the great wharves that dealt with the imports of Britain’s global trade during the heyday of Empire, and of the London docks, were converted into apartments during the Docklands development programme in the 1980s and 1990s. The first set of photos is here.

Money doesn’t scream, the way it does in Canary Wharf, in the narrow strips of former wharves in Limehouse, Shadwell and Wapping, although obviously most of the wharf living is aimed squarely at the rich, and elements of this are obvious — the matt grey Aston Martin that, for instance, almost ran me over at one point, driven by some young idiot who obviously believed the words of Formula 1 driver Sebastian Vettel: “Matte cars are cool, they come across as a bit aggressive.”

This second set of photos focuses primarily on Wapping, and the very attractive Wapping Project, an art gallery and restaurant in a former power station, where a lovely project in a greenhouse in the garden — possibly the hottest place in London on that particular day — involved In the Dark, enthusiasts for spoken word recordings, melting in the heat and trying to prevent their stock from melting too. They were a very friendly group of people, and a refreshing contrast to the area’s sports car drivers.

On the way back, we stopped in at another lovely place that deserves the support of everyone passing by — The Space on Westferry Road in Millwall, on the Isle of Dogs,  a performing arts and community centre based in a converted church, which also serves food and drink.

Coming up next is another summer set, from Deptford, close to home and close to my heart in south east London, and I’ll then begin posting some of the 170 other photo sets I’ve been amassing since returning from my family holiday in Italy at the end of August. Thanks for your interest in my work!

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, Digg, 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 new “Close Guantánamo campaign,” and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

America’s Extradition Problem

Not content with having the largest domestic prison population in the world, both in numbers and as a percentage of the total population, the US also imports prisoners from other countries, at vast expense.

Last week, five men were extradited to the US from the UK to face charges relating to their alleged involvement with terrorism. The men’s extradition was supposed to have been made into a straightforward matter by the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who, in 2003, approved the US-UK Extradition Treaty, which purportedly allows prisoners to be extradited without the need for any evidence to be provided.

However, there have been sustained legal challenges to the treaty, with the result that, of the five men extradited last week, two British nationals, Babar Ahmad and Talha Ahsan, had been held without charge or trial in the UK for eight and six years respectively, and two foreign nationals, Adel Abdel Bary and Khaled al-Fawwaz, had been held without charge or trial since 1998, as their lawyers tried to prevent their extradition. The fifth man, Abu Hamza al-Masri, was the only one to have been imprisoned in the UK after a trial. Convicted in 2006, he was given a seven-year sentence.

On arrival in the US last Friday, all five men were jailed — Babar Ahmad and Talha Ahsan in Connecticut, and the others in New York. All appeared in front of judges on Saturday where they pleaded not guilty to the charges against them, and the New York prisoners were told that their trials will take place next year.

The problem, as politicians, lawyers and campaigners in the UK have tried for years to establish is that there are not necessarily compelling reasons for the men to have been extradited, because of fundamental weaknesses in the treaty. In June 2011, the UK Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights said in a report that safeguards in US cases were “inadequate,” and, as the BBC explained, also said that “more evidence was needed to justify requests and judges should be able to refuse them if they were not in the ‘interests of justice.’”

The committee also called for the treaty to be “urgently renegotiated,” to “enable the government to refuse extradition requests if UK prosecutors have decided against beginning proceedings at home,” as the BBC put it, and added that extradition requests “should only be considered if the US authorities provide prima facie evidence that the suspect has a case to answer to prevent people being sent to face trial abroad on ‘speculative charges.’”

None of the changes have taken place, however, leaving Babar Ahmad and Talha Ahsan, in particular, in a distressing situation — stuck in the US, where the overwhelming majority of court cases involving Muslims and alleged terrorist activities end in convictions. Their alleged crime involves running a website that supported Muslim freedom fighters in Chechnya and elsewhere, but although the site was hosted in the UK, one of the servers was apparently located in the US.

Perhaps new evidence will surface to justify these men’s long ordeal, but as it stands at present, a former employee of a London university, who worked in IT (Ahmad) and a talented poet and scholar with Asberger’s (Ahsan) face an unfair trial and the prospect of a lengthy sentence in isolation in a Supermax prison for an alleged crime that, it appears, was not something for which they could have been prosecuted in the UK.

As for the other men, it is also uncertain whether their extradition will prove to have been the best way to proceed in the search for justice. Abu Hamza, a caricature of a firebrand Islamist preacher, who lost both his hands in Afghanistan during the time of the Soviet occupation, was sentenced in the UK for “soliciting murder,” and for “intent to stir up racial hatred,” but, as Alun Jones QC, who represented him in his extradition proceedings, asked in the Independent on Wednesday, “Why was Abu Hamza extradited to the US for crimes he is alleged to have committed in this country?”

