Andy Worthington's Blog, page 61

YES! The Supreme Court Tells Would-Be Tyrant Theresa May That Act of Parliament is Required to Trigger Article 50 and Leave EU; Now MPs Must Fight to Scrap Brexit

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Great news from the grown-ups in the room today — the Supreme Court — as the highest judges in the land have confirmed what the High Court ruled nearly three months ago: that the government cannot trigger Article 50 — the mechanism for leaving the EU — without an authorising act of parliament, as Lord Neuberger, the President of the Supreme Court, stated in a summary of the court’s decision, delivered by a majority of 8-3.

As the Guardian described it, Lord Neuberger “said the government generally has a prerogative power to change treaties, but it cannot do that if it will affect people’s rights.” As the summary of the court’s ruling stated, “The change in the law required to implement the referendum’s outcome must be made in the only way permitted by the UK constitution, namely by legislation.”

The judges added, “The Supreme Court holds that an Act of Parliament is required to authorise ministers to give notice of the decision of the UK to withdraw from the European Union.” See the full ruling here.

From the beginning, when Theresa May was the only minister left standing after the bloodbath that followed the EU referendum’s outcome, it was outrageous that a decision that was supposed to be about the importance of restoring sovereignty to the UK was hijacked when May, who had nominally been a Remain supporter, instead revealed herself as a would-be tyrant who was intent on ignoring the fact that sovereignty in the UK resides with Parliament and not with the Prime Minister or her cabinet.

That outrageous assertion has now been definitively overturned, but the hostility of so many Leave voters towards our judges has not only been contemptuous; it has also revealed how, fundamentally, they don’t care about genuine democracy, and would happily settle for being ruled by a tyrant, so long as she — or he — is part of the Tory establishment.

And what a waste of time and money! The latter is bad enough, but the time wasted, on an appeal that was always almost 100% certain to fail, can only reinforce the realisation that, despite its permanent bluster, the party that created the EU referendum nightmare (via David Cameron, with his unparalleled hubris and arrogance) has fatally wounded itself in the fallout, but is refusing to show it.

The arrogant, authoritarian, racist, xenophobic and Islamophobic May and her idiot Brexiteers — the foul Liam Fox, the pathetic clown Boris Johnson, and the misguided David Davis, clearly out of his depth — have no idea what they are doing, and are endlessly involved in a process of putting on a brave face, papering over the cracks, and pretending that wishful thinking and endless flag-waving will prevent Brexit from doing what it will undoubtedly do — hole our economy below the waterline, leaving us a tiny defenceless fish in a vast ocean of international trade, with no way of preventing the rest of the world from either ignoring us, because of our laughably high and deluded opinion of our importance, or subjecting us to new deals that exploit us mercilessly.

Even with this Supreme Court decision, though, the fundamental problem with the referendum remains apparent — that it was only advisory, and that it should not be implemented, because doing so will be the most damaging, unprovoked, self-inflicted wound imaginable.

As a House of Commons Briefing Paper in June 2015 explained (on page 25, under the heading, ‘5. Types of referendum’), with emphasis added:

This Bill requires a referendum to be held on the question of the UK’s continued membership of the European Union (EU) before the end of 2017. It does not contain any requirement for the UK Government to implement the results of the referendum, nor set a time limit by which a vote to leave the EU should be implemented. Instead, this is a type of referendum known as pre-legislative or consultative, which enables the electorate to voice an opinion which then influences the Government in its policy decisions. The referendums held in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in 1997 and 1998 are examples of this type, where opinion was tested before legislation was introduced. The UK does not have constitutional provisions which would require the results of a referendum to be implemented, unlike, for example, the Republic of Ireland, where the circumstances in which a binding referendum should be held are set out in its constitution.

As for the damage that Brexit will cause unless we can prevent — or, hopefully, unless newly-empowered MPs can prevent it — see the photo on the left that contains a key excerpt from Politics.co.uk editor Ian Dunt’s essential book Brexit: What The Hell Happens Now?

I was first alerted to this excerpt by the human rights lawyer Sarah Kay in late November, and I tweeted this excerpt at the time, featuring the chilling words of former Italian Prime Minister Giuliano Amato, who had drafted Article 50, under pressure — ironically — from the British. Dunt described it as “a punishment mechanism,” a description with which Amato concurred. “I wrote Article 50, so I know it well,” Amato said, “My intention was that it should be a classic safety valve that was there, but never used.” As Dunt explained, “Article 50 will make any country that leaves the EU suffer. If another leader ‘is as mad as Cameron’ and offers a referendum on leaving the EU, Amato warned, they should know that: ‘When it comes to the economy, they have to lose.’”

I’m only halfway through Dunt’s brilliant little book, and will write more about it soon, hopefully, but it is conspicuously well-researched, and full of extremely well-grounded concerns about quite how disastrous Brexit will be, if we proceed with it, in marked contrast to the simplistic jingoism of Leave voters and Brexit’s cheerleaders in the government. Dunt explains the problems with all the proposed options for life outside the EU; primarily, as I see it, that overturning 43 years of laws and treaties is not only, to my mind, like deliberately cutting a living body in half but then having only a few minutes to conduct the major surgery required to not let the patient die, but also that we will end up with desperately unfavourable trade deals within the EU and absolutely no leverage with any country outside the EU, which will be able to insist on terms that are unfavourable to British interests.

In Dunt’s introduction, he proposes a nightmare scenario whereby, in March 2019, at the end of the two-year negotiating period triggered by Article 50, with the economy in tatters, we are forced to accept a trade deal with the US whose demands “are horrendous. Consumer protections are reduced across the board, along with environmental regulations and safeguards for the NHS.” Dunt concludes his introduction as follows: “UK civil servants have little option but to capitulate. The only way to protect what remains of the British economy is to sell off British sovereignty. The control wrestled from Brussels is now sold off to the highest bidder, behind closed doors, in a conference room in Washington.”

So now it’s over to the MPs. David Davis announced today that he intends to  introduce a “straightforward” Brexit bill this Thursday, explaining, as the Guardian described it, that “the legislation would be narrow, focusing only on the question of triggering article 50, and warned that it must not be used as a ‘vehicle for attempts to thwart the will of the people, or frustrate or delay the process of our exit from the European Union.’”

However, that smacks of his desperation — like so many in the Leave camp — not to be confronted by the hideously bleak realities of what Brexit entails, and we have every right to urge MPs to resist any bullying in an effort to rush through a simple-minded fantasy of “freedom” that may well end up like Ian Dunt’s nightmare scenario.

