Andy Worthington's Blog, page 48

14 Years On, US Court Rules that Iraqis Tortured at Abu Ghraib Can Sue US Contractor

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Great news from the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Virginia, where three survivors of torture at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq by employees of a private military contractor, CACI Premier Technology, have finally been told that their case can proceed, 14 years since they were initially held, and over nine years since the case was first filed.

It is now so long since the torture took place that younger readers may be unaware of Abu Ghraib, the prison in Iraq where photos of abuse first surfaced publicly in April 2004, shocking Americans in a way that nothing had previously despite there being such a wide array of brutal, counter-productive policies undertaken in the wake of the 9/11 attacks — from Afghanistan to Iraq, and from “black sites” and proxy torture prisons to Guantánamo. As they say — and this is a sad truth for a writer to acknowledge — a picture is worth a thousand words.

The three men are Suhail Najim Abdullah Al Shimari, Asa’ad Hamza Hanfoosh Zuba’e and Salah Hasan Nusaif Al-Ejaili, and their lawyers at the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) stated in a press release after the ruling that the men, “formerly detained at the infamous ‘hard site’ at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq were subjected to treatment that could constitute torture or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment,” according to the judge who allowed the case to proceed, Judge Leonie Brinkema.

On their website CCR describe the men’s torture and abuse as follows:

Suhail Najim Abdullah Al Shimari was detained from 2003 until 2008, during which he was held at the Abu Ghraib “hard site” for about two months. While he was there, CACI and its co-conspirators tortured him in various ways: he was subjected to electric shocks, deprived of food, threatened by dogs, and kept naked while forced to engage in physical activities to the point of exhaustion.

Asa’ad Hamza Hanfoosh Zuba’e was imprisoned at Abu Ghraib from 2003 until 2004. CACI and its co-conspirators tortured him while he was detained there by subjecting him to extremely hot and cold water, beating his genitals with a stick, and detaining him in a solitary cell in conditions of sensory deprivation for almost a full year.

Salah Hasan Nusaif Al-Ejaili, an Al Jazeera journalist, was imprisoned at the Abu Ghraib “hard site” for approximately four months. While he was there, CACI and its co-conspirators stripped him and kept him naked, threatened him with dogs, deprived him of food, beat him, and kept him in a solitary cell in conditions of sensory deprivation. See his interviews with Democracy Now! and BBC Witness.

Responding to the ruling, Salah Al Ejaili, one of the plaintiffs, said, “The case has taken a long time but we are now reaching its final steps, and I have hope that justice will be achieved. At that time, the success won’t be only mine, but also to all those who have been tortured around the world.” He added, “We will have our day in court, and the story of Abu Ghraib will be told by me and other men who lived — and survived it.”

As CCR explained, today’s hearing, at which CCR attorneys and co-counsel from Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LP argued for the plaintiffs, “marked the first time in the course of the nine-year case” that they were able to present in court “the details of the torture and serious mistreatment their clients suffered at Abu Ghraib.” As they proceeded to note, “In the proceedings to come, plaintiffs will seek to hold CACI directly accountable for cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment, torture, and war crimes.”

Responding to the ruling, CCR Legal Director Baher Azmy said, “The court has sent an important message that there can be accountability for torture, a vital step for our clients who have yet to see justice.” He added, “This is a crucial ruling in a political climate where Trump has called for bringing back widely denounced torture techniques like waterboarding.”

CCR further explained that the case, Al Shimari v. CACI, was first filed in 2008 under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), which “allows non-US citizens to sue for human rights violations committed abroad that ‘touch and concern’ the United States.”

In the long legal journey to this important day, as CCR stated, “the Fourth Circuit denied CACI’s attempt to have the case dismissed under the ‘political question’ doctrine” in October 2016, and in June this year the District Court “affirmed that war crimes, torture, and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment are well-recognized and definable norms and thus fall within the court’s jurisdiction” under the Alien Tort Statute. The court then “ordered both parties to brief whether the record supports a finding that the plaintiffs suffered these violations,” and, as CCR noted, “Shortly after, CACI moved to dismiss the case,” the move that has just been turned down.

As CCR further explained, “US military investigators long ago concluded that CACI interrogators conspired with US soldiers, who were later court martialed, to ‘soften up’ detainees for interrogations,” according to statements by co-conspirators. In a detailed report, Major General Antonio Taguba “referred to the treatment as ‘sadistic, blatant, and wanton’ criminal abuses.”

Al Ejaili, Al-Suba’e, and Al Shimari were, as CCR described it, “subjected to electric shocks, sexual assaults, sensory deprivation, mock executions, stress positions, broken bones, deprived of oxygen, food and water, stripped and kept naked, forced to witness the rape of a female prisoner, as well as experienced other dehumanizing acts of torture and threats to themselves and their families.”

In a further comment by CCR, Senior Staff Attorney Katherine Gallagher said, “We applaud the court for rejecting outdated Bush-era conceptions of torture in denying the defendant’s motion to dismiss plaintiffs’ claims of torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment. Fourteen years later, Salah, Asa’d, and Suhail are still suffering from what they experienced, and the torture of Iraqi civilians at Abu Ghraib remains one of the darkest chapters in recent U.S. history.” She added, “Now we have the opportunity to narrow the egregious accountability gap that has persisted: while a number of military officers were court martialed, the private contractors walked away with large payments, and they continue to be awarded millions of dollars in government contracts.”

Note: For more information, visit CCR’s case page, and please note that Jeena Shah of the International Human Rights Clinic at Rutgers Law School-Newark, and Shereef Akeel & Valentine, P.C. in Troy, Michigan, are also co-counsel on the case.

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer, film-maker and singer-songwriter (the lead singer and main songwriter for the London-based band The Four Fathers, whose music is available via Bandcamp). He is the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign (and the Countdown to Close Guantánamo initiative, launched in January 2016), the co-director of We Stand With Shaker, which called for the release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison (finally freed on October 30, 2015), and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by the University of Chicago Press in the US, and available from Amazon, including a Kindle edition — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here — or here for the US).

To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Also see the six-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, and The Complete Guantánamo Files, an ongoing, 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011. Also see the definitive Guantánamo habeas list, the full military commissions list, and the chronological list of all Andy’s articles.

Please also consider joining the Close Guantánamo campaign, and, if you appreciate Andy’s work, feel free to make a donation.

Omar Khadr’s Bail Conditions: On 31st Birthday, Judge Allows Internet Access, Refuses to Lift Ban on Free Travel within Canada, or Unsupervised Meeting with Sister

Please support my work as a reader-funded journalist! I’m currently trying to raise $2500 (£2000) to support my writing and campaigning on Guantánamo and related issues over the next three months of the Trump administration.

 

Happy belated birthday to former Guantánamo prisoner Omar Khadr, who turned 31 yesterday. Nearly three years since he was returned to Canada from Guantánamo, his birthday was an occasion to reflect on the mixed news from an Edmonton courtroom on Friday, in response to his request for his bail conditions to be eased.

Seized in Afghanistan at the age of 15 after a firefight that left him severely wounded, Khadr, who had been taken to Afghanistan by his father, was never rehabilitated, as the US is supposed to do with juvenile prisoners, according the terms of the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict, to which both the US and Canada are signatories.

Instead, Khadr was subjected to torture and abuse, and, eventually, shamefully charged in a military commission trial on the basis that, in the firefight, he threw a grenade that killed a US soldier. Ignored by the US was his age at the time of the incident, and the very plausible claim that he never threw the grenade in the first place, having been face-down under a pile of rubble with horrendous injuries at the time the grenade was supposed to have been thrown.

Nevertheless, Barack Obama — to what should be his eternal shame — presided over Khadr’s trial, and his plea deal in October 2010, when he agreed to the charges, because he saw it as his only way of getting out of Guantánamo. In exchange for his plea deal, he received an eight-year sentence, with one year to be served in Guantánamo and seven in Canada.

However, the Canadian government was in no hurry to get Khadr back, and it was nearly two years until he returned home, in September 2012, and another two and a half years of legal wrangling before he was released on bail in May 2015, to finally have the opportunity to rebuild his life.

The Canadian government’s position regarding Khadr had long been condemned, at the highest levels of the country’s judicial system. In 2010, as I explained in an article in 2013:

[T]he Canadian Supreme Court ruled that his rights had been violated when Canadian agents interrogated him at Guantánamo in 2003, when he was just 16. The Court stated, “Interrogation of a youth, to elicit statements about the most serious criminal charges while detained in these conditions and without access to counsel, and while knowing that the fruits of the interrogations would be shared with the US prosecutors, offends the most basic Canadian standards about the treatment of detained youth suspects.”

Finally, in July this year, Canada’s shameful treatment of Omar Khadr resulted in him receiving a compensation payment of $10.5m (about $9m in US currency).

Despite this, however, some of his bail conditions were still in force.

Some had been eased two years ago, around the time of his 29th birthday. As I reported at the time:

Two weeks ago, as I described it, he “asked a Canadian court to ease his bail conditions, so he can fly to Toronto to visit his family, attend a night course at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT), and get to early morning prayers,” and last week Justice June Ross of the Court of Queen’s Bench of Alberta agreed to relax his curfew to allow him to attend night classes and early morning prayers, reserving judgment on his other request until this week. On Friday (September 18), as hoped, his bail conditions have been eased still further. As the Edmonton Journal reported, Justice Ross said that he “can travel to visit his grandparents in Toronto for two weeks this fall.” In addition, his electronic tag will be removed.

As the Toronto Star described it, Justice Ross “said it is important that some restrictions remain, to ensure Khadr doesn’t have terrorist associations. But she added that he has complied with all conditions since he was released four months ago, and a gradual release into the community ‘is the best way to ensure he doesn’t pose a danger to the public.’” She added, “There is no reason why he should not have a visit with his family.”

For the Toronto visit, as the Edmonton Journal put it, he must travel with Dennis Edney, his lawyer for many years, in whose house he is living, and is also required to “stay with his maternal grandparents or his Toronto lawyer John Philipps, provide a phone number and address, and report to his bail supervisor.” In a sign of how micro-managed his freedoms are, despite these concessions, he “will be allowed to speak to his maternal grandparents in a language other than English, but not his controversial mother or sister Zaynab, both of whom now live outside Canada. Three brothers and one other sister live in Toronto.”

Since then, as the Edmonton Journal explained, “Restrictions that prevented Khadr from freely communicating with other members of his family, including his mother, have … been eased,” but the ban on having unsupervised visits with his sister remains in place, and his request for it to be dropped was denied in court on Friday by Justice Ross, who continues to deal with his efforts to have his bail conditions eased.

Khadr had hoped to be able to freely meet his sister who, according to the Canadian Press, “is now reportedly living in Sudan with her fourth husband, but is planning a visit to Canada.” CBC News added that, although she was born in Ottawa, “she was at one point unable to get a Canadian passport after frequently reporting hers lost,” and was also “subject to an RCMP investigation in 2005, but faced no charges.” It was also noted that “[h]er third husband, Canadian Joshua Boyle, is reportedly still a Taliban hostage along with his American wife and children in Afghanistan” (and see here for more on that story).

However, Justice Ross “refused to remove restrictions stipulating” that he can “communicate with his sister in English only and in the presence of a court-appointed supervisor, his lawyers or bail supervisor,” as CBC News Edmonton described it.