Jones proceeded to explain:

He is accused on a single US indictment of three groups of crimes, committed while in London. By far the most serious is an allegation of directing, via satellite phone, the kidnap of Western hostages in Yemen in 1999. In a shoot-out, four of the hostages were killed, three of them Britons, one Australian. One American was wounded. The UK police conducted a detailed investigation. The second group is a charge that Abu Hamza conspired to organise a terrorist training camp in Oregon preparatory to waging jihad in Afghanistan in 1999 to 2000. The third involved assistance in providing money and weapons to the Taliban in furtherance of terrorism in Afghanistan in 2000 and 2001.

Jones concluded, “If persons are accused of committing serious international crimes in or from this country, we should normally try them here. That is what independent and robust criminal justice systems do.”

It is hard to disagree with Alun Jones’ conclusion. Both of the other extradited men, Adel Abdel Bary, an Egyptian, and Khaled al-Fawwaz, a Saudi, are accused of being involved with Al-Qaeda’s deadly attacks on US embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam in August 1998, for which a case can be made that a trial in the US is appropriate. Nevertheless, their alleged involvement in Osama bin Laden’s plans also took place in the UK.

In some quarters, the eventual extradition of these five men has been regarded as a victory. After years of legal challenges, the European Court of Human Rights refused a last-ditch appeal, in which lawyers for the men had argued that, if convicted, the solitary confinement regime in the Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado, where they would be held, perhaps for up to 50 years, would amount to torture or inhumane and degrading treatment.

The Court disagreed, even though, as the Guardian noted, “The regime is designed to prevent all physical contact between an inmate and others and to minimize social interaction with staff,” adding, “For those in solitary confinement, contact with staff could be as little as one minute a day,” and also noting that inmates “have only 10 hours a week of recreation time outside their cells.”

The judges’ decision, however, turned on information provided by a representative of the prison, who stated that prisoners “could have five social visits a month with no limit on their correspondence with their families,” and added that they “have in-cell access to 50 television channels and seven radio stations, a copy of USA Today and can speak to inmates in the next cells using the ventilation system as a voice conduit.”

I am not alone in concluding that the almost total denial of human contact to prisoners, over the course of decades, is actually an insidious form of torture, and it is, I believe, deeply unfortunate that the European judges appear to have provided some sort of approval for the inhumane conditions in which human beings are treated in America’s Supermax prisons.

Moreover, as the Guardian also explained, the problems are not just with the post-conviction conditions. As the US filmmaker Sadhbh Walshe explained, the men’s “chances of getting a fair trial will also be compromised by the pre-trial conditions in which they are likely to be held” — namely, Special Administrative Measures (SAMs), initially introduced by the federal government in 1996 “to deal with certain gang leaders who had demonstrated substantial risk that their ‘communication or contact with persons could result in the death or serious bodily injury to persons,’” but now routinely applied to “terror suspects.”

Under SAMS, as Walshe explained, pre-trial defendants “are not only held in the kind of extreme isolation that is routine in facilities like ADX Florence,” but are “also subjected to extra measures of isolation,” ensuring that “they are completely cut off from the outside world and that the outside world is cut off from them.”

As she proceeded to explain:

A defendant placed under SAMS is usually only allowed to communicate with his immediate family (parents, siblings, spouse and children) and his attorney. Letters to and from his approved family members can take up to six months to be cleared. Such prisoners cannot write to or receive visits from anyone else: friends, extended family or supporters; and they can have absolutely no contact with the media. In addition to the gag that is placed on these defendants, the small number of people with whom they are allowed to have contact are also gagged, as they, too, are bound to abide by the SAMS.

In conclusion, based on all the information above, I fail to see how the vast expense of bringing these five men from the UK to the US is either good value for money, or justifiable in terms of justice being done. As with everything related to terrorism since the 9/11 attacks, it seems, instead, that the US-UK Extradition Treaty is merely adding new injustices to those inflicted in US courts on US citizens accused of offences purportedly related to terrorism, and those inflicted with no acceptable process at all on .

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, Digg, 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 new “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.

Sunny Sunday: Photos of the Isle of Dogs and Canary Wharf

Sunny Sunday: The Isle of Dogs and Canary Wharf, a set on Flickr.

In my quest to catch up on posting some of the photos that I didn’t manage to post before my family holiday in Italy in August, this set and another to follow record a glorious Sunday in July when, with my family, I cycled from our home in Brockley, in south east London, down to Greenwich, through the Greenwich Foot Tunnel and along the western shore of the Isle of Dogs to Limehouse, and then on to Wapping, where our objective was to visit the Wapping Project, an art gallery and restaurant housed in Wapping Hydraulic Power Station, which was built in 1890 and closed in 1977.