The government, endlessly pushing its “hard Brexit” plan, has made it clear that, to secure alleged control over our borders, we will be leaving the single market, but the single market is a key element in Remain voters’ fears, as well as an issue that responsible Leave voters worry about, and any effort to stifle full debate about what the various options entail, or to insist that there can be no question of refusing Brexit if it turns out, on close analysis, to be the single most suicidal act by a nation state, must be resisted.

Last month, 89 MPs — 23 Labour, 5 Lib Dems, 51 SNP, Green MP Caroline Lucas, Ken Clarke of the Conservatives and eight others — refused to blindly support an effort by Theresa May to bully them into agreeing to the triggering of Article 50 regardless of what it might entail, and these MPs and others will be crucial. After all, three-quarters of all MPs supported Britain remaining in Europe, and although many represent constituencies where a majority of those who voted opted for a Leave vote, I believe they must be prepared to stick to their principles, and engage with their constituents to try and persuade them why it would be so disastrous to proceed with Brexit, and, if necessary, sacrifice their seats to save the economy from disaster.

I’m slightly reassured that, according to the Guardian, “About 60 Labour MPs are preparing to defy any party order to vote in favour of triggering article 50, with frontbenchers expected to resign if a three-line whip is enforced.” Jeremy Corbyn, the paper noted, recently “made clear that Labour MPs would be asked to vote for triggering article 50 because his party does not want to block the Brexit process.”

Nevertheless, MPs and shadow ministers in constituencies that voted Remain have made it clear that they will vote against any bill triggering Article 50.

As the Guardian explained:

Catherine West, the shadow foreign minister who was elected MP for Hornsey and Wood Green in 2015, said: “Theresa May has allowed the hardline Brexiters within her own party and the rightwing media to dictate the form of Brexit, discounting the views of the 48% who voted to remain and more importantly disregarding the national interest.

“In Hornsey and Wood Green we secured the highest remain vote in the UK with 81.5%. The best way I can represent my constituents, and indeed protect our national interest, is to vote against invoking article 50.”

Tulip Siddiq, the shadow minister for early years, said she would vote in line with her strongly remain-leaning Hampstead and Kilburn constituents.

Owen Smith, the Labour MP for Pontypridd who challenged Corbyn for the leadership last summer, said he saw the issue as a defining political moment for his generation of politicians as well as the country.

“I have reached the decision that whatever the impact on my career, however difficult it may be to swim against the Brexit tide, I cannot, in all conscience, stand by and wave through a course of action that I believe will make our people poorer and our politics meaner,” he wrote in an article for the Guardian.

“I cannot vote to trigger article 50 on the wing and a prayer that Brexit will do as the prime minister says, and make Britain a fairer, more prosperous and equal society. Because I do not believe that is true.”

Neil Coyle, whose Bermondsey and Old Southwark constituency was also strongly remain, echoed those concerns, saying he fundamentally disagreed with the decision to leave the EU, regardless of the referendum result.

Coyle said finance sector jobs in his constituency were already being lost. “London is losing out as a result now. More damage will come as the implications of Brexit expand,” he said.

“For this reason, I am one of the growing number of Labour MPs who will not vote to trigger article 50. I made a simple promise in the May 2015 general election that I would not support in parliament anything that would harm people in my constituency.”

He said Labour whips should allow MPs to vote in line with their constituents, adding: “Labour should not sign up to the economic damage the government is pursuing. May is drafting her economic suicide note and Labour must not sign it with her.”

He said Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, could “pursue a whipped abstention for Labour MPs or could cause every person who loses work or other opportunities between now and the next election to hold Labour culpable in their misfortune”.

Other backbenchers including Ben Bradshaw, David Lammy and Daniel Zeichner also said they would not back a Brexit bill. Bradshaw, a former secretary of culture, sport and media, tweeted: “I will not vote to destroy jobs and prosperity in #Exeter & the wider South West with a hard Tory #brexit. I will vote against #Article50.”

Chris Leslie, a former shadow chancellor, said: “I believe Theresa May’s approach to Brexit will cause harm to our economy, place barriers for businesses who will find it harder to sell goods and services, and leave us with less growth and fewer decent job prospects than if we choose a different approach.

“I am not, therefore, inclined to vote in favour of a bill that would endorse the government’s ‘hard Brexit’ strategy. I will instead work with MPs from across all parties to amend and significantly improve any article 50 legislation, so that parliament gives a steer to the government to salvage our participation in the single market and avoid the UK economy falling off an economic cliff edge in 2019.”

I hope soon to look in more detail at the role MPs need to play in not only resisting a “hard Brexit,” but resisting Brexit altogether, but for now it is reassuring that the would-be tyrant and her clowns have been told in no uncertain terms by our most senior judges that their disdain for their fellow MPs, and for any form of debate on the terms of Brexit, which was never spelled out at the time of the referendum, is unacceptable.

As Tory MP Anna Soubry explained, in the Guardian’s words, “MPs should be able to discuss not just the triggering of article 50 but also the decisions to abandon the single market and free movement without debate or a vote.” As she said, “What has my honourable friend [David Davis] got to lose with a debate on a white paper?”

The answer, I hope, is their credibility, which only survives because it is cocooned in nothing but jingoistic platitudes. What Brexit would actually entail needs to be exposed to the sunlight, where, I believe, its credibility will evaporate like a vampire.

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 debut album ‘Love and War’ and EP ‘Fighting Injustice’ are available here to download or on CD 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.

Photos: 500,000 Women (and Men) March Against Donald Trump in New York, Jan. 21, 2017

See my photos on Flickr here!

Please also consider supporting my work! I’m currently trying to raise $2500 (£2000) to support my writing and campaigning on Guantánamo and related issues – including the threats posed by Donald Trump and his administration – over the next two months.

 

After the shock of Donald Trump’s inauguration day, when millions of Americans (and visiting foreigners like me) felt understandably distraught, bereft, dismayed, as the grotesque, narcissistic, predatory, corrupt fraud that is Donald Trump delivered a bleak and graceless inauguration speech, it was nothing short of a delight on Saturday, Jan. 21, Day 2 of the aberrant Trump presidency, when, across the country and around the world, millions of women (plus large numbers of supportive men) marched in protest against Trump and all he and his administration stand for— his disdain for women, his racism, his xenophobia, his adherence to intolerant white Christian fundamentalism, and, last but not least, his opaque, but very obviously corrupt business practices. Two US academics have estimated that between 3.3m and 4.6m people marched in total across the US, with New York’s turnout estimated at between 400,000 and 500,000 people.

