Andy Worthington's Blog, page 62

Andy Worthington Visits the US for the 15th Anniversary of the Opening of Guantánamo, and for Donald Trump’s Troubling Inauguration

Andy Worthington addressing campaigners in Florida, outside the entrance to US Southern Command, on January 9, 2016 (Photo: Medea Benjamin for Andy Worthington).

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

Dear friends and supporters,

I’m delighted to be writing to you from Heathrow Airport — despite a seriously disruptive Tube strike in London — awaiting a flight to New York City, for what will be my seventh annual visit at this time of year, to campaign for the closure of the prison at Guantánamo Bay on and around the anniversary of its opening, on Jan. 11.

I’m not delighted to have to keep calling for Guantánamo’s closure, of course, and this year, the 15th anniversary of the prison’s opening is a particular difficult occasion: simultaneously, a definitive black mark against President Obama for having failed to fulfill the promise to close the prison — within a year! — that he made when he first took office eight years ago, and the introduction to Guantánamo under a third president, the worryingly unpredictable Donald Trump, who has vowed to keep Guantánamo open, and to “load it up with bad dudes,” and who, just days ago, tweeted that there should be no more releases from Guantánamo.

Trump’s comments came in spite of the fact that 19 of the 55 men still held have been approved for release by high-level, inter-agency review processes, and others may well be approved for release in future by the latest review process, the Periodic Review Boards, unless he decides, unwisely, to scrap them.

I will be talking about these topics, and reflecting on Guantánamo’s history, what it means, who is held, and why the closure of the prison remains so essential, during my visit.

On the anniversary itself (Wednesday January 11), I’ll be joining — and speaking at — the annual protest by numerous rights groups, which normally take place outside the White House, except in inauguration years, when it is off-limits. As a result, the protest, featuring rights groups including Witness Against Torture, Amnesty International, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Code Pink, the National Religious Campaign Against Torture and World Can’t Wait, will begin with a rally and speeches outside the Supreme Court at 11.30am, and will continue at 12:15 with a march around the Senate Buildings.

At 2.30pm, I’m part of a panel discussion, Guantánamo Bay: Year 15, at New America, 740 15th St NW #900, Washington, D.C. 20005. Also speaking are the attorney Tom Wilner, with whom I co-founded the Close Guantánamo campaign, Jim Moran, former congressional representative for Virginia’s 8th district and one of the representatives who led opposition to Guantánamo Bay, and Rosa Brooks, a Senior ASU Future of War Fellow at New America who also served in the Obama administration. Moderating is Peter Bergen, the Vice President of New America and the Director of the International Security Program. Please RSVP if you wish to attend.

I’ll then be on Al-Jazeera at 6pm, and then I return to New York City for an event on Friday January 13, “Trump, Torture, and Guantánamo,” at Revolution Books in Harlem, at 437 Malcolm X Blvd./Lenox Avenue, New York City, NY 10037, beginning at 7pm, with special guests tbc. The Facebook page for the event is here, so please sign up if you’re coming.

This is how Revolution Books describes the event:

The prison at Guantánamo, now open almost 15 years, remains a living symbol of U.S. torture and human rights abuses. The fascist Trump has promised to keep it open and to expand the use of torture — waterboarding and worse.

On January 13, Revolution Books will host an evening with Andy Worthington, the British journalist and author who has relentlessly exposed the crimes against humanity being committed by the U.S. government at Guantánamo. He has introduced the world to the stories of the men who have been imprisoned there — most of whom have never been charged, let alone tried for any crime — and he’s a leader in the international battle to close this notorious prison. Andy will speak on what has gone on there over these long 15 years, and what can be expected under Trump if he and Pence are allowed to come to power and bring in the fascist regime they are promising the world.

This evening is one in the current series of RB programs called “In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE To Accept a Fascist America!: 65 Defiant Days — Talks, Dialogue and Culture.” These events are aimed at helping people to understand what is driving this fascist regime, how to stop it, and what this situation tells us about the necessity, possibility and desirability of an actual revolution.

I’m in the US until January 21 — CONTACT ME HERE — and available for TV and radio interviews and to take part in events, and if you have access to a guitar, I’m also happy to sing and play some of the political songs I generally play with my band The Four Fathers (on Twitter here). Check out our recordings here, and see this video of me playing ‘Song for Shaker Aamer’ in Washington, D.C. last January, the day before 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.

View more on Andy Worthington's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on January 09, 2017 04:52

Who Are the Four Guantánamo Prisoners Freed in Saudi Arabia, Leaving 55 Men Still Held?

The four prisoners released from Guantanamo to Saudi Arabia in January 2017. From L to R: Mohammed Rajab Abu Ghanim, Mohammed Ali Abdullah Bawazir, Salem Ahmad Hadi Bin Kanad and Abdullah Yahia Yousef al Shabli.

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

Good news from Guantánamo, as four men have been released to Saudi Arabia, reducing the prison’s population to 55, the lowest number since its opening weeks 15 years ago.