Notoriously, Zaynab Khadr had, in the past, expressed support for al-Qaeda, while her brother was still at Guantánamo, but Omar’s efforts to persuade Justice Ross that, whatever her views, he was not impressionable, failed to convince her.

In a sworn affidavit, Khadr said, ”I am now an adult and I think independently. Even if the members of my family were to wish to influence my religious or other views, they would not be able to control or influence me in any negative manner.”

Justice Ross also “denied Khadr’s request to have his travel restrictions softened, meaning he will still require authorization to leave Alberta and travel within Canada,” as CBC News described it, noting that this was in spite of his lawyer, Nathan Whitling, arguing in court that his “requests to visit his elderly grandparents in Toronto had always been approved in the past.”

As Whitling told reporters after the hearing, “He’s been getting permission anyway, so it’s not a huge big deal, but it is pretty onerous for him to have to seek advanced permission any time he wants to take a trip to Toronto.”

Justice Ross also granted Khadr “greater access to the internet as long as he stays away from anything to do with terrorism on the web.”

Whistling also told reporters that Khadr was “disappointed” by aspects of the ruling, explaining that, when it came to his sister, “He does want to be able to contact his sister and he doesn’t see how he’s going to be able to speak to his nieces and nephews without having some sort of supervisor present at the time.”

In his affidavit, Khadr, who recently got married, also explained that “he has been accepted to a nursing program in Alberta and wishes to put his legal matters behind him,” as CBC News put it. He added, however, as CTV News described it, that his client is “doing very well,” and that the requirements that he “seek permission before travelling within Canada and only contact his sister only ‘in the presence of some responsible person who has been approved in advance by his bail supervisor’ are more of an ‘inconvenience’ than a ‘big deal.’”

As Whitling said, “Everything’s going just fine for him. I don’t want to pretend this is a major burden on him.”

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer, film-maker and singer-songwriter (the lead singer and main songwriter for the London-based band The Four Fathers, whose music is available via Bandcamp). He is the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign (and the Countdown to Close Guantánamo initiative, launched in January 2016), the co-director of We Stand With Shaker, which called for the release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison (finally freed on October 30, 2015), and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by the University of Chicago Press in the US, and available from Amazon, including a Kindle edition — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here — or here for the US).

To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Also see the six-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, and The Complete Guantánamo Files, an ongoing, 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011. Also see the definitive Guantánamo habeas list, the full military commissions list, and the chronological list of all Andy’s articles.

Please also consider joining the Close Guantánamo campaign, and, if you appreciate Andy’s work, feel free to make a donation.

Social Cleansing and the Destruction of Council Estates Exposed at Screening of ‘Dispossession’ by Endangered New Cross Residents

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On Saturday, I went to the New Cross Learning Centre — a community-run former library in New Cross — for a screening of ‘Dispossession: The Great Social Housing Swindle’, a new documentary about Britain’s housing crisis directed by Paul Sng, who is from New Cross (and is the director of ‘Sleaford Mods: Invisible Britain’). The screening was organised by the residents of the Achilles Street area, whose homes are threatened by Lewisham Council, which wants to knock them all down, and build shiny new replacements. The area affected runs between New Cross Road and Fordham Park (from south to north), and between Clifton Rise and Pagnell Street (from west to east), and there are 87 homes (with 33 leaseholders), and around 20 businesses (along New Cross Road and down Clifton Rise).

Lewisham Council claims, in its most recent consultation document, from February this year, that “[a]ll current council tenants who wish to stay in the new development will be able to do so with the same rent levels and tenancy conditions that they have today,” and that “[a]ny resident leaseholder who wishes to will be able to remain in home ownership on the new development.”

This sounds reassuring, but the recent history of regeneration projects — both in London and elsewhere in the country — is that councils and developers lie to tenants and leaseholders, to get them to agree to regeneration under terms that are not then honoured. Instead, tenants are evicted and their homes demolished, and they never get to return, and leaseholders are offered derisory amounts for the homes that, ironically, they bought under Margaret Thatcher’s Right to Buy policy, which is insufficient for them to buy a replacement property in the area, leading to their exodus in addition to that of the former tenants.

The recent history of this social cleansing programme is admirably documented in ‘Dispossession’, exposing what is, fundamentally, a scandal that has received far too little attention: the selling off to private developers of council estates — mostly deliberately run down over many years, or even decades, under a process of “managed decline” — on the basis that there is insufficient money to refurbish them to a decent standard. The developers, with the collusion of the councils, then knock them down, and build unaffordable new housing instead, resulting in the involuntary exile —- the social cleansing — of the former residents, who have to leave the area — even if, as often, they have lived there for decades, and, understandably, think of their homes as home — and often can no longer even afford to live in London.

The film chronicles the template for dispossession that is well-known and well-documented to those paying attention — beginning with the destruction of the Heygate Estate in Southwark, and looking at Cressingham Gardens in Lambeth, the Balfron Tower in Poplar, and the Aylesbury Estate, also in Southwark, and also taking the story further afield — to Glasgow and Nottingham.

The Heygate, near the centre of the Elephant & Castle, an estate of huge high-rise blocks surrounding lower-rise buildings and significant green space, was emptied of its occupants in the 2000s, and, for many years, was empty except for a handful of leaseholders clinging on, at which time it became a kind of post-apocalyptic urban jungle, a place of extraordinary silence, with performance spaces and vegetable gardens.

Housing activists — via the extraordinary Southwark Notes website — have demonstrated how most of the Heygate’s 3,000 residents were dispersed across London, never to return, and there are other shocking statistics: Lendlease paid Southwark Council £55m for the Heygate Estate, and £40m for the Oakmayne and Tribeca site, also at the Elephant. The process of evicting and relocating tenants cost the council £65m, while refurbishment of the estate would have cost just £35m. Lendlease, meanwhile, stands to make a profit of £194m, while Southwark will make noting, although one doesn’t vine have to be cynical to notice a revolving door whereby former Southwark council housing employees end up getting jobs with the developers.

In other revealing statistics, 1,034 homes were demolished on the Heygate Estate, and 2,704 are being built on its replacement, Elephant Park, but only 82 of those will be for social rent, generally set at 30% of market rents. This is genuinely affordable for a majority of workers, whereas what passes for “affordable” in the legislation approved in London by Boris Johnson when he was Mayor, is actually set at 80% of market rents, and is therefore completely unaffordable for most workers, because market rents in central London can easily be £500 a week for a couple. When the median income is less than £20,000, that can lead to people paying, as Oxford professor Danny Dorling says in the film, 50%, 60% or even 70% of their income in rent, when it should only be described as “affordable” if it is no more than a third.

The film provides a background to the need for social housing, and points out that, after the Second World War, the Attlee government built 1m new homes, 80% of which were council houses, and 5m were then built in the decades that followed. The decline began under Margaret Thatcher, and her baleful legacy is clear: at the start of her premiership, 42% of people lived in social housing, now it is less than 8%, and 1.4m people are on waiting lists. Of the properties that were sold under Thatcher’s ‘Right to Buy’ policy, 2.2m were in private ownership by 1996, and the most unforgiveable aspect of Thatcher’s policy — which new Labour never repealed — was the prohibition on councils building any new homes.

From Thatcher’s time onwards, some council housing ended up being transferred to the ownership and control of housing associations, a mix of private companies and charities, directed by legislation, who often did a good job. However, beginning under rNew Labour and most glaringly since 2010, under the Tories, cynical austerity cuts have forced them into becoming developers much more than being social housing providers, and a glaring example of that is at the Aylesbury Estate in Southwark.

Failing to learn any lessons from the Heygate disaster — because the template of dispossession and private profit is the same for all developments — Southwark hooked up with Notting Hill Housing, which used to be a social housing provider, but is now one of many former social housing providers that have become aggressive private developers, to demolish the borough’s other huge estate, the Aylesbury, rather than refurbishing it, as would have been sensible after all the negative publicity surrounding the Heygate redevelopment.

Instead, the evictions have started, as have the private developments, and Southwark and Notting Hill have had their compulsory purchase programme blocked by Sajid Javid, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, for its derisory nature, and for breaching leaseholders’ human rights. The film focuses on the story of Beverley Robinson, a resident on the Aylesbury Estate, and, as Paul Sng explained in an article for the Guardian when ‘Dispossession’ was released:

She has refused to move out of the estate until she receives the market rate for her home, which will enable her to buy an equivalent property in the area. The council’s initial offer for Robinson’s two-bedroom flat, was £65,000, which she rejected. Following a tribunal, the price was increased to £187,500, still short of her expectations. According to estate agents Foxtons, the average price of a two-bedroom property in Southwark is £884,648. Robinson is entitled to expect a like for like replacement property if she is forced to leave her home.

Robinson is now the only resident in a block that is fenced off like a prison, and as Sng explained:

Robinson has to be let in and out of the building by a guard day and night, and is a virtual prisoner in a home she bought from the council under the right to buy policy. In addition, the council have also stopped providing regular maintenance on the building (despite her still paying a service charge), meaning that the communal garden areas are untended and the lift and lighting are frequently not working for days on end. Such underhand tactics suggest that the council is attempting to intimidate Robinson into selling her flat, thus allowing them to continue with a £1.5bn redevelopment project.

Both the Heygate and the Aylesbury estates are desirable because Southwark is so close to central London. Elsewhere, however, parkside and waterside locations are what the council and developers seize upon. It is no accident that Achilles Street is right next to New Cross’s only park, Fordham Park, just as it is no accident that, in Lambeth, the destruction of Cressingham Gardens, a well-designed, low-level estate that opened in the 1970s, is being aggressively sought by Lambeth Council, as it overlooks Brockwell Park from an elevated location.

At Cressingham Gardens, all the subterfuge required to try to persuade the tenants and leaseholders of 306 homes to vote for their own death penalty failed. Just 4% were in favour. Residents describe it as “like living in a village,” and were well aware that they had been subjected to “managed decline.” The council decided to press ahead with its plans anyway, but the residents took them to court, and won — twice — although the council still refuses to give up.

The latest corrupt manoeuvrings exposed by the film involve the creation by councils themselves of housing associations to handle the destruction of estates and their lucrative rebuilding. In Lambeth, the council’s chief social housing destroyer is Matthew Bennett, who has not set himself up as the head of Homes for Lambeth, the housing association responsible for rebuilding. And so, in a shocking demonstration of naked vested interests, Bennett will be approving the destruction of estates that he will then be in charge of redeveloping.

At Cressingham Gardens, it has been demonstrated that the cost of destroying the estate is much greater than refurbishing it, as is generally true of all redevelopments. The film also looks briefly at Central Hill, an acclaimed estate in Crystal Palace, which is coveted by the council and developers because of its stunning views over London. The campaign to save Central Hill is ongoing, but is interesting not only because lovers of architecture are on board, but also because Architects for Social Housing, a wonderful organisation campaigning to save estates from destruction and to pursue refurbishment options instead, have produced unassailably sensible plans to refurbish the estate rather than proceed with its destruction.

The film also looks at the underhand eviction of tenants from the Erno Goldfinger-designed Balfron Tower in Poplar, where artists were cynically engaged as a diversion — in a move that is known as artwashing — and touches briefly on other social cleansing programmes that are either underway or imminent.

In Poplar, the destruction of Robin Hood Gardens (oh so close to Canary Wharf) is in the latter category, and in the former is the West Hendon Estate, which demonstrates another geographical draw for developers — it’s right next to a beautiful reservoir.