This is the 43rd set of photos in my ongoing project to photograph the whole of London by bike, which is progressing extremely well, despite my inability to post the results to keep up with my photographic journeys, as I have 160 sets still to post, with more on the way on an almost daily basis. Come rain or shine, I am out on my bike, having discovered, after my illness last year, when I gave up smoking after 29 years, that being healthy, and relentlessly exploring this fascinating and sometimes infuriating city I live in, by bike, is the perfect antidote to years of imperilling my health by smoking like a madman and working obsessively on Guantánamo. Not that I’ve given up on Guantánamo, of course, as I still write regularly about the ongoing horrors of indefinite detention for the men still held there, and, just this week, published an exclusive article based on notes from a lawyer’s meeting with Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, which Shaker wanted to be made available to me.

I also continue to chronicle and resist the barbarous and ideologically motivated “age of austerity” imposed by the Tory-led coalition government, which, outrageously, is destroying the very fabric of the British state by making the poor, the ill, the unemployed and the disabled pay for the crimes committed by bankers and the corporate world, with the support of politicians, while shielding the guilty. This narrative often surfaces in my travels around London, as I have begun to notice the increase in poverty, although it is most readily apparent in the numerous high-profile building projects underway, despite the recession that is increasingly making life miserable for ordinary Londoners, in which the corporate interests who have hijacked our world continue to remake the city in cold glass and steel. Everywhere across London, projects costing hundreds of millions of pounds are underway, which, shockingly, are financed by the banks, as a result of the money pumped into their coffers by taxpayers, and used not to support small businesses and entrepreneurs but to help consortiums of property developers and speculators to create housing that is unaffordable for ordinary working people, and even for those who are paid well above average wages.

This set of photos doesn’t explicitly address these problems, although it is an undercurrent, as it always is when Canary Wharf and the high-rise riverside developments on the Isle of Dogs are involved, where the minimum rent for a one-bedroom property is £300 a week, and is generally much more than that. Mainly, however, this set records some details missing from my earlier photos from the Isle of Dogs and in and around Canary Wharf, and the next set does the same for Limehouse and Wapping, where the trend has been more for the renovation of wharves rather than the building of new apartment blocks, and where my family and I also succeeded in locating and visiting the Wapping Project.

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, Digg, 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 new “Close Guantánamo campaign,” and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

Call Time on This Wretched Government and Its Assault on the Disabled

Please, please, please sign and promote the petition,  initiated by Pat Onions and other disabled activists, calling for the British government to “stop and review the cuts to benefits and services which are falling disproportionately on disabled people, their carers and families.” The petition needs to reach 100,000 signatures by November 1 to be eligible for Parliamentary debate.

One month ago, the Paralympic Games came to an end, and there were hopes that, after two weeks in which disabled people had been the focus of the media and the British people, and had performed spectacularly well, the time might be ripe for those fortunate enough not to be physically or mentally disabled to realise that they were being lied to by their government, and that the Tories’ wretched assault on disabled people as cheats and scroungers was both cruel and deeply unfair.

In a cynical attempt to cut expenditure on welfare, the government has embarked upon a particularly horrific assault on the mentally and/or physically disabled through the Work Capability Assessment (WCA), administered by the French-based multinational company Atos Healthcare, and designed to find disabled people fit for work, even when, as in a heartbreakingly large number of cases, they are not.

In addition, hundreds of thousands of disabled people will lose between £20 and £131.50 a week when the ­Disability Living Allowance (DLA) that is a crucial part of their support is ­”replaced with the more restrictive ­Personal ­Independence Payments as part of a £2.2billion cost-cutting plan,” as the Sunday Mirror explained last month. As the Mirror also explained, “The DLA currently goes to around 3.2 million people at a cost of £12.6 billion a year. Analysts estimate up to 500,000 disabled people will have their allowance entirely withdrawn over the next four years as ­eligibility criteria is tightened.”

The results of this assault on the disabled are already horrendous. People are treated disdainfully by Atos’s representatives, as they systematically play down their disabilities, and then have their financial support cut. In appeals, over two-thirds of claimants are winning with assistance from sympathetic advisers, but nothing gets the government off their backs. Whether or not those in receipt of financial support have degenerative conditions that will never improve, they, like everyone else, will soon be back on the treadmill of assessments, as Atos and the government again try to prove them fit for work, imposing huge stresses and strains along the way, which have undoubtedly contributed to the rising death toll amongst the disabled.

During the Paralympic Games, what was particularly noticeable was how disabled athletes, while obliged to put up with the breathtaking cynicism of Atos buying itself a role as a sponsor of the Games, were as critical as they could be. At the opening ceremony, for example, athletes reportedly hid their Atos-branded badges, and as the Games wound down, several disabled athletes spoke openly to the Sunday Mirror about their disgust at the government’s position.