Stepping out of Grand Central Station into a river of protest, with more clever, witty and insightful handmade posters than you could imagine, and with chants and cheers punctuating the general hubbub at regular intervals was to feel that perhaps this dystopian vision of America can indeed be overthrown before it wreaks untold havoc at home and abroad. And with no beginning or end of the protest in sight, it was easy to believe that the number marching was much larger than even the academics’ estimate.

It will take more than one day, of course, as the people of America need to unite like never before — everyone who didn’t vote for Trump, everyone threatened by Trump, everyone appalled by Trump, including, of course, those who voted for him but might already be having second thoughts. This could be a disastrous presidency, or it could be even worse than that, but people need to put aside any notions of complacency, and work out how to resist. This was a great start, and a historic moment that everyone there will remember, but now there needs to be much more action and organizing.

People also need to abandon any fanciful notions that the Democratic Party is going to rise to the rescue. Outnumbered in Congress, the Democrats primarily need to work out who they are and who they represent before indulging in any more efforts to present themselves as being the voice of the people. As the election showed, the Democrats lost many voters — with some turning to Trump instead — after eight years of President Obama, and after Hillary Clinton’s campaign, because they correctly perceived that the Democrats are in bed with Wall Street and big business, that they also back America’s disastrous ongoing military engagements, and that they care little about ordinary hard-working men and women of America, despite claiming that they do.

The fact that those turning to Trump will undoubtedly be disappointed with their choice, unless they fall prey to the Trump camp’s relentlessly aggressive efforts to always blame someone else for everything, and to lie as much as possible, while claiming not to, ought not to benefit Democrats until they decide whether they are for the vested interests that Trump so cynically attacked (despite evidently being part of the problem himself) or whether they, and not Trump, can claim to act for the people. If they cannot, then Trump’s election shows that the people need a whole new political movement to represent them.

For now, however, as I leave you to ponder on how resistance might best be achieved, and to hope that you will recognize that doing nothing is not an option, I leave you with these photos of a day of hope across the US and around the world, when ordinary people demonstrated that fundamental decency will not be silenced, and that a tolerant, multi-racial society, featuring, at its heart, equality between women and men, and between people whatever their race, creed or color, has humor, intelligence and compassion that throw into even sharper relief how troublingly miserable, negative and ungenerous Donald Trump and his advisors are.

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 debut album ‘Love and War’ and EP ‘Fighting Injustice’ are available here to download or on CD 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.

As Trump Becomes President, New Close Guantánamo Poster and Photo Campaign Launches: “Donald Trump No! Please Close Guantánamo!”

Please support my work! I’m currently trying to raise $2500 (£2000) to support my writing and campaigning on Guantánamo over the first two 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.

So let’s keep this short and sweet. We need to work on Donald Trump from Day One of his presidency to get Guantánamo closed. Here’s the poster for you to print off, take a photo with, and send to us!

Unfortunately, President Obama is leaving office with a black stain on his name for having failed to close Guantánamo despite promising to do so on his second day in office eight long years ago, and despite our relentless campaigning here for the last five years, including over the last year with the Countdown to Close Guantánamo, an initiative that campaign co-founder Andy Worthington launched with music legend Roger Waters on Democracy Now! last January.

Throughout the year, campaigners across the US and around the world stood with posters reminding President Obama how many days he had left to close Guantánamo — at first at 50-day intervals, and then, in the last 50 days, at 5-day intervals, and, for the last five days, on a daily basis. Over 700 photos were submitted, and we thank all of you who took part. See the photos here: Celebrity photos, Public photos 1, Public photos 2, Public photos 3, Public photos 4 and Public photos 5.

Now, however, we are faced with a new challenge — the troubling rise of Donald Trump to the position of President of the United States, with all the alarm that brings with it. On the campaign trial, Trump promised to keep Guantánamo open, and to “load it up with some bad dudes,” and also threatened to send US citizens there to face military commission trials. Trump also enthused about officially reintroducing torture as a weapon of the US government, and although he has been rebuffed on this position — most noticeably by his choice for defense secretary, Gen. James “Mad Dog” Mattis — and we think it extremely unlikely that any US citizen will be sent to Guantánamo, because of the constitutional protections enjoyed by US citizens compared to foreign “terror suspects,” we remain, of course, implacably opposed to any plan to keep Guantánamo open.

We think it unlikely that new prisoners will be sent to Guantánamo, because the basis for holding men there is the Authorization for Use of Military Force, passed by Congress the week after the 9/11 attacks, which specifically relates to 9/11, al-Qaeda, the Taliban and associated forces, and we think a new authorization from Congress would be required to, for example, send anyone associated with ISIS to Guantánamo. We believe that any proposal to do so would face serious opposition from a range of critics, including some Republicans, who recognize that federal courts are perfectly well equipped to handle cases related to terrorism, as they have been doing since 9/11 — throughout the Bush administration, and throughout Obama’s administration too, while Guantánamo has always stood apart as an aberration.

Nevertheless, there is no room for complacency, and, as Donald Trump takes power, we renew our call for Guantánamo’s closure with a brand new poster, which reads, “Donald Trump No! Please Close Guantánamo!”

We urge you to print it off, to take a photo with it, to send it to us, and to share it with everyone you know. We hope to be swamped with photos, which we will be posting on the Close Guantánamo website, and on our Facebook and Twitter accounts.

In particular, we have three demands for Donald Trump:

1. Honor the decisions to release those men still held who have been approved for transfer out of the prison by high-level inter-agency US government review processes, the Guantánamo Review Task Force and the Periodic Review Boards.

2. Maintain the Periodic Review Boards, which, since November 2013, have been reviewing the cases of men previously designated as “too dangerous to release” or recommended for prosecution, with, to date, 38 out of 64 men approved for release, near all of whom have been freed without incident.

3. Close Guantánamo once and for all. President Obama has failed to fulfill his promise, but he inched towards the prison’s closure, which remains necessary for the US to be able to claim that it respects the rule of law, to be respected around the world, and to take the moral high ground when it comes to dealing with terrorism.