Also of note is Woodberry Down in Hackney — also located by a beautiful reservoir — and in bringing the story up to date concerned readers need to check out Haringey’s plans to sell of all its housing stock to Lendlease, the destroyers of the Heygate Estate, in a £2bn deal that explicitly involves giving Lendlease approval for the destruction of entire estates, including Broadwater Farm and Northumberland Park, both in Tottenham.

Readers should also check out the story of the West Kensington and Gibbs Green estates in west London, threatened with destruction as part of the huge – and hugely profitable – Earls Court redevelopment (which is subject to widespread criticism on a number of fronts), but primarily the message of the film, and of the experience of anyone paying attention in London, is that a full-scale assault on social housing is underway in almost every borough, which, if it is not stopped, might well lead to the social cleansing of up to a million people over the next 10 or 15 years. Moreover, as ASH never tires of explaining, the social cleansing cuts across party lines, as most of the dispossession in London is being conducted by Labour councils.

I’ll let that sink in, and give you time to check out ASH’s list of estates under threat from Labour councils, whilst also adding that there are no saviours waiting in the wings. Despite getting elected because housing is Londoners’ number one concern, Sadiq Khan’s plans are worthless, and Jeremy Corbyn is permanently silent on the clearances conducted by his own party.

It is up to us to fight back — and to build a movement that corrupt politicians and developers cannot ignore, and which, I hope, can continue to channel the justifiable anger that was felt in June when the contempt that politicians, developers,and housing officials feel for social tenants was most vividly felt as an inferno engulfed Grenfell Tower in North Kensington, killing at least 80 people, an inferno that was entirely preventable and that only happened because safety standards had been deliberately gutted in an effort to increase profits.

Note: Check out the Achilles Street Stop And Listen Campaign website for information about how to contact councillors to oppose Lewisham’s plans, prior to a council meeting on October 4 at which residents fear the redevelopment plans will be approved. If you’re interested, please ask the campaigners to put you on their mailing list. And please also check out the Achilles fanzine, put together by Lilah Francis.

And for a defence of London’s social housing in song, check out ‘London’ by my band The Four Fathers.

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer, film-maker and singer-songwriter (the lead singer and main songwriter for the London-based band The Four Fathers, whose music is available via Bandcamp). He is the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign (and the Countdown to Close Guantánamo initiative, launched in January 2016), the co-director of We Stand With Shaker, which called for the release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison (finally freed on October 30, 2015), and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by the University of Chicago Press in the US, and available from Amazon, including a Kindle edition — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here — or here for the US).

To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Also see the six-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, and The Complete Guantánamo Files, an ongoing, 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011. Also see the definitive Guantánamo habeas list, the full military commissions list, and the chronological list of all Andy’s articles.

Please also consider joining the Close Guantánamo campaign, and, if you appreciate Andy’s work, feel free to make a donation.

Former Obama Security Official Says Keeping Guantánamo Open “Damages Our National Security”

Please support my work as a reader-funded journalist! I’m currently trying to raise $2500 (£2000) to support my writing and campaigning on Guantánamo and related issues over the next three months of the Trump administration.

 

I wrote the following article for the “Close Guantánamo” website, which I established in January 2012, on the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, with the 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.

Eight months since Donald Trump became president, and 16 years after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, one unfortunate side-effect of 9/11 — the prison at Guantánamo Bay — briefly flickered back into the national consciousness last week.

That faraway facility, where 41 men are still held, was supposed to have been closed by President Obama, but that was a promise he failed to keep, despite having eight years to do. And now Donald Trump — childishly, petulantly, as usual — wants to treat the prison as his own plaything, somewhere to keep open forever, and to send new people to, whom he regards as his version of what Bush administration officials so memorably — and disproportionately — referred to as “the worst of the worst.”

“The worst of the worst” never were held at Guantánamo, as Larry Wilkerson, the former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell explained to me in an interview in 2009. He told me, “I laughed at this when I first heard it, but now I realize it was probably closer to the truth than anything the administration said — when Bush announced in September 2006, with some degree of trepidation, that he’d transferred these 14 to Guantánamo out of the secret prisons. Now I realize that they made that transfer principally so they could get some hardcore terrorists to Guantánamo.”

Wilkerson also told me that someone he had no reason to distrust, who knew about the inner workings of the Bush administration, gave “his estimate of the number of people — I think it was 741 or 742 that we suddenly had on a piece of paper somewhere — of any significance was as follows. He said, ‘I’ll tell you right now that 700 of them haven’t done a damn thing except get in the way of somebody capturing them.’”

In addition, in 2004 — before the 14 “high-value detainees” arrived at Guantánamo, the New York Times reported that, “In interviews, dozens of high-level military, intelligence and law-enforcement officials in the United States, Europe and the Middle East said that contrary to the repeated assertions of senior administration officials, none of the detainees at the United States Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay ranked as leaders or senior operatives of Al Qaeda. They said only a relative handful — some put the number at about a dozen, others more than two dozen — were sworn Qaeda members or other militants able to elucidate the organization’s inner workings.”

Despite this, cynical or misguided lawmakers — and the right-wing media — have persistently ignored these truths about Guantánamo, and have continued to tout it as somewhere necessary to America’s national security — as if the torture and abuse of prisoners, and their imprisonment without charge or trial (possibly for the rest of their lives in the cases of the men still held), were somehow essential, and not an affront to all the values the US claims to hold dear.

Here at “Close Guantánamo,” since our founding back in January 2012, on the 10th anniversary of the opening of the prison at Guantánamo Bay, we have endeavored to get this message across, but the black propaganda of the Bush administration has been durable, as have the ongoing lies and distortions of Republican lawmakers and their cheerleaders in the media. And since January, of course, an enthusiast for Guantánamo — as ill-informed as all those who have come before him — has been in the White House.

It is always useful, therefore, when other prominent voices emerge to support our message, and on the 16th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, one such voice spoke out in The Hill — Joshua Geltzer, who served as senior director for counterterrorism and deputy legal advisor at the National Security Council from 2015 to 2017. Seltzer is now executive director and visiting professor of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown University and a fellow in the international security program at New America, and his timely and important article was entitled, “Keeping Guantánamo Bay open damages our national security.” We previously covered Joshua Geltzer’s writing about Guantánamo in July, in an article entitled, Six Months of Trump: Is Closing Guantánamo Still Possible?

We’re cross-posting his latest article below, and we every much hope you have time to read it, and to share it if you find it useful. Geltzer has an authoritative voice on these matters, when he explains how mistaken are the Trump administration’s proposals for Guantánamo — centered on “issuing an executive order formally rejecting existing U.S. policy to pursue the facility’s closure and instead declaring its indefinite operation, including the considerations that might lead new detainees to be brought to Guantánamo,” but also including stopping all releases from the prison (even though five men have been approved for release), and “eliminat[ing] the State Department office charged with seeking to identify receiving countries for those detainees cleared for transfer” — and monitoring them afterwards.

As Geltzer says, pulling no punches, Trump’s approach to Guantánamo is foolish, and, as he states, “the White House’s revived effort to stuff down the throat of national security professionals an unwanted backtracking on Guantánamo is bad for national security, bad for human rights, and ultimately yet another sign that the Trump administration is more interested in playing politics with national security than protecting it.”

Keeping Guantánamo Bay open damages our national security

By Joshua Geltzer, The Hill, September 11, 2017

The Trump administration has revived its push to maintain and even increase the number of terrorism suspects held at the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, according to a recent report by the New York Times. Trump has already delivered on his campaign promise to halt all detainee transfers from Guantánamo, thus ensuring that the 41 detainees still held at the facility remain there despite government unanimous recommendations to transfer five of them.

Last month, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson provided bureaucratic insurance to that promise by pledging to eliminate the State Department office charged with seeking to identify receiving countries for those detainees cleared for transfer. The next step, according to the Times, would be to entrench Trump’s position as a matter of law by issuing an executive order formally rejecting existing U.S. policy to pursue the facility’s closure and instead declaring its indefinite operation, including the considerations that might lead new detainees to be brought to Guantánamo.

This is foolish, no matter how one looks at Guantánamo, whether from a national security perspective or a human rights perspective. I’ve had both. I was, until March, part of the White House team responsible for coordinating the government’s counterterrorism policies. Since April, I’ve helped to lead a legal advocacy organization.

Yet, whichever perspective one emphasizes, the White House’s revived effort to stuff down the throat of national security professionals an unwanted backtracking on Guantánamo is bad for national security, bad for human rights, and ultimately yet another sign that the Trump administration is more interested in playing politics with national security than protecting it.

From a counterterrorism perspective, the proposed executive order reported in the Times would do nothing except strain relations with allies and partners that have already signaled that a resurgent Guantánamo would make it harder for them to cooperate with the United States, including as part of the critical counter-ISIS coalition. The order would, it seems, state what’s already a set of facts in the world: that the Trump administration doesn’t intend to close the Guantánamo facility and might consider bringing additional detainees there.

To go further still and actually bring new detainees there, especially ones detained for their association with ISIS, would be an unwanted source of risk in the eyes of any U.S. Justice Department lawyer, who’d quickly face the undesirable scenario of having to defend before a federal judge the entire theory of the executive branch’s authority for using military force against ISIS.

Meanwhile, counterterrorism officials would immediately need to do damage control with partners suddenly constrained in their ability even to consider handing custody of detainees over to the United States, much as one U.S. partner is reported to have reneged already on the intended transfer of a Sudanese terrorism suspect known as Abu Khaybar.

This is, in short, a set of distractions and detractions that national security lawyers and policymakers would dread, not welcome. And all without any actual problem to be solved, as the United States has been doing just fine using short-term detention for especially high-value detainees, such as Umm Sayyaf, who was captured in a U.S. raid in Syria in May 2015, and then relying on U.S. criminal prosecution or foreign partners for longer-term disposition.

From a human rights perspective, Trump’s approach to Guantánamo revives old questions about indefinite detention in a counterterrorism conflict whose end regrettably appears nowhere in sight. Whatever one’s view of the legal theories based on which detainees remain at Guantánamo, the sheer fact of such detainees being held, in some cases, for a decade and a half without either facing some form of prosecution or being released raises the type of concerns emphasized by human rights organizations.

In addition to indefinite detention, Guantánamo is associated with past detainee treatment that the International Committee of the Red Cross has decried as “tantamount to torture.” That history is inseparable from Guantánamo’s legacy, as is its deliberate construction as a site for detention “beyond the reach of U.S. courts,” in the words of a former U.S. Defense Department detainee affairs official.

So, if the Trump administration’s revived Guantánamo effort is bad for national security and bad for human rights, why do it? There’s only one answer, and sadly one all too familiar for this White House: playing politics. Issuing an unnecessary and indeed unhelpful executive order on Guantánamo plays to that small streak of American politics in which embracing Guantánamo means endorsing a symbolically belligerent approach to counterterrorism, and to hell with the actual consequences.

This is the same tactic taken by this administration on other aspects of national security and law enforcement, such as imposing an anti-Muslim travel ban that responded to no actual threat but damaged relations with critical counterterrorism partners, and threatening to punish sanctuary cities in a move framed as “restoring law and order” but in fact, is certain to make it harder for law enforcement officials to learn about, investigate and punish crimes in certain communities.