The four men are Yemeni citizens — although one was born in Saudi Arabia, but to Yemeni parents, meaning that he was not given citizenship. A third country had to be found that was prepared to take them in, because the entire US establishment agrees that it is unsafe, from a security perspective, to repatriate any Yemenis. The men will go through Saudi Arabia’s well-established rehabilitation program, although, to be honest, it is obvious upfront that none of these men can be regarded as a threat.

Two were approved for release by President Obama’s cautious, inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force in 2009, while the other two were approved for release more recently by the latest inter-agency review process, the Periodic Review Boards, which consider the prisoners’ cases in a manner similar to parole boards — except, of course, for the crucial fact that the men in question have never been convicted of any crimes.

The first of the four, whose case has rarely been discussed, is Abdullah Yahia Yousef al Shabli (ISN 240), who, according to US records, was born in Jeddah on September 10, 1977. Al-Shabli was approved for release by the task force in 2009, but is one of 30 men the task force placed in a category of their own invention, “conditional detention,” which was only supposed to end when someone — it was not determined who, or how — established that the security situation in Yemen had improved. As I explained in August, when 12 Yemenis were released in the UAE, “those in the ‘conditional detention’ group languished until the Obama administration began finding countries that would offer new homes to them, a process that only began last November and that, before [the August] releases, had led to 19 men being given new homes — in the UAE, Ghana, Oman, Montenegro and Saudi Arabia.” Six of the 12 Yemenis freed in August were from the “conditional detention group,” and with the two releases to Saudi Arabia from this group, just three men from this group are left — plus another two men from the 126 other men approved for release by the task force.

In a profile of al-Shabli that I wrote in September 2010, I stated:

The US authorities allege that al-Shabli was “recruited to go to al-Farouq camp by a mujahideen fighter who had fought in Afghanistan,” that he was “supplied with a false Yemeni passport, travel funds, tickets and the locations of guest houses in Afghanistan,” and that he trained at al-Farouq, and at another camp in Kabul, although he was not at either camp for long, as he only arrived in Afghanistan in August 2001, and al-Farouq closed after the 9/11 attacks.

The authorities also made an attempt to link him with Osama bin Laden, but it was not entirely convincing. It was alleged that he stated that he “saw Osama bin Laden passing by in the Tora Bora mountains,” but it not clear that he was ever in Tora Bora, because, elsewhere in the government’s evidence, it was stated that, after fleeing Kabul, he stayed in a house in Jalalabad for three weeks, and then traveled in a convoy towards the Pakistani border. When the convoy came under fire, he and others were taken in by Afghan locals, who then arranged for them to be seized by Northern Alliance soldiers. At no point in this story, therefore, was there any suggestion that he engaged in combat, or had even been in a position where he might have engaged in combat, and it is surprising that he was not released in 2006 or 2007, when dozens of Saudi prisoners were released. (The reason, I recognize now, is that he was not a Saudi citizen, as listed by the US, but a Yemeni).

The second “conditional detention” prisoner to be released is Mohammed Ali Abdullah Bawazir aka Bwazir (ISN 440), who, according to the US records, was born in 1980. As I explained in my book The Guantánamo Files, he claimed that all the allegations against him — including a claim that he attended Osama bin Laden’s daughter’s wedding in Kandahar — came about because he was tortured. “When I came to Mazar-e-Sharif they questioned me [and asked] me if I was from al-Qaeda,” he said. “They used to hit me physically until they broke my skull … Then I had to say yes I had met Osama bin Laden, that I talked with the Taliban, that I knew about nuclear rockets, and that I know everything about what al-Qaeda is up to.”

Bawazir was approved for release by the US military under George W. Bush in May 2007, after it evidently became apparent that the case against him was worthless, and he was approved for release again under Obama’s task force in 2009, but he had to wait until February this year for the US authorities to offer him a new home — in an unspecified foreign country that was so troubling to him that he chose, at the last minute, to stay at Guantánamo rather than accept the offer.

As I wrote at the time:

His lawyer, John Chandler, told the Guardian he “had traveled to Afghanistan as part of a ‘charitable organization,’” and was “sold to the US for $5,000 by the allied warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, now Afghanistan’s vice-president.” He was also described as “[a] former longtime hunger striker whose forced feeding became an issue in federal court after Bawazir likened it to torture.” He currently weighs just 130 pounds, but at one point weighed just 90 pounds.

However, when it came to leaving Guantánamo after 14 years — to be rehoused in a country “[n]either US officials nor Bawazir’s lawyer would identify … claiming that doing so could jeopardize the country’s willingness to take subsequent Guantánamo detainees,” Bawazir rejected it, “because it meant not being able to be with his family.” As recently as last Friday, according to Chandler, “Bawazir, who is described as ‘mercurial’ and fearing the unknown, had agreed to go there.”

Chandler told the Miami Herald that Bawazir “understood he couldn’t go home to his native Yemen but wanted to go to the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia or Indonesia where he had his mother, brothers or aunts and uncles.”