We also remind Donald Trump that the prison is also unforgivably expensive. As Human Rights First has noted, “The documented cost of running the Guantánamo prison facility in 2015 was $445 million. The actual amount is far more, since this amount does not include the cost of Camp 7, where ‘high-value detainees’ are held. That cost has been deemed classified. The $445 million sum also fails to include the cost of Justice Department, FBI, and CIA involvement in detention operations.” That works out at $10m per prisoner at the most generous estimate, whereas “keeping a prisoner at a maximum-security federal prison costs just over $34,000 per year,” and “at a federal Supermax prison, the highest-security and strictest federal prisons, the cost is $78,000 per year.”

Launching the new poster, Close Guantánamo co-founder Tom Wilner, who was Counsel of Record for the Guantánamo prisoners in their cases before the Supreme Court in 2004 and 2008, said: “President Obama didn’t get Guantánamo closed. Hopefully, Donald Trump will instead. It’s a bad deal for America — it’s wasteful, ridiculously expensive, and it ruins our reputation throughout the world.”

Journalist Andy Worthington, Close Guantánamo’s other co-founder, said: “Guantánamo must be closed. It is disappointing enough that President Obama has failed to close it, without Donald Trump trying to return to the rhetoric of the prison’s early days to justify keeping it open. Every day that this wretched, lawless place remains open is an affront to the values that America claims to hold dear.”

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 debut album ‘Love and War’ and EP ‘Fighting Injustice’ are available here to download or on CD 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.

Obama Commutes Chelsea Manning’s 35-Year Sentence; Whistleblower Who Leaked Hugely Important Guantánamo Files Will Be Freed in May 2017, Not 2045

Please support my work! I’m currently trying to raise $2500 (£2000) to support my writing and campaigning on Guantánamo and related issues over the next two months.

 

Great news from the White House, as, in the dying days of his presidency, Barack Obama has commuted the 35-year sentence of Chelsea Manning (formerly Bradley Manning), the former Army intelligence analyst responsible for the largest ever leak of classified documents, including the “Collateral Murder” video, featuring US personnel indiscriminately killing civilians and two Reuters reporters in Iraq, 500,000 army reports (the Afghan War logs and the Iraq War logs), 250,000 US diplomatic cables, and the Guantánamo files, released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, on which I worked as a media partner.

I regard the Guantánamo files as a hugely significant resource, which, unfortunately, have been used by right-wing, Islamophobic magazines and websites in an effort to justify the continued existence of Guantánamo. Like Biblical fundamentalists, who swear that everything in the Bible is true (and who, as a result, are unable to recognize its many contradictions), the right-wing defenders of Guantánamo fail to recognize the huge number of contradictions in the files.

Any intelligent analysis of the files instead reveals the extent to which they lay bare the cruelty and incompetence of the authorities at Guantánamo, providing the names of the many unreliable witnesses, who, as a result of torture for other forms of abuse, or being bribed with better living conditions, or simply through exhaustion after seemingly endless — and pointless — interrogations, told their interrogators what they wanted to hear. And the interrogators, of course, wanted whatever information would make the prisoners appear significant, when, in truth, they had been rounded up in a largely random manner, or had been bought for bounty payments from the Americans’ Afghan or Pakistani allies, and very few — a maximum of 3% of the 779 men held, I estimate — genuinely had any kind of meaningful connection with al-Qaeda, the leadership of the Taliban, or any related groups. Most were either foot soldiers or civilians in the wrong place at the wrong time, dressed up as “terrorists” to justify a dragnet, from September 2001 to November 2003 (when the transfers to Guantánamo largely ended) that is primarily remarkable because of its stunning incompetence.

I began a detailed study of the Guantánamo files leaked by Manning after their release in 2011, but exhaustion, and a lack of funding, prevented me from analyzing more than the 422 files I covered in detail in 34 articles totaling over half a million words, which are available here, although I do believe that my work on the files constitutes important research. One day I hope to complete the project, but even if I don’t, the files Manning released will provide historians with an unparalleled opportunity to understand the extent to which the so-called intelligence at Guantánamo is a house of cards built on torture and lies, and we should all be grateful to her for leaking them in the first place — just as there are reasons to be grateful for all the other documents she leaked.

Reporting the commuting of Manning’s sentence, Charlie Savage in the New York Times described how Obama’s decision “rescued Ms. Manning, who twice tried to kill herself last year, from an uncertain future as a transgender woman incarcerated at the men’s military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.,” adding “She has been jailed for nearly seven years, and her 35-year sentence was by far the longest punishment ever imposed in the United States for a leak conviction.”

Savage also noted how this, and a pardon for Gen. James E. Cartwright, “the former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who pleaded guilty to lying about his conversations with reporters to FBI agents investigating a leak of classified information about cyberattacks on Iran’s nuclear program,” were “a remarkable final step for a president whose administration carried out an unprecedented criminal crackdown on leaks of government secrets. Depending on how they are counted, the Obama administration has prosecuted either nine or 10 such cases, more than were charged under all previous presidencies combined.”

Obama also “commuted the sentence of Oscar Lopez Rivera, who was part of a Puerto Rican nationalist group that carried out a string of bombings in the late 1970s and early 1980s,” who had been held long after the other members had been freed, and “also granted 63 other pardons and 207 other commutations, mostly for drug offenders.”

Manning will be freed on May 17, 2017 rather than in 2045, with a senior administration official explaining that the 120-day delay was “part of a standard transition period for commutations to time served, and was designed to allow for such steps as finding a place for Ms. Manning to live after her release.” Charlie Savage added that the commutation “also relieved the Defense Department of the difficult responsibility of Ms. Manning’s incarceration as she pushes for treatment for her gender dysphoria, including sex reassignment surgery, that the military has no experience providing.”

Several Republican lawmakers criticized the commutation, as did president elect Donald Trump, but Nancy Hollander and Vince Ward — lawyers representing Manning — were euphoric.

“Ms. Manning is the longest serving whistleblower in the history of the United States,” they stated. “Her 35-year sentence for disclosing information that served the public interest and never caused harm to the United States was always excessive, and we’re delighted that justice is being served in the form of this commutation.”

Unlike Manning, no pardon will be forthcoming for Edward Snowden. On Friday, White House spokesman Josh Earnest “discussed the ‘pretty stark difference’ between Ms. Manning’s case for mercy and Mr. Snowden’s,” as the Times put it, adding that, “While their offenses were similar, he said, there were ‘some important differences.’”