The decision to eliminate the U.S. State Department’s Guantánamo office is yet another step that may be viewed as politically symbolic but is actually counterproductive to national security, as that office has played a critical role in working with foreign partners to ensure that former Guantánamo detainees do not reengage in terrorist activities.

Central to Trump’s campaign and early presidency has been his promise to “make America safe again” by “putting America first” and “protecting national security.” But his renewed vigor for pursuing a counterproductive executive order on Guantánamo Bay reveals, yet again, that he’s less interested in putting America first and protecting national security than putting politics above protecting national security. That’s the opposite of making America safe.

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer, film-maker and singer-songwriter (the lead singer and main songwriter for the London-based band The Four Fathers, whose music is available via Bandcamp). He is the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign (and the Countdown to Close Guantánamo initiative, launched in January 2016), the co-director of We Stand With Shaker, which called for the release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison (finally freed on October 30, 2015), and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by the University of Chicago Press in the US, and available from Amazon, including a Kindle edition — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here — or here for the US).

To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Also see the six-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, and The Complete Guantánamo Files, an ongoing, 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011. Also see the definitive Guantánamo habeas list, the full military commissions list, and the chronological list of all Andy’s articles.

Please also consider joining the Close Guantánamo campaign, and, if you appreciate Andy’s work, feel free to make a donation.

“Guantánamo Was Created to Destroy People, to Destroy Muslims”: Ex-Prisoner Djamel Ameziane’s Powerful Statement to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights

Please support my work as a reader-funded journalist! I’m currently trying to raise $2500 (£2000) to support my writing and campaigning on Guantánamo and related issues over the next three months of the Trump administration.

 

Three days ago, I published an article about former Guantánamo prisoner Djamel Ameziane, and specifically about a hearing of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), in Mexico City, at which, via his lawyers, and via a statement he had written, he asked the Commission members: “Please issue a merits decision and decide my case. I ask you to order reparations and other relief so that I can get the assistance that I need and move forward with my life, and put Guantánamo behind me forever. I also want an apology. I ask the representatives of the US: Will you say on behalf of your government that you are sorry for what the US Government did to me?”

The IACHR is a key part of the Organization of American States (OAS), whose mission is “to promote and protect human rights in the American hemisphere,” and whose resolutions are supposed to be binding on the US, which is a member state, although the US, of course, has little regard for anyone trying to tell it what to do.

As CCR described it, Ameziane also “urged OAS member states to remain involved in the issue given the current context in the US, and assist in the transfer of Guantánamo detainees and supporting efforts to close the detention center, among others.”

Below, I’m taking the opportunity to cross-post the whole of Djamel Ameziane’s statement, because it provides a powerful indictment of the manner in which the US, after 9/11, abandoned all adherence to the rule of law, setting up a global network of prisons — including at Guantánamo Bay, where Muslim men and boys, largely rounded up without any sense or any application of intelligence, were horribly abused and deprived of hope.

Ameziane, who had fled persecution in Algeria, had tried settling in Austria and Canada, but had been refused, and had only ended up in Afghanistan because he was at the end of his tether, and knew he could live there cheaply, and, as a Muslim, without being hassled. Soon after his arrival, however, 9/11 happened, and, although he “fled right away to Pakistan to escape the fighting in which I had no interest and took no part,” he was sold to Pakistani forces, and then to US forces, who began his abuse at Kandahar, and then continued it at Guantánamo.

If you don’t know much of the story of Guantánamo, Djamel Ameziane’s account will shock you, and even if you do, like I do, I’m sure there are elements of his story that will shock you — his explanation of how Camp 6, the last of the blocks to be built for the general prison population, where he was moved in April 2007, was terribly damaging for both his mental and his physical health. Modeled on a facility in Michigan, Camp 6 was generally portrayed as an improvement on Camp 5, where prisoners regarded as “difficult” were held in isolation, but Ameziane makes it clear that Camp 6 was no less isolating. As he writes, “[T]o understand Camp 6, you must envision what we called a tomb above the ground. A super-max type prison made of concrete and steel, with no windows and only single cells.” There, he stated, “my health and well-being took a turn for the worst.”

In addition, whilst acknowledging that conditions improved under President Obama, he is also highly critical of how, despite being approved for release at the end of Bush’s presidency, and again by the Guantánamo Review Task Force in Obama’s first year in office, he was not released until December 2013, when — spitefully, it seems — he was sent back to Algeria, despite the fact that other countries were prepared to offer him a new home.

Ameziane also reveals — which, again, was news to me — that despite having been approved for release, “the US government went to court to stop my lawyers at CCR from telling anyone I had been approved for transfer by either administration,” a prohibition that applied when Ameziane first sought the support of IACHR, leading to the ruling in his favor in 2012, which I covered at the time in an article entitled, Inter-American Commission on Human Rights Calls for Release of Djamel Ameziane, an Algerian in Guantánamo.

Ameziane also explains, poignantly, how, despite support from the Mexican government, he did not feel able to visit Mexico in person to deliver his statement. As he stated, “The stress and anxiety from the uncertainty about whether I would be allowed to travel, or whether as a former detainee I might be detained or interrogated were too great.”

In conclusion, Ameziane’s description of his life in Algeria — without work, without money, without a home — not only are, appropriately, critical of his home government, but also of the US, which has not only shown complete contempt for him, but also, outrageously, kept the money he had when he was first seized in Pakistan, which he had earned in Canada.

I do hope the IACHR ends up delivering the sternest of rebukes to the US government for its disgraceful treatment of Djamel Ameziane, following up on the indication given at the hearing by the Commissioners, as reported by CCR, that they “would continue to study the issue and expressed consternation at Ameziane’s prolonged detention at the camp without any charges, indicating that reparations should be made, including, at a minimum, that his personal belongings be returned.”

That is, I have to say, the very least, that the US should be doing, to restore some semblance of dignity to Djamel Ameziane’s life.

Statement of Djamel Ameziane

before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights

Case No. 12.865, Ameziane v. United States

7 September 2017

Honorable Commissioners,

My name is Djamel Ameziane. I am a victim of the United States in its war on terror. For nearly 12 years, I was held by the US military at Guantánamo Bay, without charge, trial or fair process to challenge the legality of my detention. I was held without any legitimate basis, including for more than five years after I was first cleared for transfer. I was humiliated, tortured and abused, and discriminated against as a Muslim man each and every day that I was in US custody, from early January 2002, when Pakistani authorities turned me over to the US military and I was transferred to Kandahar Air Base in Afghanistan, until the time I was forcibly returned to Algeria in December 2013, despite my fears of persecution there. The United States treated me like an animal, or worse than an animal, because the Iguanas that roam freely at Guantánamo were protected by laws. I lived in a cage and was protected by no laws. I suffered abuse and mistreatment at the hands of the US Government, and I watched other detainees suffer the same fate. My family also suffered greatly. I have lasting physical and psychological injuries as a result of what I have endured.

Regrettably, because of those injuries, and in particular because of the depression and post-traumatic stress that I continue to suffer as a result of my detention at Guantánamo, I was not able to travel from Algeria to Mexico and testify before the Commission in person as I had hoped and planned. The stress and anxiety from the uncertainty about whether I would be allowed to travel, or whether as a former detainee I might be detained or interrogated were too great. I became depressed, and my mind started to sink into a dark place, so I decided that I could not make the journey. I am very sorry. But I would like to thank the Commission and the Government of Mexico for their efforts to arrange for me to attend the hearing in person. The Mexican Government issued me a visa at its embassy in Algiers, and the Mexican Ambassador to Algeria met with me personally and was very kind and encouraging of me.

What I wanted to tell the Commission in person, and what I want to explain now, are some of the horrors that I endured at Guantánamo, and what has happened since my release. These are only a few examples; it would take me days to explain it all.

As my lawyers have detailed for the Commission, and as the US also knows well, I was a refugee from Algeria. I fled the country in the early 1990s to avoid the civil war that devastated our country. I lived legally in Vienna for several years, handing out flyers by the Opera House and later working as a chef, but was not allowed to remain in Austria. My work visa was not renewed in 1995. I went from there to Canada, where I immediately applied for political asylum. I lived in Montreal legally for five years until my asylum application was rejected at the end of 2000. Fearing return to Algeria, I panicked and fled to Afghanistan, where as a single Muslim man I could live without papers, and without harassment, while I tried to figure out what to do next. I lived there for a few months until the tragedy of 9/11 happened and the US invaded, after which I fled right away to Pakistan to escape the fighting in which I had no interest and took no part.

After arriving in Pakistan, I was welcomed initially but quickly betrayed by villagers who were rounding up foreigners and selling them for bounties. I was turned over to the Pakistani forces, who in turn gave me to the US military, which flew me to Kandahar on a military cargo plane. I was chained, handcuffed, hooded and tied with other prisoners to the floor of the plane. When we arrived, it was total chaos and mayhem. We were beaten and brutalized by the soldiers. One thing I remember clearly were armed guards yelling, “Kill them! Kill them!” as we arrived. And I remember the soldiers had vicious, barking dogs that they would bring close to our heads, while we were chained face-down to the freezing cold ground, so close in fact that I could feel their breath on my face. The guards used the dogs to terrify us, and because they thought that we as Muslims especially did not like dogs. I was in shock, but looking back on it, that was probably the guards’ intention. Because right when I thought I could not take any more abuse and might lose my mind, I was brutally interrogated. I also encountered other prisoners who were hooded and beaten, and others who were deprived of sleep to the point of hallucination, all in an effort to get them to confess to various things that the interrogators said they had done. This went on continuously while I was held in Kandahar.

In February 2002, I was transferred to Guantánamo, and I thought my life was over completely. For the 15-hour flight, I was once again chained and bound with others, with opaque goggles, earmuffs and a mask over my nose and mouth. I was chained to a seat, forbidden from speaking, and it was living hell. I was not treated like a human being.

When I arrived at Guantánamo, I was placed in an outdoor cage in Camp X-Ray. My cell was like a dog kennel, and indeed it was unfit for a human being. The cell was two meters square and made of wire mesh, with a cement floor and a roof of sheet metal. At first we were not permitted to speak much at all, and we had no amenities. I was eventually given a thin mat and blanket, a bucket for water, and a bucket for human waste, as well as a few other small items. We were given food, but no time to eat it, and the guards constantly harassed us and yelled obscenities at us. They purposefully interrupted our prayers and systematically deprived us of sleep. They sprayed us with water when we slept. We were searched and harassed and demeaned constantly. At times I was also placed in solitary confinement in Camp 1, which was part of the Camp Delta complex that housed Camps 1, 2, 3 and eventually 4, all built after my arrival at Guantánamo. I was left alone for periods lasting up to one month in a cold, rusty metal cell. Everything at Guantánamo rusts quickly in the hot, salty sea air. I slept there on a very cold metal bed, but once again was often kept awake at night by guards making a racket outside my cell.

Thinking back on those early days at Guantánamo, I do not know how I did not go completely crazy. My experiences there were like a nightmare from which I could not awake. Thousands of miles from my home and my family, with no contact with the outside world, I did not even think my family would know where to look for me. They probably thought I was dead. Indeed, after I was released I learned from my brother in Canada that they did not know where I was or what had happened to me until a Canadian official told him a few years after my arrival that I was in Guantánamo. My brother could not believe it.