The first of the other two men sent to Saudi Arabia, who were approved for release by Periodic Review Boards, is Mohammed Rajab Abu Ghanim (ISN 044), who was born in 1975, according to the US records. His case was reviewed in May 2016, and he was approved for release in July.

At one point, he was regarded as having been a bodyguard for Osama bin Laden, but he and others seized with him, known as “the Dirty Thirty,” and all regarded as bin Laden bodyguards, were mostly young Yemenis, who had not been in Afghanistan for long, and it is, frankly, inconceivable that they would not have been trusted with such important positions.

Nevertheless, Ghanim was reportedly subjected to torture in Guantánamo, as I stated at the time of his PRB:

In a report from a former prisoner published by Cageprisoners, it was stated that Ghanim was subjected to prolonged sleep deprivation in Guantánamo, as part of what was euphemistically termed “the frequent flier program,” and was also denied medical treatment: “Every two hours he would get moved from cell to cell, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, sometimes cell to cell, sometimes block to block, over a period of eight months. He was deprived of sleep because of this and he was also deprived of medical attention. He had lost a lot of weight. He had a painful medical problem, haemorrhoids, and that treatment was refused unless he cooperated. He said he would cooperate and had an operation. However, the operation was not performed correctly and he still had problems. He would not cooperate. [H]e was [then] put in Romeo Block where the prisoners would be made to stand naked. It was then left to the discretion of the interrogators whether a prisoner was allowed clothes or not.”

The last of the four is Salem Ahmad Hadi Bin Kanad (ISN 131), who, according to the US records, was born in 1975. Bin Kanad, sometimes referred to as Salem Ben Kend, had fought with the Taliban in northern Afghanistan, and, as I explained at t time of his first PRB, he “had ended up imprisoned in Qala-i-Janghi, a fort controlled by the Northern Alliance commander Abdul Rashid Dostum, where he survived a notorious massacre by US, British and Northern Alliance forces. In his classified military file, released by WikiLeaks in 2011, it was revealed that, in the massacre, he was ‘shot in the chest and legs.’”

At the PRB it also became apparent, for the first time, that, as I described it, he “has two daughters, the youngest of whom was just two months old when her last saw her. His status as a father has not previously emerged in any reports, but his personal representatives made it clear that they are a central concern of his, and that he ‘wants to urge both daughters to complete their educations.’”

Bin Kanad first had his case reviewed by a PRB in April 2014, but he refused to turn up, making it impossible for the board to even contemplate releasing him. Three further file reviews then took place, in which the PRB officials reviewed his case again, on the third time approving him for a another full review, and finally he was interviewed by the officials by video link from Guantánamo. That review took place in April 2016, and he was approved for release in May.

In Riyadh, a reporter for AFP stated that the prisoners and family members “wept as they saw each other for the first time in years.” Salem bin Kanad told reporters “he felt ‘born again’ after seeing his relatives,” and Mohammed Bawazir “said he hoped to move on and forget the past,” as AFP put it. “I want to give back to my family the 15 years I lost,” he said.

AFP also noted, “The bearded ex-prisoners appeared healthy and were all dressed in two-piece Pakistani-style tunics. One prisoner was welcomed by 21 relatives, including children, but only a handful greeted the others. A lone woman waited for one of the inmates.”

These releases leave 19 other men at Guantánamo who have also been approved for release — five by the 2009 task force, and 14 by PRBs. Recent reports suggest that between 13 and 15 of these men will be freed before President Obama leaves office, leaving just six men approved for release when Donald Trump takes over. But that, of course, is six men too many, especially given Trump’s recently stated hostility towards releasing any prisoners. In addition, just ten men are facing trials, and 26 others are awaiting further reviews, which, as with Salem bin Kanad, will almost certainly end up approving some of them for release, as is appropriate, unless Trump decides once more to lock Guantánamo shut, as he has threatened to do.

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.