“Chelsea Manning is somebody who went through the military criminal justice process, was exposed to due process, was found guilty, was sentenced for her crimes, and she acknowledged wrongdoing,” Earnest said, whereas “Mr. Snowden fled into the arms of an adversary and has sought refuge in a country that most recently made a concerted effort to undermine confidence in our democracy.”

Mr. Earnest also noted that “while the documents Ms. Manning provided to WikiLeaks were ‘damaging to national security,’ the ones Mr. Snowden disclosed were ‘far more serious and far more dangerous.’”

When Manning decided to make public files she uncovered, as Pfc. Bradley Manning, on duty in Iraq, she wrote at the time that she hoped they would incite “worldwide discussion, debates and reforms.”

Charlie Savage noted that the disclosures “set off a frantic scramble as Obama administration officials sought to minimize any potential harm, including getting to safety some foreigners in dangerous countries who were identified as having helped American troops or diplomats,” adding that prosecutors, however, “presented no evidence that anyone had been killed because of the leaks.”

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 debut album ‘Love and War’ and EP ‘Fighting Injustice’ are available here to download or on CD 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.

Reflections on Mortality, on the Death of One of My Oldest Friends, Nick Parsons (1962-2017)

I’m thinking about mortality today, with the passing of one of my oldest friends, Nick Parsons, who has died aged 54. At New College, Oxford University, in 1982, it was Nick who introduced me to musicians who had a profound effect on me — Neil Young, Van Morrison, and, in particular, Bob Dylan, whose influence has been enduring. We used to listen to music in his room in the college during our first year (in the so-called ‘New Buildings’ — they weren’t very new, but nor was the college, which was founded in 1379) and by the ‘Bridge of Sighs’ on New College Lane, where Nick’s room was in our second year.

It was also Nick who, one day in June 1983, insisted that he and I and other friends (Rupert and Hugo, you know who you are) get in Rupert’s car and drive down to Stonehenge for the Stonehenge Free Festival, an eye-opening, psychedelic, anarchic jamboree that led, eventually, to me writing my first and second books on Stonehenge and the counter-culture, which, in turn, led to me writing a third book, about Guantánamo, and devoting the last 11 years of my life to getting the prison closed down.

That first visit was wonderful, on a personal level, like our own “summer of love,” and in terms of seeing how an alternative to mainstream society could actually exist. We returned again, in 1984, for what was to be the last festival, before its violent suppression in 1985 at the Battle of the Beanfield, but by then it was clear that, in what was one of the darkest years of Margaret Thatcher’s horrible rule, any coherent belief in a brighter future was unravelling under duress, and, sadly, also under self-inflicted wounds.

Nick and I also shared a flat when I first moved to London in 1985, at 1 Tulse Hill, opposite the George Canning pub, at the start of what was, for me, a giddy decade of ups and downs in SW2 and SW9, and it was there that I learned to play the guitar, and first started writing songs, hooking up with another friend who died many years ago, Glyn Andrews, and performing as The Rebel Soldier, sometimes with other musicians, including, on a few occasions, Vivian Weathers, a legendary bassist who played with Linton Kwesi Johnson, and who taught me all I know about reggae bass, but who, I fear, is also no longer with us.

In memory of Nick, here’s my reggae reworking of an old folk song, ‘Rebel Soldier,’ which I recorded with my band The Four Fathers in 2015, but first came up with it in 1986, while living with Nick in a flat in Brixton. I think it says something about both of us.

Love and War by The Four Fathers

Also in Nick’s memory, here’s another song I wrote at the time, ‘City of Dreams’, a countryish lament for the London being destroyed by Margaret Thatcher and the greed she was unleashing in the City:

Love and War by The Four Fathers

I wrote ‘City of Dreams’ in 1987, when I wasn’t living with Nick, although I still saw him regularly at this time, with my girlfriend at the time, Alessandra, and we spent some time wth him in Herne Hill, on the North Kent coast, where he was housesitting, in a cottage right on the seafront, and where, in general, I think, the isolation of living in a seaside town that had the oldest population in the UK, and whose newspaper, as he once noted, featured only adverts for funeral directors, may not have been particularly helpful for his mental health, although our visit seems, in retrospect, to have had something of ‘Withnail & I’ about it.

Our lives continued to intersect in the decades that followed. I spent time with him in the early 2000s, when he was overcoming long-term addictions, but lost him again as he headed out to the far east on what turned out to be the last self-destructive phase of his life. Last year we re-established contact once more, and met on a few occasions. He had been very ill but was in a flat in Battersea, and on one occasion he came to a gig by my band The Four Fathers — unfortunately arriving just too late to hear his favourite song, Bob Dylan’s ‘Tangled Up in Blue’, which I had us rehearse especially for him.

Below is Bob Dylan performing ‘Tangled Up in Blue’ during the extraordinary Rolling Thunder Tour:

At the end of last year, Nick became very ill again. I had tried on several occasions to contact him, but I was unaware that he was so ill, and I only managed to speak to him one last time on the phone before his passing — one time that I will, of course, remember now that he is gone forever.

Cherish your lives, my friends, and be good to those who love you, and those who you love — and rest in peace, Nick. You influenced me perhaps more than you ever knew, and your sense of humour and your intellect always counteracted the darkness that threaten to engulf you, although I am sorry that your life was so often so hard for you to bear.

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 debut album ‘Love and War’ and EP ‘Fighting Injustice’ are available here to download or on CD 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.

Photos: The Close Guantánamo Protest Outside the Supreme Court, Jan. 11, 2017

See my photos on Flickr here!
Please also support my work! I’m currently in the US to campaign for the closure of Guantánamo and trying to raise $1000 (£800) to support my visit.

 

January 11, 2017 was the 15th anniversary of the opening of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo, and for the seventh year running I was in Washington, D.C. to call for the prison’s closure as the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign, with representatives of other rights groups, Witness Against Torture, Amnesty International, the Center for Constitutional Rights and the National Religious Campaign Against Torture.

This year, the protest took place not outside the White House (which is off-limits in the run-up to presidential inaugurations), but outside the Supreme Court, and, as I explained in my speech to the gathered protestors and the media (those who could be bothered to take an interest), this year’s anniversary was, excruciatingly, a double disappointment, because President Obama is just days away from failing to fulfill the promise to close Guantánamo that he made on his second day in office nearly eight years ago, and Donald Trump is about to take the prison over with his wild promises to “load it up with some bad dudes.”