Team GB footballer Keryn Seal, who is blind, told the Mirror he “relies on his £70-a-week allowance to get to training.” He explained, “I find it quite incredible that the ­Government can go around handing out medals when away from the Games they are taking the DLA away. It’s all well and good backing disabled sports at the highest level and looking good for the cameras but what they are doing is going to affect hundreds of thousands of disabled people really badly.” Speaking after George Osborne and Theresa May were both booed after presenting medals at the Games, he added, “Some of the reason George ­Osborne and Theresa May were booed was because of the DLA stuff.”

Keryn also said that “he spends £50 a week of the allowance just to get to and from training,” because, like most British athletes, he “receives no Government funding,” and “relies on the DLA to pay for his young children to get to ­playschool.” A father of two, from Exeter, he explained, “I came out of university two years ago with a 2:1 in sports studies but I haven’t worked since. I have applied for loads of jobs and only had four interviews. In many ways training for the Olympics has kept me going and I wouldn’t have been able to do that if I didn’t have the DLA ­payments. I can’t understand why the Government would dream of ­taking this money away from us. It shows a complete lack of ­empathy. Disillusioned, disenchanted and disappointed are all words I would use to describe how I feel about the Government.”

Double amputee Derek Derenalagi, who took part in the discus competition and who lost his legs in a bomb attack in Afghanistan, receives £100 a week in Disability Living Allowance, and told the Mirror that the changes “would have a ­’devastating’ effect on many disabled people.” He explained, “The Paralympics have been huge and people have enjoyed it but when it finishes we are still disabled. I hope the Government will change these decisions as it could be terrible for us.”

He added, “The money really helps with our ­training and everyday life. I spend it on things like my discs which cost £60 to £70, trainers which can be around £60 and physio which is about £70 a time. Not every Paralympian is sponsored and we would hugely struggle without it. We do not get paid like footballers and it really helps us.”

Ben Quilter from Brighton, who won a bronze medal in judo, is partially sighted and receives around £50 a week in Disability Living Allowance. He told the Mirror, “Losing my DLA would affect my general life. There is no doubt about it. I need the money to travel around. For example, a train ticket to London costs about £14. I also need it to buy iPad apps which help me with my disability and allow me to interact with people. I really hope the Government change their mind on this. It’s a real shame as the Paralympics has been so amazing. It is a very important issue.”

These examples — and others reported at the time – should have prompted some deep soul-searching amongst the British people, and especially throughout the mainstream media, but the media refuses to ally itself to causes, which, increasingly, plays into the hands of cynical opportunists like the Tories, who are getting to indulge in class war and the oppression of the weakest in society without much opposition, when really the scale of their crimes deserves a call to arms on a daily basis.

The ordinary people, meanwhile, struggle to find an outlet for their frustrations with politicians, if they are fortunate enough not to have fallen for the Nazi-style slurs on the poor, the weak, the ill, the old, the young, the disabled and students, which the Tories and malignant media barons are constantly encouraging, so that when all the elements of solidarity that survived the years of Thatcher, Major and Blair have been thoroughly eradicated, those in penury will be completely alone, and, as in the most wretched of times, those with nothing still fight each other rather than realising who their real enemies are.

There is hope, of course, as there is always hope. John McDonnell MP has submitted an Early Day Motion against Atos, which has been signed by 111 MPs to date, and which states:

That this House deplores that thousands of sick and disabled constituents are experiencing immense hardship after being deprived of benefits following a work capability assessment carried out by Atos Healthcare under a 100 million a year contract; notes that 40 per cent of appeals are successful but people wait up to six months for them to be heard; deplores that last year 1,100 claimants died while under compulsory work-related activity for benefit and that a number of those found fit for work and left without income have committed or attempted suicide; condemns the International Paralympic Committee’s promotion of Atos as its top sponsor and the sponsorship of the Olympics by Dow Chemical and other corporations responsible for causing death and disability; welcomes the actions taken by disabled people, carers, bereaved relatives and organisations to end this brutality and uphold entitlement to benefits; and applauds the British Medical Association call for the work capability assessment to end immediately and to be replaced with a system that does not cause harm to some of the most vulnerable people in society.

Please urge your MP to sign it, if they haven’t already.

As for what else can be done, please attend the TUC rally, “A Future That Works,” on October 20 in central London and make your voice heard against the dreadful treatment of the disabled, and against all the other ideologically imposed cuts imposed by this most savage of governments. And if you need other persuasive arguments for people to take on the government regarding its treatment of the disabled, then please read the following article from the Guardian by Amelia Gentleman, whose coverage of those affected by the government’s”age of austerity” has been excellent. It concerns Ruth Anim, the severely disabled daughter of Cecelia Anim, the deputy president of the Royal College of Nursing, who “has epilepsy, heart problems, curvature of the spine, severe autism and a mental age of 10,” as well as having no sense of danger, as noted by Sarah Ismail in the Independent yesterday. Along with other coverage, the Guardian article caused such a stir that Atos “apologised to the Anims for the ‘error’ they made in finding Ruth fit for work.”