Again, there are so many instances in which I was abused and tormented and discriminated against that I might take me a week to explain them all.

After a few months in Camp X-Ray, I was moved around through different camps within Camp Delta, and the abuse continued as the prison filled up with more and more detainees from countries all around the world. All were Muslim. We even heard that there were children as young as maybe 10 years old held in another camp separate from ours, and elderly men as old as their 90s. I do not know what ever happened to them, or to most of the other prisoners I encountered there.

Eventually, the physical abuse that mostly characterized my early years in Guantánamo gave way to psychological abuse. Although the physical harassment and abuse continued, as did the religious discrimination, the psychological abuse was far worse. I would rather have continued to be beaten physically than locked away in isolation and forgotten, which is what happened to me.

In April 2007, I was moved to solitary confinement in Camp 6 for no apparent reason. Perhaps it was to punish me for meeting with my lawyers and litigating a habeas corpus case to challenge my detention. Maybe it was just to be sadistic. I do not know. But what I can say with certainty is that my health and well-being took a turn for the worst in Camp 6. For to understand Camp 6, you must envision what we called a tomb above the ground. A super-max type prison made of concrete and steel, with no windows and only single cells. There, I was kept in a windowless room in isolation, and because I could see nothing but white walls for almost 24 hours a day, nearly every day, my eyesight deteriorated. I asked repeatedly for an eye exam, but adequate medical treatment was denied to me for almost one year. I received an examination and was promised glasses for a long time, but did not receive glasses until months later, and only after my attorney found out and made a request on my behalf. Even then, the glasses I received were the wrong prescription, and I could not wear them without hurting my eyes further. Camp 6 was also kept deliberately cold 24 hours a day, and as a result I suffered from rheumatism in my legs and feet, which continues to this day. All the while, too, interrogators continued to harass and threaten me, including with forced transfer to Algeria, where they led me to believe I would be tortured and killed.

If you want to begin to understand what this feels like, to be locked in isolation in an entirely white cell without relief for months or years on end, I ask you please to consider this: go into your bathroom wherever you live, close and lock the door, and remain there for one year. You will be allowed to have exactly one censored book or magazine at a time, from a limited library. The only time you will leave is occasionally for a quick shower, where you will be mostly naked in front of your guards, to harass you and offend your religious beliefs, or maybe for an hour every day or two where you will be taken to another cell where you can see a small patch of sky and nothing else. This might happen at any time including the middle of the night, so you might not actually see the sky. Maybe or maybe not there will be another prisoner nearby, and maybe or maybe not the guards will allow you to speak with one another. The only other time you will leave your cell is to be interrogated and threatened, or to meet with your lawyer, which would immediately be followed by further interrogations about what you discussed with your lawyer. Indeed, the guards did whatever they could to discourage and prevent us from meeting with our lawyers. Sometimes they would say, for example, “You have a reservation today.” Reservation to us meant interrogation, so we would refuse, only to find out later that it was supposed to be a meeting with our lawyers. If you can start to imagine this sort of thing happening day in and day out, week after week, then you can start to understand how I suffered terribly and nearly lost my mind in that horrible place. You would be lucky if you do not lose your mind as some of the men did, and as I nearly did, staring at the walls of Camp 6.

When President Obama came into office in January 2009 was the only time when I had much hope, although it was soon to be dashed. Conditions improved in the camps when he came into office. We were moved out of isolation and allowed to interact in a more communal environment even in Camp 6. For the first time, we were allowed to pray and celebrate the Muslim holy days together without fear of retribution. We were comforted and sustained by our faith, and by each other, but we were reminded of our home and families with whom we had no contact except through occasional, censored letters sent through the ICRC, or through our lawyers.

Still, when Obama came into office, I had some hope, at least for a short time. When he came into office transfers out of Guantánamo continued and several detainees like me who feared persecution in their own countries were resettled in third countries, mostly in Europe. I thought I would be transferred too, perhaps to Austria, Canada or Luxembourg, each of which had expressed interest in resettling me. But it did not happen. On the contrary, the US authorities purposefully blocked my transfer to any country except Algeria, the place I had fled violence and instability almost a decade earlier, and the one place I feared most.

I want you to understand that I had been approved for transfer by 2008, when the Bush administration concluded there was no military reason to detain me. This was a huge relief when my lawyers told me, but it meant almost nothing as a practical matter. When Obama came into office, his task force also reviewed my case and approved me for transfer right away. When this happened, I lost the right to litigate my habeas case because the government said, and the judge agreed, there was nothing left to be done because I would get out soon. But that did not happen, of course, and I was held for several more years.

To make matters worse, the US government went to court to stop my lawyers at CCR from telling anyone I had been approved for transfer by either administration. My lawyers were prohibited from saying simply that “Djamel Ameziane has been approved for transfer from Guantánamo.” Indeed, after my lawyers filed the petition and request for precautionary measures at issue today before the Commission, in large measure in order to try to prevent my forced transfer to Algeria, my habeas lawyers at CCR were prevented from informing the Commission that I was approved for transfer. They could not even inform their co-counsel at CEJIL. In particular, when this matter was referred for friendly settlement discussions, which I was aware of and followed closely from Guantánamo through my lawyers, they were barred by the US from informing the Commission or CEJIL that I was approved for transfer. They were also prevented from informing OAS member states of my cleared status, including one country that expressed interest in resettling me but which I will not name here in order to honor its request for confidentiality. The bottom line is that the US cleared me for transfer, but did everything in its power to keep me in detention and keep secret from the outside world my cleared status. And I remind you that this was the Obama administration, which vowed to close the prison but failed to take the necessary steps to achieve that goal.

I remained in detention for several more years. By January 2011, transfers essentially stopped entirely. For the next two years, only about four or five men were released from the prison by Obama. During this time, too, ironically, the US authorities did not even make serious efforts to transfer me to Algeria. They did nothing, which was quite obvious to those of us who remained in detention, waiting for our turn to come. We saw and felt no progress. It was extremely depressing, our hopes risen only to be dashed again. It was this inaction, too, that caused the outbreak of a hunger strike at the prison in April 2013. The US military’s reaction to the strike was swift and barbaric. Rather than address the detainees’ concerns and try to alleviate their concerns, the military locked everyone back in single-cell isolation in Camp 6. Many men were also force-fed, and in one instance that I was aware of, the guards shot some detainees with rubber bullets at point-blank range for resisting. This only caused the hunger strike to spread to most of the other detainees. I, too, joined the strike in protest, and because at that point I had really lost all hope and wanted to die. I was finished. During the summer of 2013, I lost 60 lbs., my nose bled and my skin deteriorated into rashes and scabs. I was a wreck, emotionally, too. I could not even bear to meet with my lawyers in person. We communicated only by mail.

In the end, President Obama recommitted to closing the prison and transfers began again. The hunger strike subsided, but I and many other men never really recovered from that point onward. Indeed, the few months that followed are somewhat of a blur to me now. My lawyers went back to court to press my case because I still was not being transferred. But the reaction of the State Department was harsh: the president’s new Guantánamo Envoy began forcibly repatriating detainees to countries where they feared persecution, notwithstanding resettlement offers elsewhere. That is what happened to me.

In December 2013, I was forced back to Algeria. Although I feared persecution, which I had conveyed to the US authorities and the ICRC, as well as to this Commission, I did not kick and scream and cling to my cell door as some men did. I went to the plane to accept whatever further fate awaited me. I was broken, I was finished, I had nothing left. I was transferred from Guantánamo Bay on December 4, 2013 at about 3:00 am (Guantánamo time). I arrived at the airport in Algiers on the same day at 8:00 pm (Algerian time). It was a direct flight, on board of a military cargo plane, which lasted about twelve hours. I was transferred along with another Algerian prisoner, Belkacem Bensayeh. My feet were chained to the floor of the plane and my hands were shackled to my waist for the entire flight. I was blindfolded and was wearing noise-cancelling headphones as well. The procedure was essentially the same as when I was brought to Guantánamo. After arriving in Algiers, I was handed over to the Air Force Border Guards, who boarded the plane, cuffed my hands behind my back, and pulled my t-shirt up to cover my face. I was only wearing a t-shirt while on the plane, where the temperature was very cold. The temperature was also very cold when I arrived in Algeria. They brutally got me out of the plane and put me in a police car and drove me to the police station where I was subjected to a short interrogation. After they took my fingerprints and a mug shot, I was turned over to the secret police, the GDNS (General Directorate of the National Security), where I remained until December 10, 2013. I was subjected to several interrogations, which were conducted by various intelligence agencies. I was held in a large cell along with criminals and drug traffickers – Common Law criminals – in poor living conditions, especially as far as hygiene is concerned, which had a serious impact on my health. I became very ill as a result, and I believe because of that I was released.

On December 10, 2013, I was taken to a courthouse in Algiers where I met with the General Prosecutor, and I was then interrogated by the Investigative Judge. I was placed under judicial supervision and then released on probation. And I was ordered to report to the court once a month while waiting for the court to render its decision, which I did as directed.

At that time I was released and went to live with my brother. I was very ill and could not speak or get up from bed for a long time. My family was very worried for my health, and also worried that the secret police would come and take me away forever. I also did not have any identity documents. I had no right to work or ability to earn income. Indeed, the US kept some money that I had when I was captured and to this day has refused to return it to me. This is money that I earned while working in Canada, and money that I need in order to fulfill my most basic needs for food, clothes and shelter. Instead, I have had to borrow money in order to take the bus to report to the court and in order to live. I still have little spare clothing, and I have no home of my own. My brother has offered me temporary lodging in his small home where he lives with his six children, but I fear that I may become a burden to him. I do not have any money to rent an apartment and the officials from various government agencies have explicitly indicated to me that they will offer me neither financial nor housing assistance, nor will they offer me any kind of assistance whatsoever. I have also sought assistance from the ICRC and received again the same response, they cannot help me in this way.

To summarize, the US government has not only refused to compensate me for twelve years of imprisonment in Guantánamo, but it has seized the money I had earned through my hard work in Canada. Even the Algerian police officers who detained me when I first arrived to Algeria were outraged to learn such a thing. They said that it was so petty from a country to do such a thing when it claims to be the leader of human rights and plays the role of the world’s “vigilante police.”

Since then, I have continued to try to improve my situation but it has been very difficult because of my prior detention at Guantánamo. As I have explained, I have obtained documentation, but still have no permanent work, no money, and no place of my own to live. But for the generosity of my brother, I would be homeless today at 50 years old. Indeed, I fear that I am a burden to my family.

I have realized too the toll that my time in Guantánamo has taken on my family. While I was detained my dear father died. I learned of my father’s death when I was in the hell of Camp 6, locked in a windowless room for 24 hours a day. I urge you to think about that and how you would feel under those circumstances that I have already described. You would be crushed and devastated as I was, and you would hope to die as I once did in that awful place.

I also learned since from my brother in Canada that mother, who is now very elderly, tried to send clothes and other items to me in Guantánamo, to care for me. I never received them. My brothers knew I would not, but how could they stop my mother from trying, it is what mothers do, they said. My mother, and my other family members, are surely also victims of Guantánamo.