I urged those gathered to make it a priority, from Day One of the Trump presidency, to demand that Trump frees those men still held who have been approved for release (9 at present, with the release  to Oman yesterday of ten men, although we are told that between 3 and 5 more will be freed by Obama in his last week), and also to demand that he continues with the latest review process, the Periodic Review Boards, for which 26 of the remaining 55 prisoners continue to be eligible. I will soon be launching a new initiative, aimed at Donald Trump, via the Close Guantánamo campaign, and I encourage you to sign up to receive further information, as I draw the year-long Countdown to Close Guantánamo, aimed at President Obama, to an end.

I hope you like the photos, and encourage you to check out Witness Against Torture’s excellent coverage — of the Jan. 11 protest, as well as the many other protests they undertook during their week-long Fast for Justice in the capital. Please also see the video of my speech here, and also see the video of the panel discussion at New America, also on the anniversary — at which I spoke along with Tom Wilner, the other co-founder of Close Guantánamo, former Congressman Jim Moran, and Rosa Brooks, with Peter Bergen moderating.

I’m currently in New York City, and will be here until Jan. 21, so please get in touch if you’d like to interview me for TV or radio, or if you’d like to put on an event with me, or if you know of anywhere I can borrow a guitar to sing and play some of the protest songs that I usually play with 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 debut album ‘Love and War’ and EP ‘Fighting Injustice’ are available here to download or on CD 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.

Video: Andy Worthington Laments Obama’s Failure to Close Guantánamo – and Fears What Trump Will Do – Outside the Supreme Court on Jan. 11

Please support my work! I’m currently in the US to campaign for the closure of Guantánamo and trying to raise $1000 (£800) to support my visit.

 

On Wednesday, I was outside the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. for the annual protest against the continued existence of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay, with representatives from rights groups including Witness Against Torture, Amnesty International, the Center for Constitutional Rights and the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, plus some powerful spoken word pieces by The Peace Poets.

I spoke about the double disappointment of this depressing anniversary, with Obama just days away from failing to fulfill the promise to close Guantánamo that he made on his second day in office nearly eight years ago, and Donald Trump about to take the prison over with his wild promises to “load it up with some bad dudes,” and I urged those gathered to make it a priority, from Day One of the Trump presidency, to demand that Trump frees those men still held who have been approved for release (19 at present, although we are told that between 13 and 15 will be freed by Obama in his last week), and also to demand that he continues with the latest review process, the Periodic Review Boards, for which 26 of the remaining 55 prisoners continue to be eligible.

The PRBs, which function like parole boards, have reviewed the cases of 64 men in the last three years, and 38 have been approved for release. The 26 other men had their ongoing imprisonment upheld, but their cases are regularly reviewed, and some of them will almost certainly also be approved for release — unless Trump repeals Obama’s 2011 executive order establishing the PRBs.

My video is below, via Vimeo, and I hope you have time to watch it — it’s just under four minutes — and to share it if you find it useful.

Andy Worthington on 15 Years of Guantánamo from Shrieking Tree on Vimeo.

I’ll soon be posting photos from the protest — and of another great Guantánamo-themed event in Washington, D.C., the Tea Project — as well as the video from yesterday’s extremely powerful discussion at Revolution Books in Harlem, at which I was joined by Ramzi Kassem, a law professor at CUNY (City University of New York), who, with his students, represents three men still held at Guantánamo, and has represented ten others, now freed, as well as a long-term Bagram prisoner, also now freed. Ramzi was on great form, and I thought he and I worked very well together— as we have in the past — and we also had a wonderfully attentive audience, who fielded some great questions.

I’m in New York for another week, so please get in touch if you’d like to interview me for TV or radio, or if you’d like to put on an event with me, or if you know of anywhere I can borrow a guitar to sing and play some of the protest songs that I usually play with 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 debut album ‘Love and War’ and EP ‘Fighting Injustice’ are available here to download or on CD 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.

Video: Discussing Guantánamo on the 15th Anniversary of the Prison’s Opening – Andy Worthington, Tom Wilner, Jim Moran and Rosa Brooks at New America

Please support my work! I’m currently in the US to campaign for the closure of Guantánamo, and trying to raise $1000 (£800) to support my writing and campaigning on Guantánamo over the next two months.

 

Yesterday was the 15th anniversary of the opening of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and a typically busy day for me. My seventh annual visit to Washington, D.C. to call for the closure of Guantánamo on the anniversary began with a protest outside the Supreme Court with representatives from rights groups including Witness Against Torture, Amnesty International, the Center for Constitutional Rights and the National Religious Campaign Against Torture. As usual, there were speakers from all the groups involved, plus some powerful spoken word pieces by The Peace Poets, and video of my talk will hopefully be available soon.

The day continued with a panel discussion, Guantánamo Bay: Year 15, at New America, with my friend and colleague Tom Wilner, counsel of record to the Guantánamo prisoners in their Supreme Court cases in 2004 and 2008, with whom I co-founded the Close Guantánamo campaign five years ago, Jim Moran, former congressional representative for Virginia’s 8th district and a longtime opponent of Guantánamo, and Rosa Brooks, a Senior ASU Future of War Fellow at New America who also served in the Obama administration. The moderator was Peter Bergen, the Vice President of New America and the Director of the International Security Program.

I’m pleased to report that the panel discussion was streamed live, and that a video is available on YouTube. It’s cross-posted below and I do hope you have time to watch it, and to share it if you find it useful.

I was the first speaker, and spoke — as I did outside the Supreme Court — about the double disappointment of this particular anniversary, with Obama just days away from failing to fulfill the promise to close Guantánamo that he made on his second day in office nearly eight years ago, and Donald Trump about to take it over with his wild promises to “load it up with some bad dudes.” UPI reported that, outside the Supreme Court, I said that Obama “will tell you to the end he failed [in closing the prison] because of members of Congress,” adding that, while he was right to acknowledge Republican opposition, the president “should have acted much earlier to overcome that resistance.” I also said, “When it comes to Guantánamo, this is a time of a double disappointment, there is no other way of looking at it. President Obama failed to fulfill the promise he made eight years ago. I think Donald Trump is going to shut the door on Guantánamo immediately.”

I was followed by Tom Wilner, who also expressed his disappointment, and then Rosa Brooks, who spoke of how Obama had failed to fulfill his promise because of “bureaucratic inertia and political cowardice.”