As Sarah Ismail noted, however, having recently covered the shocking case of Liam Barker, 18 years old, and paralysed since birth, who breathes through a ventilator, but whose parents “had just received a letter informing them that in order to receive Employment Support Allowance, he might have to prove he is unable to work by attending a Work Capability Assessment,” there is “a strong possibility that the Anims would not have received an apology if Cecelia Anim did not have a high profile.”

Moreover, even with Ruth Anim’s victory, she “will be assessed again in two years.”

As Sarah Ismail also explained:

Ruth Anim and Liam Barker may have very different disabilities, but sadly, benefit assessments have placed them in very similar situations. Both are severely disabled. It is clear to anyone who hears their stories that neither will be any more fit for work in two years’ time than they are today.

That’s why assessing either of them again will be a greater waste of government time and taxpayers’ money than simply providing both of them with the benefits they are so clearly genuinely entitled to. This is without taking into consideration the emotional stress that will be caused to them and their parent carers by the process, first of attending assessments and later of appealing against wrong decisions.

When I was trying hard to publicise the case of Liam Barker online two weeks ago, someone suggested that a database should be kept of people who are too severely disabled to ever be fit for work. This is an idea that should be given serious consideration by all relevant government departments.

Because the next severely disabled person who is threatened with, or sent to, a WCA may not have supportive, high profile parents. They may not have the ability to appeal if they are wrongly found fit for work. They may not be able to do anything but suffer in silence.

The database is a great idea, but in the meantime do read Amelia Gentleman’s article if you haven’t already done so. Like Liam Barker’s case — and who knows how many others — it should convince the people of this country to locate their hearts and do all in their power to turf this wretched government out of office immediately.

Get ready for work: what woman who needs constant care was told

By Amelia Gentleman, The Guardian, October 3, 2012

Ruth Anim has learning difficulties, a heart problem and epilepsy. A work capability test by Atos said she should prepare for a job.

Ruth Anim needs constant one-to-one care, has no concept of danger and attends life skills classes to learn practical things like how to make a sandwich or a cup of tea. So it came as a considerable surprise to her mother, Cecilia, that an official assessment of her daughter’s abilities classified her as someone who would be capable of finding work in the near future.

The report contained a number of factual errors, perhaps most remarkably the assessor’s description of the 27-year-old as a “male client”, but more disturbing for Anim was the conclusion of the doctor who carried out the test: “I advise that a return to work could be considered within 12 months.”

Anim says: “For Ruth to go to work is actually totally unimaginable. She can’t even cross the road without someone going with her; she doesn’t know that if a car hits you it will kill you; she has no concept of danger.” Her daughter was born with complex medical needs, learning disabilities, a heart problem and epilepsy. “She is somebody who has a one-to-one carer — is she meant to go to work with her carer?”

As a result of the assessment, Ruth was assigned to a category known as the work related activity group, and required to attend the jobcentre regularly to begin mandatory preparations for going to work.

Cecilia Anim’s amazement at the written report, describing her daughter’s work capability assessment (WCA), the test to determine fitness for work, echoes the shock felt by hundreds of thousands of former claimants of incapacity benefit over the last three years, after undergoing the stringent new computerised test to check their continued eligibility for benefit payments.

Since the test was introduced in 2008 more than 600,000 people have appealed against the assessments; the cost to the state of those appeals has risen from £25m in 2009-10 to £60m in 2011-12. About 38% of those who appeal against an initial fit-for-work finding see that decision overturned on appeal and benefits granted. Welfare rights organisations and charities have voiced consistent unease about the test and the way doctors employed by the private IT firm Atos, which is paid £100m a year by the government to carry out the test, have implemented it.

Last week Labour called for a “fast and radical” overhaul of the system, admitting the policy it introduced when in government was not working.

As deputy president of the Royal College of Nursing, Anim can project her fury about the experience her daughter endured far more powerfully than most individuals going through the system. This awareness has heightened her desire to talk about the “injustice of the process”, to educate people about how inaccurate the assessments can be.

“I am able to fight back, but what about the people who are not able to fight back? It’s causing a lot of problems for a lot of people,” she says. “My daughter’s consultant neurologist was beside himself with fury when I told him. The first question he asked was, ‘Have they done a risk assessment?’”

Ruth’s case is by no means exceptional. Mencap, the charity which supports people with a learning disability, says it has seen countless similarly surprising cases of misclassification of vulnerable clients, many of whom are told they are not eligible for any sickness or disability benefit and must seek work immediately.