See the following for articles about the 142 prisoners released from Guantánamo from June 2007 to January 2009 (out of the 532 released by President Bush), and the 178 prisoners released from February 2009 to December 2016 (by President Obama), whose stories are covered in more detail than is available anywhere else –- either in print or on the internet –- although many of them, of course, are also covered in The Guantánamo Files, and for the stories of the other 390 prisoners released by President Bush, see my archive of articles based on the classified military files released by WikiLeaks in 2011: June 2007 –- 2 Tunisians, 4 Yemenis (here, here and here); July 2007 –- 16 Saudis; August 2007 –- 1 Bahraini, 5 Afghans; September 2007 –- 16 Saudis; 1 Mauritanian; 1 Libyan, 1 Yemeni, 6 Afghans; November 2007 –- 3 Jordanians, 8 Afghans; 14 Saudis; December 2007 –- 2 Sudanese; 13 Afghans (here and here); 3 British residents; 10 Saudis; May 2008 –- 3 Sudanese, 1 Moroccan, 5 Afghans (here, here and here); July 2008 –- 2 Algerians; 1 Qatari, 1 United Arab Emirati, 1 Afghan; August 2008 –- 2 Algerians; September 2008 –- 1 Pakistani, 2 Afghans (here and here); 1 Sudanese, 1 Algerian; November 2008 –- 1 Kazakh, 1 Somali, 1 Tajik; 2 Algerians; 1 Yemeni (Salim Hamdan), repatriated to serve out the last month of his sentence; December 2008 –- 3 Bosnian Algerians; January 2009 –- 1 Afghan, 1 Algerian, 4 Iraqis; February 2009 — 1 British resident (Binyam Mohamed); May 2009 —1 Bosnian Algerian (Lakhdar Boumediene); June 2009 — 1 Chadian (Mohammed El-Gharani); 4 Uighurs to Bermuda; 1 Iraqi; 3 Saudis (here and here); August 2009 — 1 Afghan (Mohamed Jawad); 2 Syrians to Portugal; September 2009 — 1 Yemeni; 2 Uzbeks to Ireland (here and here); October 2009 — 1 Kuwaiti, 1 prisoner of undisclosed nationality to Belgium; 6 Uighurs to Palau; November 2009 — 1 Bosnian Algerian to France, 1 unidentified Palestinian to Hungary, 2 Tunisians to Italian custody; December 2009 — 1 Kuwaiti (Fouad al-Rabiah); 2 Somalis; 4 Afghans; 6 Yemenis; January 2010 — 2 Algerians, 1 Uzbek to Switzerland; 1 Egyptian, 1 Azerbaijani and 1 Tunisian to Slovakia; February 2010 — 1 Egyptian, 1 Libyan, 1 Tunisian to Albania; 1 Palestinian to Spain; March 2010 — 1 Libyan, 2 unidentified prisoners to Georgia, 2 Uighurs to Switzerland; May 2010 — 1 Syrian to Bulgaria, 1 Yemeni to Spain; July 2010 — 1 Yemeni (Mohammed Hassan Odaini); 1 Algerian; 1 Syrian to Cape Verde, 1 Uzbek to Latvia, 1 unidentified Afghan to Spain; September 2010 — 1 Palestinian, 1 Syrian to Germany; January 2011 — 1 Algerian; April 2012 — 2 Uighurs to El Salvador; July 2012 — 1 Sudanese; September 2012 — 1 Canadian (Omar Khadr) to ongoing imprisonment in Canada; August 2013 — 2 Algerians; December 2013 — 2 Algerians; 2 Saudis; 2 Sudanese; 3 Uighurs to Slovakia; March 2014 — 1 Algerian (Ahmed Belbacha); May 2014 — 5 Afghans to Qatar (in a prisoner swap for US PoW Bowe Bergdahl); November 2014 — 1 Kuwaiti (Fawzi al-Odah); 3 Yemenis to Georgia, 1 Yemeni and 1 Tunisian to Slovakia, and 1 Saudi; December 2014 — 4 Syrians, 1 Palestinian and 1 Tunisian to Uruguay; 4 Afghans; 2 Tunisians and 3 Yemenis to Kazakhstan; January 2015 — 4 Yemenis to Oman, 1 Yemeni to Estonia; June 2015 — 6 Yemenis to Oman; September 2015 — 1 Moroccan and 1 Saudi; October 2015 — 1 Mauritanian and 1 British resident (Shaker Aamer); November 2015 — 5 Yemenis to the United Arab Emirates; January 2016 — 2 Yemenis to Ghana; 1 Kuwaiti (Fayiz al-Kandari) and 1 Saudi; 10 Yemenis to Oman; 1 Egyptian to Bosnia and 1 Yemeni to Montenegro; April 2016 — 2 Libyans to Senegal; 9 Yemenis to Saudi Arabia; June 2016 — 1 Yemeni to Montenegro; July 2016 — 1 Tajik and 1 Yemeni to Serbia, 1 Yemeni to Italy; August 2016 — 12 Yemenis and 3 Afghans to the United Arab Emirates (see here and here); October 2016 — 1 Mauritanian (Mohammedou Ould Slahi); December 2016 — 1 Yemeni to Cape Verde.

View more on Andy Worthington's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on January 06, 2017 13:19

Rights Groups, Including Close Guantánamo, Issue Statement in the Run-Up to the 15th Anniversary of the Opening of Guantánamo

Andy Worthington calling for the closure of Guantanamo outside the White House on january 11, 2016, the 14th anniversary of the prison's opening (Photo: Justin Norman).

Please support my work! I’m currently trying to raise $1000 (£800) to support my annual visit to the US to call for the closure of Guantánamo (from Jan. 9-21).

Dear friends and supporters,

It’s horrible to realize that, next Wednesday, January 11, the prison at Guantánamo Bay will have been open for 15 years, and will begin its 16th year of operations with just a week left under President Obama’s control, prior to Donald Trump taking it over. Trump, notoriously, promised on the campaign trail to “load it up with bad dudes,” and, just two days ago, tweeted, “There should be no further releases from Gitmo. These are extremely dangerous people and should not be allowed back onto the battlefield.”