There was also a time when I wanted to have a family of my own but this too has been prevented both by my detention at Guantánamo and by the after-effects of my detention. I am unemployed, in ill-health, and in need medical care. I have no access to employment, as I have said. In Algeria, the rate of unemployment is very high, and with someone like me who has been out of the workforce for more than a decade and who carries stigma of Guantánamo, it is impossible. Also as I have said, I struggled for a long time to get my identity papers signed up for public assistance and housing but have not received it, and tried to find work consistently but unsuccessfully. I have had some temporary jobs filling in for others when they take vacation, and done some English-French translation work for my lawyers and some others, but that is it.

In Spring 2016, I was also put on trial in Algeria. I was notified a few days ahead of the trial that I would face criminal charges alleging my membership in a terrorist group outside of Algeria. I was very surprised and terrified, and contacted my lawyers at CCR. I was certain a guilty plea would be manufactured to ensure I remained in prison forever even though I was innocent. But thankfully, and to my surprise, the trial lasted fifteen minutes and I was acquitted. Not only that, but I was fully exonerated of any wrongdoing and released without conditions. This is how I was ultimately able to obtain a passport. I am now free and clear as far as the Algerians are concerned. I am very thankful for this, particularly as I had feared persecution for so many years. It is a weight that has been lifted from me.

But it is still very difficult, and painful, to think about everything that happened to me at Guantánamo, to learn how my family suffered, and to move forward with my life. I am 50 years old, and I lost many prime years of my life to Guantánamo. It was all for no good reason, and at great, great cost. There have been so many terrible events that it is hard, especially now, to remember every injustice. Thinking about it overwhelms me and I get numb. My mind sometimes goes blank. I know from my experience that Guantánamo was created to destroy people, to destroy Muslims, who are the only people to have been held there, and it has nearly destroyed me. I want to be free of it forever, to forget and move on with my remaining years.

Members of the Commission, what I respectfully ask of you today is: please issue a merits decision and decide my case. I ask you to order reparations and other relief so that I can get the assistance that I need and move forward with my life, and put Guantánamo behind me forever.

I also want an apology. I ask the representatives of the US: will you say on behalf of your government that you are sorry for what the US Government did to me?

To the Commission I also have one final request. I ask you please to stay involved on the issue of Guantánamo and make sure your voice is heard by the US and the international community. Please help the men who remain at Guantánamo, including my countryman Sufyian Barhoumi [approved for release by a Periodic Review Board in August 2016, but still held]. I have seen his family, his mother and his brothers since my release, and they are devastated by his continuing detention, as my family was for many years. Please, remain involved on these issues, and urge OAS member states to accept detainees for resettlement. To do what El Salvador and Uruguay have done by taking men from Guantánamo. Help to close this horrible prison.

Thank you.

Djamel Ameziane

September 2, 2017

Note: The photo at the top of this article is by Debi Cornwall, whose photography book, Welcome to Camp America: Inside Guantánamo Bay, is published this month.

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer, film-maker and singer-songwriter (the lead singer and main songwriter for the London-based band The Four Fathers, whose music is available via Bandcamp). He is the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign (and the Countdown to Close Guantánamo initiative, launched in January 2016), the co-director of We Stand With Shaker, which called for the release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison (finally freed on October 30, 2015), and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by the University of Chicago Press in the US, and available from Amazon, including a Kindle edition — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here — or here for the US).

To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Also see the six-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, and The Complete Guantánamo Files, an ongoing, 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011. Also see the definitive Guantánamo habeas list, the full military commissions list, and the chronological list of all Andy’s articles.

Please also consider joining the Close Guantánamo campaign, and, if you appreciate Andy’s work, feel free to make a donation.

Quarterly Fundraiser Day 4: Why I Need Your Money ($2000/£1600) to Keep Me Working as a Reader-Funded Guantánamo Journalist

Please click on the ‘Donate’ button below to make a donation towards the $2000 (£1600) I’m trying to raise to support my work on Guantánamo for the next three months!

 

Dear friends, supporters, and any interested passers-by,

I need your help, and I won’t beat around the bush. I’m a reader-funded journalist, activist and creator, and I can’t continue to do what I do without your help. I’m trying to raise $200 (£1600) to support my work for the next there months, and any amount – $15, $25, $50, $100 or more will be very gratefully received. Click on the ‘Donate’ button above to make a donation, via Paypal.

So what do I do, and why do I need your money?

Well, since 2006, I’ve been researching and writing about the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay and working to get it closed down, because it’s a legal, moral and ethical abomination, and because outrageous lies have been told about the significance of the men held here (the “worst of the worst,” we were told, although most, as I have demonstrated repeatedly, were no such thing).

First — unpaid — I wrote a book, The Guantánamo Files, telling the stories of the prisoners, which took me 14 months, and then I began publishing articles here, on my website, on a daily basis, as I could find no one at the time prepared to pay me to write about everything I had learned through 14 months of research and writing.

In the intervening years, I have sometimes been paid by mainstream media outlets, but I also value the independence of my website, and my ability to write without any outside interference, and that remains crucial in many ways, as I deliberately blur the false standards the so-called liberal media sets itself, which involve “objectivity” — reporting news stories giving equal weight to both sides of any story, and saving opinions for op-eds.

In contrast, I have always reported news stories about Guantánamo (and about other topics I write about) with an editorial voice, to show my disgust at what has been taking place, and I regard the failure to do so in the mainstream media as a failure to challenge the dark forces shaping our lives and ruining our world. I’d also like it to be noted that the right-wing media, in contrast, has no pretence to “objectivity.”

An example of this false adherence to “objectivity” came in 2008, when I worked with Carlotta Gall on a front-page New York Times story about a prisoner at Guantánamo, Abdul Razzaq Hekmati, who had been a ferocious opponent of the Taliban, but had been mistakenly sent to Guantánamo, where the authorities persistently ignored his efforts to clear his name, and, adding insult to injury, slandered him after his death. Within hours of the article being published, someone in the Bush administration had called the Times to tell them that I shouldn’t have been given a byline, and the editors duly capitulated, printing an Editors’ Note apologizing for giving me a byline because I “had a point of view.”

As the Editors’ Note put it:

Mr. Worthington has written a book, “The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison,” in which he takes the position that Guantánamo is part of what he describes as a cruel and misguided response by the Bush administration to the Sept. 11 attacks. He has also expressed strong criticism of Guantánamo in articles published elsewhere.

The editors were not aware of Mr. Worthington’s outspoken position on Guantánamo. They should have described his contribution to the reporting instead of listing him as co-author, and noted that he had a point of view.

Overlooked in all this was that I “had a point of view” because I had studied Guantánamo for 14 months, and had reached the understandable and accurate conclusion that factual research only established that it was an unforgivable place that should never have been opened, and that should be closed as swiftly as possible.

My independence, therefore, is partly though necessity — to allow me to say what need saying without being prevented, or having what needs to be said watered down.

But there is, of course, a price to pay for this independence, and this is that, once you step outside of the mainstream media, with, for the most part, its funding through advertising, and, for the print media, through paper sales, there is no money to pay writers. The internet, and the blogging revolution that I got involved in quite early on (as a full-time blogger from May 2007), allows anyone a platform, and I can say, I believe, after ten years, that if you have a clear focus and some talent, you will get noticed, but getting paid is a different matter, and it’s on this point that I return to where I began — and ask you to support me if you can because the kind of writer, activist and creator I am is not corporate-backed, or funded through advertising, but one supported by you.

This applies to my Guantánamo work, for which I am best-known, and which involves not just this website, but also the Close Guantánamo campaign, associated social media, and the costs of running the various sites, but it also applies to all the other work I undertake — my work on social justice issues, mainly, but not exclusively related to British politics, my photography (both my protest photos and my recently launched project ‘The State of London’), and my music, with my band The Four Fathers.

This is probably not the place to start a major discussion about the difficulties of funding all creative endeavors at this point in time, but I think that we collectively face a problem whose scale is not fully acknowledged: essentially, that, since the internet became central to so many of our lives, a huge amount of creative work has become unpaid, and the relatively recent growth of social media, apps and tech companies continues to shift the balance away from creators to a handful of people essentially in charge of the technology, who have become almost incomprehensibly rich at everyone else’s expense.

To some extent, everyone is being ripped off — every time we share our photos, our writing, our thoughts, our creations, on social media and through apps, we are making money for those who own the platforms, whose extraordinary wealth is only possible because we have all been persuaded to provide everything we do for free. For people with paid jobs elsewhere, this is perhaps not so much of a problem, but for creative people it often makes for a profoundly challenging, precarious existence financially, on more or less a full-time basis. For me, these particular obstacles permeate the worlds I’m involved in — writing, photography and music — and, as a result, I really do rely on your support.

To make a donation, please click on the “Donate” button above to make a payment via PayPal. You can also make a recurring payment on a monthly basis by ticking the box marked, “Make This Recurring (Monthly),” and if you are able to do so, it would be very much appreciated.

Thanks for listening, and I hope the thoughts I’ve outlined above have some resonance for you.

With thanks, as ever, for your support.

Andy Worthington

London

September 14, 2017

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer, film-maker and singer-songwriter (the lead singer and main songwriter for the London-based band The Four Fathers, whose music is available via Bandcamp). He is the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign (and the Countdown to Close Guantánamo initiative, launched in January 2016), the co-director of We Stand With Shaker, which called for the release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison (finally freed on October 30, 2015), and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by the University of Chicago Press in the US, and available from Amazon, including a Kindle edition — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here — or here for the US).

To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Also see the six-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, and The Complete Guantánamo Files, an ongoing, 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011. Also see the definitive Guantánamo habeas list, the full military commissions list, and the chronological list of all Andy’s articles.

Please also consider joining the Close Guantánamo campaign.

At Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Former Guantánamo Prisoner Djamel Ameziane Asks US to Apologize, and Calls for Prison’s Closure

Please support my work as a reader-funded journalist! I’m currently trying to raise $2500 (£2000) to support my writing and campaigning on Guantánamo and related issues over the next three months of the Trump administration.

 

Last week, in Mexico City, a symbolically powerful blow was dealt to the United States’ notion of itself as a nation founded on the rule of law, which respects the rule of law and also respects human rights.

The occasion was a hearing of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), a key part of the Organization of American States (OAS), whose mission is “to promote and protect human rights in the American hemisphere,” and whose resolutions are supposed to be binding on the US, which is a member state.

The hearing last Wednesday was for Djamel Ameziane, an Algerian citizen, and an ethnic Berber, who was held at Guantánamo for nearly 12 years.

In the hearing last week, at which Ameziane was represented by the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL) and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), the lawyers representing him urged the IACHR to “hold the US accountable for the abuse” of Ameziane and the “discrimination” against him. CCR explained, in a press release, that it was “a landmark hearing,” and the following brief explanation of his story:

For nearly 12 years, Djamel Ameziane, an Algerian citizen, was arbitrarily detained without charge at the Guantánamo Bay prison camp. During his detention, Ameziane was tortured and suffered from other forms of abuse. In 2008, the US approved his release from Guantánamo, yet he remained imprisoned for another five years. In December 2013, Ameziane was forcibly repatriated to Algeria despite having fled from violence and persecution for belonging to a minority ethnicity.

As CCR also explained:

The hearing marked the first time the IACHR was asked to issue a merits report based on human rights violations suffered by a former detainee at the Guantánamo Bay detention center. Throughout their presentation, the petitioners highlighted the importance of the Commission’s role in addressing the impunity and lack of reparations in Ameziane’s case, and also highlighted that his detention and torture were never contested by the State. Moreover, the petitioners noted that the decision itself would mark a historic victory for Ameziane and other victims of the War on Terror.