The principle underlying the WCA is that a health condition or disability should not automatically be regarded as a barrier to work, and in theory the policy is designed to ensure that support is available to help people find work. Anim says there is nothing she would like more than for her daughter to find a job, just as she would like her to get married and have the kind of life her contemporaries have, but she argues that, given the severity of her daughter’s condition, this approach is not realistic.

The 45-minute examination was chaotic from start to finish, Anim says. Her daughter was extremely anxious and kept asking the doctor if he was going to take a blood test. She refused to sit down and hopped on and off the medical examining couch when the doctor was talking to her. Anim points to a line in the partly computer-generated report which notes “client was able to sit on a chair with a back for 45 minutes”.

“The whole examination was very chaotic and bizarre because she was not co-operating. But in his report he has put that Ruthie sat for 45 minutes. She never sat down for more than three minutes. She was all over the place,” she says. “At one point she went to the tap and washed her hands and started spraying the water everywhere. He raised his voice and said ‘Stop doing that!’ I said no, no, don’t speak to her like that. She’s got learning difficulties; she doesn’t understand.”

A few questions the doctor asked, about her daughter’s condition and her schooling, made Anim doubt his familiarity with the British care system. He noted in his report that her daughter’s speech was normal, although Anim had done most of the speaking. The few questions Ruth managed to respond to were answered inaccurately. “He asked her how old she was and she said 18, despite the fact that she is 27,” she says.

A few months after the medical assessment Ruth was called to an interview at the jobcentre to discuss finding work. She went with her mother, who was aghast when she understood why they had been called in. “I said ‘Are you having a laugh?’” The jobcentre adviser realised very quickly that a mistake had been made. “We sat down, and every question she asked her, Ruth raised her palms as if she didn’t know the answer. She asked ‘What day is it?’; Ruthie said Thursday, but it was Tuesday. She asked ‘What time is it?’. She said 5.30pm, but it was 2.30pm,” she recalls. “Ruth was rummaging through the tray on her desk and being disruptive. She kept saying, ‘What’s your name?’”

“They said she must come every three weeks to show that she is actively seeking work,” Anim says; but the adviser also told her that she could appeal against the decision. “It only took her 10 minutes to realise that the decision was wrong.”

Anim spent her summer holiday trying to sort out the problem, marshalling the support of her local MP, Glenda Jackson, and a welfare rights organisation, Brent Association of Disabled People, as well as contacting Atos and the DWP.

The decision caused immense stress to the whole family, she says. “As a nurse I know what effect this has on families. You have to constantly struggle to get the support to meet her basic needs. After all we have gone through, then to be told she needs to look for work. She was totally oblivious to what was going on, as usual, but we felt disbelief, frustration, stress and shock.

“It was a barmy decision. People with learning disabilities need all the support they can get. [They should] not be put in this situation where there is total ignorance about their ability to work, safety and wellbeing.”

Although the Royal College of Nursing has no official position on the WCA, Anim is clear that the policy needs urgent reform. “The system needs to be overhauled and reviewed.”

The DWP says that it has introduced numerous improvements to the testing process, but charities state that serious problems continue. A report published by Citizens Advice earlier this year found a “worryingly low” level of accuracy in the assessments. The charity, which supports many people who feel they have been wrongly denied benefits through the appeals process, has seen a 71% increase in workload relating to the employment and support allowance (the replacement to incapacity benefit) over the past two years.

Campaigners blame both the design of the policy and the way it has been implemented for the problems. The headquarters of Atos have been repeatedly targeted by disabled protesters, angry at the company’s involvement in the assessments, and the company’s sponsorship of the Paralympics caused widespread controversy.

The National Audit Office criticised the Department for Work and Pensions in August for not having “sought financial redress for contractor underperformance” and recommended that it “tighten performance requirements with Atos in relation to the quality of medical assessments”.

Earlier this year delegates at the BMA conference passed a motion stating that the “inadequate computer-based assessment” performed by Atos had “little regard for the nature or complexity of the needs of long-term sick and disabled persons”, and proposed that the WCA should be halted “with immediate effect”.

Jane Alltimes, senior policy officer at Mencap, said Ruth’s case was not particularly extreme. Mencap has submitted recommendations for improvement to the system to the DWP, and is arguing for greater recognition of employers’ unwillingness to employ people with learning disabilities. Just 7% of people who receive state support for their learning disabilities are in work.

“The evidence we’ve seen suggests an assessment process that isn’t working for lots of people with a learning disability. An assessment designed to determine a person’s ‘fitness for work’ needs to take into account the realities of the barriers experienced by disabled people in getting a job — things like job availability, the prejudices of employers, the support people need to overcome the barriers they face. The assessment in its current form just doesn’t do that.”