As I have done every January since 2011, I will be in Washington, D.C. next Wednesday to call for the prison’s closure— a call aimed at the outgoing president, but, more specifically, now, aimed at Donald Trump.

I arrive in New York City on January 9, and travel to Washington, D.C. the day after, and I’ll soon be posting a more detailed itinerary — although I can tell you that at 2.30pm on January 11 I’ll be at New America to discuss Guantánamo at 15, and what we can expect from Donald Trump, with the attorney Tom Wilner, with whom I co-founded the Close Guantánamo campaign five years ago, Jim Moran, former congressional representative for Virginia’s 8th district and one of the representatives who led opposition to Guantánamo Bay, and New America fellow Rosa Brooks, who was Counselor to the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and Special Coordinator for Rule of Law and Humanitarian Policy in the Pentagon from 2009-2011. If you want to attend this free event, please RSVP here.

I will also be taking part in an event in New York City looking at Guantánamo, torture and Donald Trump, and I’m also looking for TV and radio interviews, other speaking events, and opportunities to sing and play a few protest songs, so if you can help with any of this, do please get in touch.

In the meantime, please find below the statement — a call to action — from the rights groups involved in the protest against the continued existence of Guantánamo in Washington, D.C. next Wednesday. A full list of groups is listed at the end, but they include Witness Against Torture, Amnesty International, the Center for Constitutional Rights, World Can’t Wait, Close Guantánamo and We Stand With Shaker. Thanks in particular to Jeremy Varon of Witness Against Torture for his work drafting this statement, which then bounced around through various edits. Witness Against Torture are already in Washington, D.C., for their annual ten days of fasting and daily protests, and I encourage you to check out their progress here.

This is my quote for the forthcoming press release:

“Sadly, this year we have to send messages to both a president and a president-elect about the reasons why Guantanamo must be closed. President Obama knows all the reasons, as he has eloquently explained throughout his presidency, but now he needs to find the courage to do something extraordinary in his last week in office, and close the prison once and for all. This is necessary not just to fulfill his own promise to close it, made eight long years ago, but also to prevent Donald Trump from sending new prisoners there, and refusing to release any others, as he has threatened, as recently as last week. Mr. Obama, close it now!”

No More Guantánamo

No Torture Presidency

No Indefinite Detention

President Obama has failed in his pledge of eight years ago to close the US detention camp at Guantánamo. Congressional obstacles, misinformation perpetuated in the media, and the president’s own lack of will are all responsible for this policy disaster. Guantánamo remains a living symbol of US torture and other human rights abuses, and a place of misery for the 55 men it still houses. Most of them have never been charged with, let alone tried for, any crime.

In the remaining weeks before he leaves office, President Obama must do what he still can: expedite the release of cleared men and release the full 2014 Senate Torture Report documenting CIA abuses.

Human rights and the United States’ standing in the world face a new danger: the possibility that President-elect Donald Trump will adopt the use of torture. He has also called for increasing the prison population at Guantánamo.

Statements by Mr. Trump and members of his incoming administration to moderate his past positions offer little assurance that a Trump presidency will reject torture and respect the rule of law. Trump’s blatantly Islamophobic campaign stokes fear of a new era of religious discrimination and other abuses of civil and human rights.

Human rights activists are gathering in Washington, D.C. on January 11, 2017 to mark 15 years since the prison at Guantánamo opened. We come to state, in one loud voice, to President-elect Trump:

Torture, discrimination, and indefinite detention are wrong. There is no exception. Any attempt to bring back torture or to send new people to Guantánamo will be strongly opposed in the United States and throughout the world. Any effort to persecute Muslims — or any other religious, racial, or ethnic group — through special immigration or surveillance measures is unacceptable.

Mr. Trump must:

• make clear the absolute rejection of torture, as banned by US and international law

• continue handling domestic terrorism suspects within the civilian criminal justice system and in accord with the US Constitution

• continue the policy of transferring men from Guantánamo and work toward the closure of the prison, with its steep moral and financial cost to the United States

We hope Trump will listen to those at all levels of the US government and those around the world who reject torture and want to end the blight of Guantánamo. We also have no illusions about the role that human rights violations and the persecution of Muslims could play in a Trump presidency. More than ever, our vigilance is required.

We also stand together with a plea to the public — to those who have been part of longstanding efforts to oppose torture and close Guantánamo, as well as those new to this cause. We must hold the next administration accountable to the US Constitution, to human rights standards, and to the common-sense decency that guides us.

Please join us for a rally and march to close Guantánamo and end torture and indefinite detention. The rally — at which I’ll be speaking — is outside the Supreme Court at 11.30am, because our normal rallying point, in front of the White House, is off-limits prior to a presidential inauguration. Please keep an eye on Witness Against Torture’s website for details of the subsequent march.