Finally, Jim Moran took the line that it was wrong to blame Obama for failing to close the prison. “It’s not his fault,” Moran said, “it’s the fault of the American people,” who, he added, “by and large don’t give a sh*t about Guantánamo.” He also called Guantánamo an “indelible stain on the soul of this country,” like slavery, the treatment of native Americans, and the treatment of Japanese Americans in the Second World War. On another occasion in his speech, lamenting recent foreign policy disasters, he spoke eloquently of how we had made a tragic mistake “sticking our fists into the hornet’s nest of Iraq.”

An interesting Q&A session followed, in which, as with our speeches, much time was spent speculating on what Trump may or may not do — uncertainties that dominated the whole day’s events, and that continue to cast a disconcerting cloud over everything. There was some discussion of torture, and of the role that Gen. Mattis will hopefully play in refusing to allow its use, but on Guantánamo, although I fervently hope that Trump will not send any new prisoners to Guantánamo, there was no consensus amongst the panelists that this is not worth worrying about — but then again, worry is something that is, unfortunately, the most natural of feelings right now amongst anyone not taken in by the inexplicable magnetism of Donald Trump.

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 debut album ‘Love and War’ and EP ‘Fighting Injustice’ are available here to download or on CD 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.

Shaker Aamer Interview on 15th Anniversary of Guantánamo Opening: US Government “Lied to Their Own People to Let Their Soldiers Accept Torturing Us”

Please support my work! I’m currently in the US to campaign for the closure of Guantánamo on the 15th anniversary of its opening, and trying to raise $1000 (£800) to support my visit.

 

Regular readers will know that I have had a long involvement in the case of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo, who was finally freed in October 2015 after a long campaign to secure his release, which involved MPs, the mainstream British media, and protest groups including We Stand With Shaker, the organization I co-founded in November 2014 with the activist Joanne MacInnes, which used a giant inflatable figure of Shaker to highlight his cause, with some quite spectacular success in the media, and with celebrities and MPs.

Since his release, I have maintained contact with Shaker, and, in October, was delighted when he agreed to make a short video for the Close Guantánamo campaign — another organization I co-founded — which is posted below.

Apart from a flurry of activity immediately after his release, Shaker has had little involvement with the media this year, although his words always have resonance, so I was delighted to see, a few days ago, that he had spoken to Al-Jazeera.

I’m cross-posting his interview below, for those of you who missed it the first time round. Shaker speaks eloquently about the many injustices of Guantánamo, including, as I note in the title of this article, how the US government “lied to their own people just to let their soldiers accept torturing us,” and how the prisoners resorted to hunger strikes — which Shaker describes as “our peaceful means of telling the world: ‘Listen, if I’m guilty, put me on trial. If I’m innocent, send me home’. We were hunger striking to gain some human rights. I swear to God, they treated us as less than cockroaches.”

He also speaks about how some of the guards broke down as a result of the way the prisoners were treated — and on realizing that they had been lied to about who they were. As he says, “It’s beautiful when you see this soldier become your friend; when they sacrifice their own job, their income, for you. Some of them refused to participate [in force-feeding], they were sent back from Guantánamo.“

Shaker also criticizes President Obama for his failure to close Guantánamo, claiming that “[t]he damage he did is worse than George [W.] Bush,” and stating that although he thinks Obama “wants to close it … he’s too much of a coward.”

Shaker Aamer: Guantánamo is a stain on Obama’s legacy

By Patrick Strickland, Al-Jazeera, January 7, 2017

Shaker Aamer says he endured torture by US authorities during his 14 years jailed in Guantánamo Bay detention centre.

Barack Obama’s failure to shutter Guantánamo Bay was a stain on his legacy as US president, according to Shaker Aamer, a Saudi-born UK resident held at the infamous US detention centre for nearly 14 years without trial.

Aamer was arrested in Afghanistan in 2001 but was never charged with a crime. He was released from the Cuba-based prison in October 2015 and has since lived with his wife and four children in Britain.

Despite Obama’s January 2009 executive order to close Guantánamo, he failed to do so throughout his eight years of presidency.

Of the 240 prisoners who were there when Obama took office in 2009, 55 are still in Guantánamo, according to Human Rights First.

As many as 19 have been cleared for release, while a mere three individuals from the remaining detainees have been convicted by a military commission.

Overall, more than 780 people have been held in Guantánamo [note: 779 by the US military, plus others held by the CIA in 203-04 in a secret facility], and the prisoner population peaked at 684 people in June 2003.

President-elect Donald Trump, who will take office on January 20, has already vowed to keep the prison open and lock up “more bad dudes”.

Al Jazeera spoke to Aamer about Obama’s legacy, the impact of hunger strikes and his life after his release.

Al Jazeera: Will the US shut down Guantánamo Bay?

Shaker Aamer: Can they shut down Guantánamo? Yes. But first of all, people have to understand why they want to keep Guantánamo open. There’s more to it than just politics or safety. If they close Guantánamo, what will [they] tell the world about who’s to blame for these 15 years when they put [away] all these people who didn’t belong there?

It’s just about explaining to the people. We are talking about one of the most sophisticated intelligence services in the world. Guantánamo proved to the entire world that the CIA operates outside [the rules] of the [US] government. It’s a government inside a government, and they operate outside the law. Who’s willing to answer all these questions? Are they willing to answer them? No, they’re not.

People have to ask why it cannot be closed. It’s about responsibilities and opening the books, answering questions to the whole world.

First of all, they have to [answer these questions] to the Americans. The impact of what happened on Americans was great, on the way they live and their freedoms. And everything we suffered was because of “national security”. I couldn’t receive letters from my own kids because of “national security”. I couldn’t speak freely with my lawyer because of “national security”.

After all this, do you think they’re going to close Guantánamo and then tell the world they’ve got only a handful of people that “we’re trying to put on trial for the past 10 years and until now we cannot succeed”? Can the world accept that? No. That’s why this scarecrow that is Guantánamo has to stay.

Al Jazeera: Will you continue to fight for the closure of Guantánamo?

Shaker Aamer: It’s about our futures. We are still suffering. They [governments] refuse to talk about it now. For [governments], it’s normal because they didn’t lose anything. But for me, I lost 14 years and I won’t sacrifice them without benefiting today and tomorrow — and I’m not talking about personal compensation. They compensated us [financially], but without saying sorry.