An Atos Healthcare spokesperson said: “We apologise for any discrepancy in our report and any distress this may have caused. We carry out around 15,000 assessments each week and work hard to provide the DWP with as much detailed information as we can to contribute to them making an accurate decision on benefits.”

A DWP spokesperson said: “The work capability assessment is under constant review to ensure it is both fair and effective, and it is in everyone’s interest to get the system right. We are committed to help thousands of people move from benefits and back into work while giving unconditional support to those who are most in need.”

Note: To keep up with everything that is going on, and as an antidote to the kind of lies told by Atos and the DWP in the two closing paragraphs of Amelia Gentleman’s article, I recommend Atos Miracles on Facebook, where campaigners are posting all kinds of relevant articles, as well as providing personal accounts of their experiences with Atos, and with their appeals. Their page explains their name as follows: “A place for the sick and disabled to share stories of how ATOS have cured them. Many sites on this subject have been threatened with legal action by the company and this is a place of satire — which we are hoping is not yet outlawed in the UK.”

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, Digg, 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 new “Close Guantánamo campaign,” and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

EXCLUSIVE: A Demand for “Freedom and Justice” from Shaker Aamer in Guantánamo

This article, published simultaneously here and on the “Close Guantánamo” website, contains information from a visit to Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo, by Ramzi Kassem, one of his lawyers, and was made available exclusively to Andy Worthington at Shaker’s request.

Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the US “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, has a message to the world, which has been made available exclusively to me, at his request. He wants people to know that the treatment of the prisoners is “completely arbitrary,” and there are “no laws, rules or SOPs [Standard Operating Procedures] in Cuba.” Subjected to violence every day, he continues to demand “freedom and justice.”

In information from a visit on May 14 this year by Ramzi Kassem, one of his lawyers, Shaker, who has spent much of his time in Guantánamo in isolation, explained how, from December 2011 to April 2012, he was held in the maximum security cells of Camp V, where those regarded as troublesome have been held since the block was built in 2004, but was then returned to isolation in a block known as Five Echo.

The existence of Five Echo — where the cells are only half the size of those in Camp V — was first revealed by the US military in December 2011, when David Remes, another of Shaker’s lawyers, explained to the Associated Press that his client had been held there and that it was “a throwback to the bad old days at Guantánamo.”

At the time, Ramzi Kassem also said that Shaker had “described abysmal conditions in Five Echo,” explaining that “the squat toilet is difficult to use, there are foul odors, bright lights shine on detainees and air conditioners keep it extremely cold.” He added, “It is decrepit, filthy and disgusting. Those are the words he [Shaker] used to describe it.” He also said that Shaker had told him “there is not enough room in Five Echo for the Muslim prisoners to do their prayers.”

In May, explaining his understanding of how decisions are made in Guantánamo, Shaker told Ramzi Kassem, “It is completely arbitrary. There are no laws, rules or SOPs [Standard Operating Procedures] in Cuba.” He also complained that the personnel at Guantánamo refuse to acknowledge that he is being held in isolation, even though a digital display at the entrance to the cell block reads, “Isolation Block — Echo Five.” Shaker explained that he has started mocking the guards, saying, “Even the computer knows that this is isolation, yet you deny it!”

This sounds light-hearted, but the abuse it disguises is horrendous. Shaker has spent years in isolation, even though prolonged isolation is torture, and for him to be returned to isolation so long after being cleared for release only confirms how Guantánamo remains a place of almost casual cruelty.

Shaker also provided further evidence of this when discussing his recreation time. After explaining that he is only allowed out of his cramped cell for two hours of recreation per day, he told his lawyer that, every day, he refuses to leave the recreation area and return to his cell. He described this as “a peaceful protest, to remind his captors that he is being mistreated and wants to go home,” but it is met with violence every day.

Although Shaker repeatedly makes his point peacefully, and asked the authorities to allow him a one-week period to protest peacefully about his continued imprisonment, anywhere in the prison (even outdoors), his request was refused. Instead, everyday, Shaker is forcefully extracted from the recreation area and dragged back to his cell by the Immediate Reaction Force (IRF), the five-man teams of guards who enforce even the most minor infringements of the rules with violence.

In the process, as Shaker told his lawyer, he is “often beaten and sometimes choked.” He also made a point of stating that “abuse at GTMO is common because there is little to no oversight,” explaining that this is the real GTMO, and that, if the treatment he endures daily is possible for him, if it is possible for any prisoner in Guantánamo. Furthermore, he described this as “a time warp back to the conditions that prevailed for the prisoners in 2005.”

In further descriptions of conditions in Guantánamo, Shaker also stated that many prisoners have been brought from Camp VI — where the majority of prisoners are held, and are generally allowed to have some time to socialize — to Five Echo, and added that he believes that this means there have been many problems at Camp VI.