Sponsors: Amnesty International USA, the Bill of Rights Defense Committee and Defending Dissent Foundation, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Close Guantánamo, Code Pink, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Ray McGovern with Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, National Coalition to Protect Civil Freedoms, National Religious Campaign Against Torture, No More Guantánamos, September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, the Torture Abolition and Survivor and Support Coalition, Veterans for Peace, We Stand with Shaker, Witness Against Torture, Women Against Military Madness, World Can’t Wait, and others.

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.

View more on Andy Worthington's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on January 05, 2017 14:54

Andy Worthington: An Archive of Guantánamo Articles and Other Writing – Part 21, July to December 2016

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

This article is the 21st in an ongoing series of articles listing all my work in chronological order. It’s a project I began in January 2010, when I put together the first chronological lists of all my articles, in the hope that doing so would make it as easy as possible for readers and researchers to navigate my work — the nearly 2,750 articles I have published since I first began publishing articles here in May 2007, which, otherwise, are not available in chronological order in any readily accessible form.

It is also a project for which I receive no institutional funding, so, if you appreciate what I do as a reader-funded journalist and activist, please consider making a donation via the Paypal ‘Donate’ button above. Any amount, however large or small, will be very gratefully received — and if you are able to become a regular monthly sustainer, that would be particularly appreciated. To do so, please tick the box marked, “Make This Recurring (Monthly),” and fill in the amount you wish to donate every month.

As I note every time I put together a chronological list of my articles, my mission, as it has been since my research first revealed the scale of the injustice at Guantánamo, continues to revolve around four main aims — to humanize the prisoners by telling their stories; to expose the many lies told about them to supposedly justify their detention; to push for the prison’s closure and the absolute repudiation of indefinite detention without charge or trial as US policy; and to call for those who initiated, implemented and supported indefinite detention and torture to be held accountable for their actions.

The period covered by this 21st list, from July to December 2016, saw 20 men freed, including torture victim and best-selling author Mohamedou Ould Slahi, reducing the prison’s population to just 59 men, and, as part of President Obama’s efforts to belatedly fulfill his promise to close Guantánamo, the Periodic Review Boards, set up in 2013 to assess the cases of men not already approved for release, and not facing trials, were sped up, with 14 prisoners being approved for release.

These topics took up much of my time in the last six months, but not exclusively. I also updated the definitive six-part Guantánamo prisoner list that I first put together in 2009, and spent some time focusing on the military commissions, the broken trial system at Guantánamo that drags on and on without end — and without anything resembling justice.

For the Close Guantánamo campaign, which I co-founded in 2012 with the attorney Tom Wilner, I also recorded a video with former prisoner Shaker Aamer, and worked on a promotional video for the campaign, which was created by Brendan Horstead, the drummer in my band The Four Fathers, featuring a new song, ‘Close Guantánamo’, that we recorded in the summer — the first release from our forthcoming second album.

I also — of course — wrote about the second cataclysmically depressing domestic political event of the year, after Brexit: the election of Donald Trump in the US Presidential Election.

Brexit, of course, also took up the lion’s share of my writing about British politics in this period, as the shockingly incompetent government led by the alarming authoritarian Theresa May continued to fail to comprehend quite how disastrous it will be for the British economy if we leave the EU.

The articles dealing with British politics are listed separately, at the end of the monthly chronological lists of articles related to Guantánamo.

An archive of Guantánamo articles: Part 21, July to December 2016

July 2016

1. Guantánamo, Periodic Review Boards: The Last Russian in Guantánamo and an Alleged Saudi Bomb-Maker Seek Release Via Periodic Review Boards

2. Shaker Aamer, protest music: Fighting Injustice: Andy Worthington’s Band The Four Fathers Release New EP Including Reworked ‘Song for Shaker Aamer’

3. Guantánamo, Periodic Review Boards: The Last Two Yemenis Mistakenly Identified as Members of Al-Qaeda Cell Seek Release from Guantánamo via Periodic Review Board

4. Prisoners released from Guantánamo: 76 Men Left in Guantánamo, as Yemeni Starts New Life in Italy, and Another Yemeni and the Last Tajik Go to Serbia

5. Radio, Guantánamo: Radio: Andy Worthington Discusses Guantánamo and Brexit on Portland’s KBOO FM with Linda Olson-Osterlund

6. Guantánamo, Periodic Review Boards: Penitent Pakistani Seeks Release from Guantánamo, as Two Yemenis and a Moroccan are Approved for Release and an Algerian’s Request is Denied

7. Guantánamo, Periodic Review Boards: Libyan Who Abandoned Habeas Corpus Petition, Citing Its “Futility,” Asks Review Board to Approve His Release from Guantánamo

8. Guantánamo, Mohamedou Ould Slahi, Periodic Review Boards: Finally! Torture Victim and Best-Selling Author Mohamedou Ould Slahi Approved for Release from Guantánamo