Crucially, the lawyers also “voiced Ameziane’s own requests, which he had previously submitted in writing,” and which have particular relevance because Donald Trump has repeatedly stated his intention to not only keep Guantánamo open, but also to bring new prisoners there. In his statement, as CCR described it, “Ameziane urged OAS member states to remain involved in the issue given the current context in the US, and assist in the transfer of Guantánamo detainees and supporting efforts to close the detention center, among others.”

Ameziane stated, “Members of the Commission, what I respectfully ask of you today is this: Please issue a merits decision and decide my case. I ask you to order reparations and other relief so that I can get the assistance that I need and move forward with my life, and put Guantánamo behind me forever. I also want an apology. I ask the representatives of the US: Will you say on behalf of your government that you are sorry for what the US Government did to me?”

Speaking about the hearing, Elsa Meany, Senior Attorney at CEJIL, said, “This is not a case with complicated considerations of law, as all the violations detailed were committed against Djamel by state actors, while in state custody. The Commission has, in fact, already undertaken much of the legal analysis necessary to decide this case. However, the current legal framework in the US provides civil and criminal immunity for those responsible that effectively provides an amnesty for grave violations of human rights, in contravention of clear Inter-American standards. A decision by the Commission will constitute a decisive step towards accountability and recognition of Djamel’s fight for justice and reparations.”

Wells Dixon, Senior Staff Attorney at CCR, said, “Over the past 16 years, the Commission has not yet issued a Merits Report in relation to the violations committed by the United States within the framework of the War on Terror, despite having multiple pending cases regarding rendition, unlawful and arbitrary detention and torture at Guantánamo. We urge the Commission to build on existing jurisprudence and decide the present case, consolidating a set of standards that will have implications in this region and globally.”

CCR also explained that, at the hearing, “the Commissioners stated they would continue to study the issue and expressed consternation at Ameziane’s prolonged detention at the camp without any charges, indicating that reparations should be made, including, at a minimum, that his personal belongings be returned.”

CCR added, “If the IACHR rules in favor of Ameziane, it would be the first case regarding human rights violations committed at the Guantánamo Bay prison that a regional human rights body issues a decision on. The decision would mark a historic victory for him and Guantánamo Bay detainees and their right to judicial reparations.”

The IACHR and Guantánamo: the background

Djamel Ameziane’s case has, memorably, been before the IACHR before. In April 2012, as I reported at the time, the IACHR accepted jurisdiction over his case, the first time the organization had accepted jurisdiction over the case of a Guantánamo prisoner.

President Obama responded by forcibly repatriating Ameziane (and another Algerian) in December 2013, even though, when the IACHR was first notified go Ameziane’s case in 2008, they had stated, unambiguously, that “[a]ll necessary measures must be taken to ensure Djamel Ameziane is not transferred to a country where he would face persecution” — a requirement that, objectively, the Algerian government could not be trusted to uphold.

Since then, two more Guantánamo prisoners have submitted their cases to the IACHR. The first, as I reported in an article entitled, Guantánamo “An Endless Horror Movie”: Hunger Striker Appeals for Help to Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, is Muaz al-Alawi, identified in Guantánamo as Moath al-Alwi, who, in February 2015, urged the IACHR to “issue precautionary measures to end his indefinite detention,” and the second, in March last year, as I reported at the time in an article entitled, US Military Lawyer Submits Petition to Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on Behalf of Mohammad Rahim, CIA Torture Victim Held at Guantánamo, was on behalf of one of the so-called “high-value detainees” at the prison.

In March 2015, the IACHR issued a resolution in al-Alwi’s case calling for the US to undertake “the necessary precautionary measures in order to protect the life and personal integrity of Mr. al-Alwi,” on the basis that, “After analyzing the factual and legal arguments put forth by the parties, the Commission considers that the information presented shows prima facie that Mr. Moath al-Alwi faces a serious and urgent situation, as his life and personal integrity are threatened due to the alleged detention conditions.”

Nevertheless, al-Alwi continues to be held, and in February, Judge Richard Leon, a district court judge, denied his efforts to be released based on a plausible argument that, as Buzzfeed described it, “he could no longer be held because the US combat mission in Afghanistan was over,” in which he cited statements to that effect by President Obama.

Note: In a second article to accompany this one, I’ll post Djamel Ameziane’s full statement.

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer, film-maker and singer-songwriter (the lead singer and main songwriter for the London-based band The Four Fathers, whose music is available via Bandcamp). He is the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign (and the Countdown to Close Guantánamo initiative, launched in January 2016), the co-director of We Stand With Shaker, which called for the release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison (finally freed on October 30, 2015), and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by the University of Chicago Press in the US, and available from Amazon, including a Kindle edition — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here — or here for the US).

To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Also see the six-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, and The Complete Guantánamo Files, an ongoing, 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011. Also see the definitive Guantánamo habeas list, the full military commissions list, and the chronological list of all Andy’s articles.

Please also consider joining the Close Guantánamo campaign, and, if you appreciate Andy’s work, feel free to make a donation.

Calling for the Closure of Guantánamo on the 16th Anniversary of the 9/11 Attacks

It’s the start of my latest quarterly fundraiser. Please support my work as a reader-funded journalist! I’m currently trying to raise $2500 (£2000) to support my writing and campaigning on Guantánamo and related issues over the next three months of the Trump administration.

 

Today, as we remember the terrible terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, I am also aware that it was those attacks that, in turn, led to a terrible development by the United States that has consumed my life for the last eleven and a half years — the establishment, four months later, of the prison at Guantánamo Bay, where men have been subjected to torture, and are held indefinitely without charge or trial, for the most without anything resembling evidence.

Largely seized by America’s allies in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and sold for bounty payments, most of the prisoners arrived at Guantánamo without any information about them at all, and the US authorities then proceeded to create what they pretended was evidence by interrogating the prisoners using torture and other forms of duress, thereby rendering most of it worthless — although that conclusion remains something that, sadly, most US citizens, and a shockingly large number of lawmakers neither know nor care about.

Exactly nine years ago, on the seventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, I had an op-ed published in the Guardian, “Bush’s bitter legacy,” in which I began by stating the following, which largely remains relevant today:

Today, as we pause to remember the 3,000 people who died in the dreadful attacks of September 11 2001, it is also important to remember that, in terms of the Bush administration’s response, the bitter legacy of that day remains a deep stain on America’s moral standing.

In order to pursue a “war” against a group of terrorist criminals, the administration flouted the US Constitution and the bill of rights, dismissed the Geneva conventions, endorsed imprisonment without charge or trial, created a system of show trials for terror suspects out of thin air, granted themselves the right to spy on American citizens with impunity, and invaded a sovereign country without justification.

I also noted how “[d]ecisive leadership is now required to correct these mistakes, and to revive the United States as a country founded on the rule of law,” and proceeded to suggest that “[s]ome of this can be accomplished with a few pieces of crucial legislation – upholding the absolute ban on torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, prohibiting the use of “extraordinary rendition”, holding prisoners seized in wartime in accordance with the Geneva conventions, and bringing criminals to justice within the US court system.”

Unfortunately, although the Bush program of torture and rendition is over, shady goings-on still take place in the shadows that attend America’s covert activities in numerous countries around the world, and assassinations by drone have replaced Bush’s network of “black sites.” In addition, at Guantánamo, men are still held without their imprisonment being in accordance with the Geneva conventions, and without anyone who has allegedly committed a crime being brought to justice within the US court system.

Nine years ago, some readers, I recall, thought it was unacceptably insensitive to even mention Guantánamo on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, and so, today, 16 years after the attacks, I looked through the headlines to see if that has changed, and was reassured to see a handful of articles specifically dealing with Guantánamo in relation to 9/11.

In the Guardian, Joanna Walters asked, “Will accused 9/11 architect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed ever come to trial?”, looking at how unacceptable it is that the trial for those accused of the 9/11 attacks has not yet taken place — and is still probably many, many years away, if it is to take place at all.

Walters noted that, although military prosecutors hope that his trial by military commission will begin in January 2019, “[m]ost interested experts think that is wildly optimistic, and are asking if [he] will ever stand trial at all.”

His lawyer, David Nevin, said, “It will take another two, three or four years to get the case to trial and it will take a year or so to try. Walters added that he “estimated there would likely follow an initial appeal that could take five years, then that appeal going up to the circuit court – another three or four years – and, maybe four years after that, a conclusion in the US supreme court up to 18 years from now – 34 years after the attacks.”

As Nevin added, “There’s every possibility that my client will die in prison before this process is completed.” He also said, “So you have to ask, why exactly are we doing this, or doing it in this way? We are spending millions and millions of [public] dollars every week for something that could be pointless.”

Al-Jazeera also covered the 9/11 trial today, in an article entitled, “Justice remains elusive on 9/11 anniversary,” and, for the New Yorker, Amy Davidson Sorkin wrote a highly critical piece, criticizing the military commissions, which involve ten of the 41 men still held, and also looking at the other men still held, and how it is that the prison is still open.

As she stated:

Five other prisoners … have been cleared for release, a long process that includes multiple agencies determining that they pose no threat. These are people who probably never should have been sent to Guantánamo in the first place; in some cases, they were ordered released many years ago but are still being held. (One problem is figuring out where to send them.) There are also twenty-six people who are known as “forever prisoners,” meaning that the Obama Administration was too uncertain about their innocence to release them but too timid to file charges against them—whether this was out of fear of an acquittal or because something embarrassing to the government might have emerged, it is impossible to say without a trial. President Obama enshrined this hesitation in a process of “periodic reviews.” The status of these prisoners remains what it is: indefinite detention on no charge, a distinctly un-American condition. The day before Obama left office, he sent a letter to Congress complaining that “politics” had kept him from closing the base. That is true, to an extent: even though George W. Bush had transferred twice as many prisoners as Obama ever did, once Obama took office, the Republicans used the prison issue as a cudgel. When the Obama Administration put together a comprehensive analysis demonstrating, among other things, that supermax prisons did a good job of holding even the worst terrorists, Senator James Inhofe, the Republican of Oklahoma, said that the report was “simply giving cover to President Obama so that he can continue what he is already actively working towards, which is bringing terrorists onto U.S. soil.” But politics is not something that just descends on a President, like a hurricane. Even before Congress made it much harder, the Obama Administration had muddled its chances to close Guantánamo. In 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder said that he would bring Mohammed to New York, to stand trial in federal court. This was the key moment; we might have had a trial years ago if the Administration had stuck to that decision. But, in the face of opposition from Republicans and local politicians, the Administration backed down.

She added, “What this means, in short, is that although Obama scaled Guantánamo down, and brought it a great distance from the days when prisoners were abused there, his successor, Donald Trump, could easily scale it up again.”

16 years after 9/11, this is, sadly, a possibility. As Amy Davidson Sorkin reminded readers, “He has said that he wants to keep it open: during the campaign, he said, ‘We’re gonna load it up with some bad dudes, believe me, we’re gonna load it up.’ That hasn’t happened yet, but, last week, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson announced that the job of the State Department official assigned to work on closing Guantánamo would be eliminated. The retired general John Kelly, Trump’s chief of staff, oversaw Guantánamo when he led the military’s Southern Command, and has dismissed criticisms of the site as media exaggerations.”