He added that he was not surprised, because, in the past, the prison authorities showed their dominance of the prisoners, and subjected them to humiliation by making them kneel, and that one of the ways they did this was through bribery, offering prisoners watches, MP3 players and DVDs in exchange for their compliance.

Shaker also explained that, recently, he was being harassed for several months by a watch commander who threw out some of his personal items. He stated that, in protest, he broke the mirror mounted on the wall in his cell and cut his hand. Eventually, the watch commander was re-assigned.

Shaker showed his lawyer the scars on his hand and forearm during the visit in May, and this, together with his return to isolation in Five Echo, added poignancy and power to his desire for a formal request to be made on his behalf for a meeting with the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Professor Juan Méndez.

Shaker also recalled that, when a delegation of senior officials in the Obama administration met with him three years ago, he reacted negatively when they said that they “wanted to ensure his comfort,” telling them, “This isn’t comfort to me. It’s about freedom and justice!”

Shaker Aamer’s words always carry weight. He is well-known as an eloquent, charismatic man, who has always stood up for the rights of his fellow prisoners, but now, however, his words are more highly charged than ever before, because it has been officially revealed, for the first time ever, that he was cleared to leave Guantánamo three years ago; in other words, that the Obama administration has no desire to hold him any longer.

The shame that ought to accompany this news is two-fold: firstly, that he continues to be held despite being cleared for release three years ago; and secondly, that, since this information was publicly released, on September 21, he has not been promptly put on a plane and flown back to the UK, to be reunited with his British wife and his four British children.

The information about Shaker’s status was revealed on a list of the names of 55 cleared prisoners that was , surprising lawyers for the Guantanamo prisoners who had been told since 2009 that this information was classified, and that it was important that it remained secret, in order to help the US government’s attempts to secure new homes for those who cannot be safely repatriated because of human rights concerns in their home countries.

28 of these names were previously known, as we revealed here in June, in an exclusive report entitled, “Guantánamo Scandal: The 40 Prisoners Still Held But Cleared for Release At Least Five Years Ago.” Shaker was one of the 28 men named in that report, but whereas almost everyone else in the report had their status confirmed in publicly available documents, Shaker’s status as a cleared prisoner had only been confirmed indirectly, in a letter to Congress by four British MPs in December 2011.

In light of the recent news of Shaker’s status as a cleared prisoner, and this latest information about how terribly he is being treated, it is time to renew calls to the Obama administration — and to the British government — to secure Shaker Aamer’s return to the UK. A petition to the British government is here, and an international petition is here.

In conclusion, it’s worth remembering what the British MPs who wrote a letter to Congress about Shaker noted, last December, about what Shaker was told in a notification of his cleared status by the US government. “On January 22, 2009 the president of the United States ordered a new review of the status of each detainee in Guantánamo,” the document stated, adding, “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.”

That time is now, and no more excuses can be tolerated.

Note: In April, two more exclusive articles about Shaker Aamer’s treatment in Guantánamo were published here and on the “Close Guantánamo” website.

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, Digg, 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 new “Close Guantánamo campaign,” and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

Green London: Photos of Crystal Palace, the Isle of Dogs, Ladywell and Brockley

Green London: Crystal Palace, the Isle of Dogs, Ladywell and Brockley, a set on Flickr.

My 42nd photo set in my ongoing project to photograph the whole of London by  bike brings together a few disparate elements, photographed in July, and united under the umbrella title of “Green London” — firstly, a few photos from Mudchute Farm and Mudchute Park, on the Isle of Dogs, which I had put aside when I posted a set of photos of a journey around Canary Wharf to which these were the green prelude.

The second group of photos — 12 photos of Crystal Palace — were taken on a rainy afternoon, and had been sitting around until I decided to join them up with the “Green London” photos — not just the Mudchute idyll, but also some photos taken locally to me — in Ladywell Fields, a popular spot by the River Ravensbourne, which, further downstream, feeds into the River Thames at Deptford Creek, and on Hilly Fields, the wonderful hill-top park near my home, with its wonderful views out over south east London and beyond, and, at strategic points, its glimpses of Canary Wharf and the O2.

As with the two previous “Green London” sets (see here and here), these photos are the equivalent of a chill-out session, and I’d be tempted, personally, to put on some roots reggae and to take a few minutes to enjoy these reminders of summer. As I was cycling yesterday around Hampstead Heath and down to St. Pancras via Kentish Town (photos to follow), the change in the seasons was all too apparent. It was a lovely, warm, sunny morning and early afternoon, before the clouds came over, but the leaves have turned on the oaks and are starting to turn on the beech trees, and the air is thinner somehow, less full of the richness of summer.

I’l be back soon with some more photos from north of the river, but for now, I hope you enjoy these glimpses of green that are often all that keeps Londoners sane.

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, Digg, 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 new “Close Guantánamo campaign,” and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.