9. Guantánamo, Periodic Review Boards: Yemeni Seized in Georgia, Who Has Not Been Able to Make Contact With His Family in 13 Years at Guantánamo, Seeks Release Via Review Board

10. Guantánamo, Periodic Review Boards: Ravil Mingazov, the Last Russian in Guantánamo, Is Approved for Release, While Afghan Who Arrived in 2007 Has Ongoing Detention Upheld

August 2016

11. Guantánamo, Periodic Review Boards: Two Yemenis Approved for Release from Guantánamo, as Detention of Two Saudis Upheld, Including Torture Victim Mohammed Al-Qahtani

12. Guantánamo, Periodic Review Boards: Somali “High-Value Detainee,” Held in CIA Torture Prisons, Seeks Release from Guantánamo via Review Board

13. Guantánamo campaigns: For Aug. 22, Please Send Us Your Photos Reminding President Obama That He Has Just 150 Days Left to Close Guantánamo

14. Guantánamo, Periodic Review Boards: The Last Prisoner to Arrive at Guantánamo, an Afghan Fascinated with US Culture, Asks Review Board to Approve His Release

15. Prisoners released from Guantánamo: Obama Releases 15 Prisoners from Guantánamo to UAE; Just 61 Men Now Left (Part 1 of 2)

16. Video, Guantánamo: Video: Andy Worthington Discusses Guantánamo’s Declining Population with Peter B. Collins

17. Prisoners released from Guantánamo: Obama Releases 15 Prisoners from Guantánamo to UAE; Just 61 Men Now Left (Part 2 of 2)

18. Guantánamo, Periodic Review Boards: Algerian Approved for Release from Guantánamo, As Three Other Men Have Their Ongoing Imprisonment Upheld

19. Guantánamo, Periodic Review Boards: Two Malaysian “High-Value Detainees” Seek Release from Guantánamo Via Periodic Review Boards

20. Guantánamo, Periodic Review Boards: Guantánamo “High-Value Detainee” Abu Faraj Al-Libi Seeks Release Via Periodic Review Board

September 2016

October 2016

32. Closing Guantánamo: Obama’s Failure to Close Guantánamo: Revisiting a Major Article in the New Yorker

33. Guantánamo prisoner list: My Six-Part Definitive Guantánamo Prisoner List: Updated for the First Time Since 2014

34. Guantánamo campaigns: President Obama Has 100 Days Left to Close Guantánamo: Send Us Your Photos

35. Guantánamo, military commissions: Guantánamo torture victims should be allowed UN visit (for Al-Jazeera)

36. Video, Guantánamo campaigns: Close Guantánamo World Exclusive Video: Shaker Aamer Urges President Obama to Shut the Prison Now

37. Mohamedou Ould Slahi, prisoners released from Guantánamo: Mohamedou Ould Slahi Released from Guantánamo, Thanks Those Who Stood By Him

38. Guantánamo, Periodic Review Boards: Afghan Money Exchanger Approved for Release from Guantánamo; Former Child Prisoner and Pakistani Have Ongoing Imprisonment Upheld

39. Guantánamo events: ‘Enshrined Injustice: Guantánamo, Torture and the Military Commissions’ – Nov. 2 London Event with Alka Pradhan, Andy Worthington, Carla Ferstmann

40. Guantánamo, Periodic Review Boards: How Guantánamo’s Periodic Review Boards Exposed Woefully Distorted Intelligence Assessments

41. Guantánamo prisoner list: Good News! The Updates to My Six-Part Definitive Guantánamo Prisoner List Are Now Complete

42. Guantánamo, military commissions: The Messed-Up Trial of the Century: Lawdragon’s Exhaustive Report on the 9/11 Pre-Trial Hearings at Guantánamo

43. Guantánamo, Periodic Review Boards: Two More Guantánamo Prisoners, Including Hambali, Recommended for Ongoing Imprisonment by Review Boards

44. Guantánamo, military commissions, US courts: In Contentious Split Decision, Appeals Court Upholds Guantánamo Prisoner Ali Hamza Al-Bahlul’s Conspiracy Conviction

45. Shaker Aamer, Guantánamo: New Thank You Message from Shaker Aamer to Supporters, Exactly One Year Since His Release from Guantánamo

November 2016

[image error]46. Guantánamo, Abu Zubaydah, Periodic Review Boards: First “War on Terror” Torture Victim Abu Zubaydah Denied Release from Guantánamo

47. Guantánamo, Abu Zubaydah: Humanizing a Torture Victim: Abu Zubaydah’s Letters from Guantánamo

48. Guantánamo, military commissions: Parliament and the People: Two Days of London Events About Guantánamo, Torture and the Military Commissions

49. Donald Trump: Trump’s Victory Confirms 2016 as the Year WASPs Began, Alarmingly, to Embrace the Far Right in Significant Numbers

50. Video, Guantánamo campaigns: With Trump En Route to the White House, New Close Guantánamo Video Urges President Obama to Get the Prison Closed