It’s a lot bigger than me. It’s not just because of the detainees. We are talking about a whole government, a whole system. They [the US government] lied to their own people just to let their soldiers accept torturing us. Can you imagine that they had to go to classes and show them movies about us? They had to make [guards and soldiers] believe they were defending freedom. For [a soldier] to accept all this, they had to brainwash them. Now we have to reverse everything to let them know that we are human beings and we haven’t done anything.

Al Jazeera: You have a reputation as having been a key protest leader while you were in Guantánamo Bay. How important were the hunger strikes and other protests within the prison walls?

Shaker Aamer: When someone launches a hunger strike, it means he is willing to lose his life for the cause. It is a peaceful tactic. They told the world we were trying to kill ourselves to serve al-Qaeda. It’s amazing how they twisted logic.

They were so brutal when they dealt with us [on hunger strike]. But a hunger strike was our peaceful means of telling the world: “Listen, if I’m guilty, put me on trial. If I’m innocent, send me home”. We were hunger striking to gain some human rights. I swear to God, they treated us as less than cockroaches.

Some of the guards would break down. Not once, not twice — 10, 20, 30 times. It’s beautiful when you see this soldier become your friend; when they sacrifice their own job, their income, for you. Some of them refused to participate [in force-feeding], they were sent back from Guantánamo.

Even though the US denies it, the hunger strike was effective. We gained some control. We changed the whole equation because of hunger strikes.

Al Jazeera: What has life been like since your release?

Shaker Aamer: I have no restrictions for me in any way — not written. But my phone is tapped; my house is being watched; there are cameras in front of my house all the time.

My lawyer advised me to stay away from overseas phone calls. I refuse to talk to anybody because I’m worried about my family and my kids. I don’t want to do anything, even go back for questioning. My wife is still not ready to take any more pressure or shock. It’s so sad.

At the same time, my wife worries every time there is a knock on the door. People in the UK are going to jail because they one time knew someone who is in Syria now. Imagine if I receive a phone call from someone who was in Guantánamo right now? Definitely they are going to come knock on my door.

That’s why I’m free, but I’m not free. I’m being watched.

When I came out, I found a different family, a different life, different kids. My kids are grown up. To build a strong relationship with them is not easy. It is hard. They are my kids, but they are not my kids. They are very good kids, very educated, very smart. They still see me as a little bit of a stranger.

Al Jazeera: It appears that Obama’s final presidential term will expire without the closure of Guantánamo Bay. What do you think that says about his legacy?

Shaker Aamer: I remember when Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize [in 2009]. It was sad. I told [my lawyer], if people like Obama get this prize, it means nothing. Where is the peace he’s implementing? At that time, we were roughly 300-something people [in Guantánamo]. [Note: actually, there were less than 240 prisoners at the time.]

What peace did he bring to the world? The damage he did is worse than [former US President] George Bush. If Obama can get this prize, it’s just an insult. That prize is nothing. It’s just a decoration.

For Obama, he wants to close it. I have no doubt, but I think he’s too much of a coward. You cannot be a hero without being willing to sacrifice. He proved he’s the biggest liar; he proved he’s not a leader. The most basic thing he could have done is close Guantánamo. He could have brought so much [respect] back to America.

Note: For another perspective on Shaker Aamer’s story, please listen to my band The Four Father’s ‘Song for Shaker Aamer,’ which was used in the campaign video for We Stand With Shaker. The version above is the ‘Freedom Version’ released last year, with the lyrics amended to reflect his release. Also see here for me playing it in Washington, D.C. last January, on the eve of the 14th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo.

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 debut album ‘Love and War’ and EP ‘Fighting Injustice’ are available here to download or on CD 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.

Please Read “Teaching Trump About Gitmo,” An Op-ed in the New York Daily News by Close Guantánamo Co-Founders Tom Wilner and Andy Worthington

[image error] Please support my work! I’m currently in the US to campaign for the closure of Guantánamo on the 15th anniversary of its opening, and trying to raise $1000 (£800) to support my visit.

 

I’m delighted to report that yesterday, while I was crossing the Atlantic by plane and was offline, the New York Daily News published “Teaching Trump About Gitmo,” an op-ed that I wrote with my friend and colleague Tom Wilner, the US attorney with whom I co-founded the Close Guantánamo campaign exactly five years ago.

The op-ed was a response to the president elect’s recent — and disgraceful — tweet, in which he stated, “There should be no further releases from Gitmo. These are extremely dangerous people and should not be allowed back onto the battlefield.”

In the hope of educating Mr. Trump, Tom and I pointed out that, of the 55 men still held, 19 have been approved for release by two inter-agency review processes — 2009’s Guantánamo Review Task Force, and the current Periodic Review Boards — which are “made up of our nation’s top security, defense and justice officials,” and just ten are facing — or have faced — trials, leaving 26 others whose cases should continue to be reviewed by the Periodic Review Boards, as it seems certain that some of them will also end up being approved for release, like 38 of the 64 men originally whose cases have been reviewed by the PRBs in the last three years.

What Mr. Trump needs to remember is that, when the 2009 task force reviewed the cases of these 38 men in 2009, they were found to be either “too dangerous to release,” or were recommended for prosecution, decisions that, with hindsight, can only be regarded as deriving from a position of extreme and, it must be said, unwarranted caution.

As Donald Trump’s troubling presidency nears, it is important for those opposed to the continued existence of Guantánamo to bear in mind that (1) holding firm on the need to release prisoners already approved for release, and (2) maintaining the Periodic Review Boards that were established as a result of presidential order by President Obama in March 2011 are not negotiable and are the key issues on which to immediately put pressure on him — whilst, of course, also reminding him of (3) the undying need to close the prison for good, (4) not to send anyone new there, (5) not to send US citizens there for military trials, and (6) not to reintroduce torture — all policies he embraced on the campaign trail.

In our op-ed, Tom and I also reminded Donald Trump of the failure of Guantánamo’s military commission trial system, which “is broken and has delayed justice rather than delivering it,” and also pointed out the unacceptable economic costs of keeping Guantánamo open. As we explained, “If President Obama leaves about 40 prisoners in Trump’s hands, we will be spending more than $11 million per prisoner each year to continue incarcerating them at Guantanamo. By contrast, the average cost of keeping a prisoner locked up on the U.S. mainland is less than $32,000 per year … There is simply no business or security justification for paying that difference.”

I hope you have time to read the op-ed, and will share it if you find it useful.

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 debut album ‘Love and War’ and EP ‘Fighting Injustice’ are available here to download or on CD 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.