While we wait to see if recent suggestions that Trump is still committed to expanding Guantánamo will come to fruition, we must not allow anyone to suggest that the terrible events of September 11, 2001 provide any basis whatsoever for the ongoing existence of Guantánamo, a moral, legal and ethical abomination that shames the United States, and its claimed respect for the rule of law, every day that it remains open.

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer, film-maker and singer-songwriter (the lead singer and main songwriter for the London-based band The Four Fathers, whose music is available via Bandcamp). He is the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign (and the Countdown to Close Guantánamo initiative, launched in January 2016), the co-director of We Stand With Shaker, which called for the release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison (finally freed on October 30, 2015), and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by the University of Chicago Press in the US, and available from Amazon, including a Kindle edition — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here — or here for the US).

To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Also see the six-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, and The Complete Guantánamo Files, an ongoing, 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011. Also see the definitive Guantánamo habeas list, the full military commissions list, and the chronological list of all Andy’s articles.

Please also consider joining the Close Guantánamo campaign, and, if you appreciate Andy’s work, feel free to make a donation.

It’s My Quarterly Fundraiser: Can You Please Help Me Raise $2500 (£2000) to Support My Guantánamo Work for Three Months?

Please click on the ‘Donate’ button below to make a donation, via Paypal, towards the $2500 (£2000) I’m trying to raise to support my work on Guantánamo for the next three months!

 

Dear friends and supporters,

Today is the 16th anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, in which nearly 3,000 people died. As we take time to remember the victims of this terrible crime, I hope we can also remember that it is exactly 15 years and eight months since, in response, the Bush administration set up a cruel and lawless prison for Muslims at Guantánamo Bay, in Cuba, an unacceptable response that, for the last eleven and a half years, I have been writing about, exposing the lies and distortions used in a cynical effort to justify the imprisonment of the men (and boys) held there, and campaigning to get the prison shut down once and for all.

To help me to continue to work towards this aim, I need your help. Every three months I ask you, if you can, to support my work on Guantánamo and on related issues — holding accountable those who authorized and set up Guantánamo, for example, and those who authorized and set up the torture program whose story is woven so closely into its fabric.

No mainstream media outlet pays me a salary for what I do, and no educational institution or funding organization either, so I am largely dependent on your generosity to enable me to continue my work as a freelance investigative journalist, campaigner and commentator. Please click on the “Donate” button above to make a payment via PayPal.

You can also make a recurring payment on a monthly basis by ticking the box marked, “Make This Recurring (Monthly),” and if you are able to do so, it would be very much appreciated.

It would be profoundly reassuring to me if a hundred of you were able to donate $25 (£20) to support my work over the next three months, but I understand that this may be asking rather too much, as, for some time now, I’ve only generally succeeded in raising around $1000 per quarter rather than the $2500 I seek.

I understand that this is, in part, because Guantánamo has rather spectacularly dropped off the radar since Donald Trump became president, and I also understand that Trump’s arrogance and stupidity has meant that there are many, many other worthy causes calling out for people’s attention. However, an injustice ignored doesn’t go away, and although President Obama reduced Guantánamo’s population to just 41 men before he left office, those men continue to be held without the rights that prisoners should be able to take for granted — that they will face prompt trials if accused of a crime, and, if seized in wartime, will be held unmolested until an agreed end of hostilities under the Geneva Conventions.

The men at Guantánamo, shockingly, are still essentially political prisoners who can only be freed at the whim of the president — and with Donald Trump in the White House, it ought to be particularly unacceptable that their fate is completely dependent on someone so particularly unsuited to the demands of high office.

With your help, I will continue to work towards getting Guantánamo closed. Those of you with long memories will recall that there have been times before when the prison slipped off the radar — in 2011 and 2012, in particular, when Republican lawmakers raised obstacles to the release of prisoners, and President Obama responded not by challenging Congress, but by doing nothing, as he did until the prisoners themselves obliged him to act, embarking on a prison-wide hunger strike in 2013 that shone an uncomfortable spotlight on him, and led to unprecedented domestic and international criticism regarding his inaction.

With Donald Trump as president, it is, once more, an uphill struggle to remind people of the existence of Guantánamo, and to highlight the need for its closure, but as long as those of us who care — however small our numbers — refuse to be silenced, the dark forces who want to keep Guantánamo open forever will be thwarted in their efforts to do so without opposition. And, like others opposed to the existence of Guantánamo — primarily, these days, Witness Against Torture, Reprieve and the Center for Constitutional Rights — I will, through this website, through my related work with the Close Guantánamo campaign that I co-founded in 2012 with the attorney Tom Wilner, and through my music and photography, continue to call for the prison’s closure, and to point out that every day it remains open is an affront to the values that the United States claims to hold dear.

With thanks, as ever, for your support.

Andy Worthington

London

September 11, 2017

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer, film-maker and singer-songwriter (the lead singer and main songwriter for the London-based band The Four Fathers, whose music is available via Bandcamp). He is the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign (and the Countdown to Close Guantánamo initiative, launched in January 2016), the co-director of We Stand With Shaker, which called for the release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison (finally freed on October 30, 2015), and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by the University of Chicago Press in the US, and available from Amazon, including a Kindle edition — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here — or here for the US).

To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Also see the six-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, and The Complete Guantánamo Files, an ongoing, 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011. Also see the definitive Guantánamo habeas list, the full military commissions list, and the chronological list of all Andy’s articles.

Please also consider joining the Close Guantánamo campaign.

Photos: Festival of Resistance Against the DSEI Arms Fair in London’s Docklands, Sept. 9, 2017

See all my photos from the Festival of Resistance against the DSEI arms fair  on Flickr here!

Yesterday (September 9, 2017), the Campaign Against Arms Trade and Stop the Arms Fair organised a Festival of Resistance against the bi-annual international arms fair that takes place in London’s Docklands at the ExCeL exhibition centre, which I visited, played at, and took photos of. See my photos here. This UK government-backed orgy of trade in weapons of war and weapons of mass destruction tries to disguise itself by calling itself DSEI (Defence and Security Equipment International), but anyone perceptive can see through the PR-speak.

As the festival’s Facebook page explains, “As one of the world’s largest arms fairs, DSEI brings together over 1,500 arms companies and military delegations from over 100 countries. On display will be everything from crowd control equipment to machine guns, tanks, drones and even battleships.” Countries invited to take part, all with dire human rights records, include Bahrain, Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

The resistance to the DSEI has involved protests all week in advance of the arms fair itself, which runs from September 12-15. Throughout the week, dozens of protestors were arrested stopping arms-laden vehicles arriving at ExCeL, and this pattern continued during the festival, as protestors locked on to each other in the road or locked on to vehicles. Protests are also continuing throughout the coming week — see here for further details.

My band The Four Fathers played at the festival, along with other performers (the Commie Faggots and the Strawberry Thieves Socialist Choir, to name just two), and I was honoured to have been able to take part. I can think of few things more exhilarating than playing a cover of Bob Dylan’s ‘Masters of War’ as an arms-laden lorry drives up, protestors block its passage, the police start swarming, and a helicopter swoops down low and menacing. Despite the moments of tension, there was, in general, a very positive atmosphere all day, with hundreds of activists of all ages and from all walks of life taking the time to protest against the disgusting and disgraceful international arms trade, and its facilitators here in the UK.

Unfortunately, although the passion on display yesterday reminded me of how, at heart, much of my activism is directed against war, and not just, as my work on Guantánamo has demonstrated over the last eleven and a half years, on illegal imprisonment and torture, it’s sadly true that the mainstream media in this country generally walks hand-in-hand with the government and the establishment as a whole when it comes to supporting our disgusting involvement in the international arms trade, and our general bellicosity and warmongering. Why else would Jeremy Corbyn — a lifelong CND member and opponent of the insanely expensive and ethically unacceptable Trident nuclear missile programme — have attracted so much hostility from the establishment as a whole after his election as Labour leader in September 2015?

Most of the British establishment supports Trident, and supports the arms trade, despite our business clearly contributing to murder and torture in the countries mentioned above, and in numerous other countries that are serial abusers of human rights.

As a timely article in the Guardian yesterday, ‘British arms sales to repressive regimes soar to £5bn since election’, explained, Campaign Against Arms Trade “found that of the 49 countries that are classed as ‘not free’ by Freedom House, the independent organisation that promotes democracy, 36 have bought British-made weapons under the current government.”

As the Guardian article proceeded to explain:

Since 2015, Saudi Arabia has agreed orders for more than £3.75bn worth of British defence equipment – mainly bombs and fighter aircraft – up from £160m in the 22 months leading up to the election. Even when Saudi’s massive order book is stripped out, arms exports to repressive regimes have almost doubled since the Tory government was elected: orders to such countries, excluding Saudi, amount to almost £1.2bn, compared with £680m in the 22 months before the election.

Among the major buyers were: Algeria, which agreed a military helicopter deal in September 2015, worth £195m; Qatar, which is buying military support aircraft worth £120m; and China, which is subject to an arms embargo. Despite the embargo, the UK agreed a £16m deal to export components for military radar. One notable new customer is Azerbaijan, which bought £500,000 of “targeting equipment.”

As the Guardian also explained, following the Brexit referendum last June, “the Defence & Security Organisation, the government body that promotes arms manufacturers to overseas buyers, was moved from UK Trade & Investment to the Department for International Trade,” where, soon after, the international trade secretary, Liam Fox (a corrupt right-wing fanatic so untrustworthy that he had to resign as defence secretary under David Cameron, after it was revealed that he had given his friend, the lobbyist Adam Werritty, inappropriate access to the MoD and had allowed him to join official British government trips abroad), would “spearhead the push to promote the country’s military and security industries exports.”

The Guardian described how “charities and other organisations that campaign against the arms trade fear that a post-Brexit Britain will see an increase in weapons sold to countries with poor human rights records,” and this is indeed what can be expected to happen without concerted action to prevent it — by, most logically, everyone with a shred of decency working assiduously to prevent Brexit from happening.

Speaking to the Guardian, Andrew Smith of Campaign Against Arms Trade said, “The UK has consistently armed many of the most brutal and authoritarian regimes in the world, and a number have been invited to London to buy weapons. These arms sales aren’t morally neutral, they are a clear sign of political and military support for the regimes they are being sold to. The government has played an absolutely central role, and has consistently put arms exports to despots and dictators ahead of human rights.”

For further coverage — proving an exception to the general desert of coverage, in both the broadcast and print media — see ‘Bahrain is buying arms in London – and my family is paying the price’ by Bahraini activist Sayed Alwadaei, who spoke at the event yesterday, and this Guardian article last week as the protests began.

Also see the album here:

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer, film-maker and singer-songwriter (the lead singer and main songwriter for the London-based band The Four Fathers, whose music is available via Bandcamp). He is the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign (and the Countdown to Close Guantánamo initiative, launched in January 2016), the co-director of We Stand With Shaker, which called for the release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison (finally freed on October 30, 2015), and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by the University of Chicago Press in the US, and available from Amazon, including a Kindle edition — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here — or here for the US).

To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Also see the six-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, and The Complete Guantánamo Files, an ongoing, 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011. Also see the definitive Guantánamo habeas list, the full military commissions list, and the chronological list of all Andy’s articles.

Please also consider joining the Close Guantánamo campaign, and, if you appreciate Andy’s work, feel free to make a donation.