51. Radio, Guantánamo, Donald Trump: Radio: Andy Worthington Discusses Closing Guantánamo, Trump, Brexit and the Failure of Mainstream Politics on Portland’s KBOO FM

52. Radio, Guantánamo, Donald Trump: Podcast: Andy Worthington Discusses Closing Guantánamo and the Rightward Drift of Politics in the US and the UK with Kevin Gosztola for Shadowproof

53. Guantánamo, protest music: Andy Worthington’s Band The Four Fathers Release New Online Single, Close Guantánamo, Prior to Release of Second Album

54. Donald Trump, Guantánamo: Donald Trump, Guantánamo and Torture: What Do We Need to Know?

55. Guantánamo, torture: Great New York Times Exposé of How Torture, Abuse and Command Indifference Compromised Psychiatric Care at Guantánamo

56. Life After Guantánamo: Guantánamo Lawyer’s Moving Memories of Her Client Obaidullah, an Afghan Released in the UAE in August

57. Guantánamo campaigns: The Countdown to Close Guantánamo: With Just 50 Days Left for President Obama to Close the Prison, Please Send Us A Photo

December 2016

58. Guantánamo, Periodic Review Boards: Final Two Review Board Decisions Announced: 21 Men Now Approved for Release from Guantánamo

59. Prisoners released from Guantánamo: Yemeni Freed in Cape Verde: 59 Men Left in Guantánamo

60. Guantánamo, drone attacks, President Obama: In Final Counter-Terrorism Speech, Obama Targets Trump But Fails to Acknowledge His Own Mistakes on Guantánamo and War

61. Guantánamo letter-writing campaign: Please Write to the Remaining Prisoners in Guantánamo in Obama’s Last Month in Office

62. Guantánamo, President Obama, Donald Trump: Obama v Trump on Guantánamo and torture (for Al-Jazeera)

63. Guantánamo, Periodic Review Boards: Periodic Review Boards Approve Another Two Yemenis for Release from Guantánamo

64. Guantánamo, protest music: Andy Worthington’s Band The Four Fathers’ Top Ten Songs on Bandcamp

65. Closing Guantánamo: Emptying Guantánamo: Obama to Release 17 or 18 Prisoners Before Trump Takes Over

66. Guantánamo, Periodic Review Boards: Another Yemeni Approved for Release from Guantánamo: Did He Make the List of Prisoners Being Freed in the New Year?

An archive of articles about British politics, July to December 2016

1. Brexit: Not Giving Up: Photos from the March for Europe in London, Saturday July 2, 2016

2. Brexit: As the Leaderless UK Begins Sinking, MPs, Media and British Citizens Don’t Seem to Care

3. Brexit: On Brexit, the Labour Party, With Its Blundering and Pointless Coup, Lost Its Best Opportunity Ever to Attack the Tories

4. Brexit: 1,000+ Lawyers Tell Parliament that UK Cannot Leave EU Without MPs’ Consent

5. Theresa May, terrorism: As Theresa May Becomes Prime Minister, A Look Back at Her Authoritarianism, Islamophobia and Harshness on Immigration

6. Music festivals: Off to WOMAD for A Long Weekend of World Music, Back on Monday

7. Music festivals: My Photos: Wonderful WOMAD 2016

8. Brexit: Photos of the March For Europe in London on Sep. 3 and the Need to Keep Fighting Brexit and the Tories

9. Refugee crisis: My Photos of the Refugees Welcome March in London, Sept. 17, 2016

10. Housing crisis: Surprise as Tories Judge that Compulsory Purchases for the Regeneration of Southwark’s Aylesbury Estate Breach Leaseholders’ Human Rights

11. Brexit: It’s 100 Days Since the EU referendum; As a Legal Challenge Secures a Victory, It’s Clear the Tories Don’t Know What They’re Doing

12. Theresa May, Brexit: Theresa May and the Conservative Party’s Alarming White Fascist Aspirations

13. Protest music: Sun. Oct. 16: Love and Politics – New London Gig for Andy Worthington’s Band The Four Fathers

14. Theresa May, Brexit: Britain’s Ongoing Brexit Woes: Nero Had Nothing on Deluded Theresa May and Her Inadequate Ministers

15. Andy Tsege, Boris Johnson: Ask Your MP to Tell Boris Johnson to Demand the Release of UK Citizen Andy Tsege, Kidnapped and on Death Row in Ethiopia

16. Brexit: As Racism Spreads and Economic Woes Increase, Is the Tide Starting to Turn Against Brexit?

17. Brexit, UK courts: YES! Judges Tell Lawless Tory Government That UK Cannot Leave EU Without Parliamentary Approval

18. Theresa May, austerity: Theresa May Oversees Cruel Benefit Cap That Could Make 250,000 Children Homeless

19. Racism, Brexit: Andy Worthington Speaks About “Demonising ‘the Other’” at the Festival of Ideas for Change in Brockley, London SE4, Sun. Nov. 20

20. Homelessness: Andy Worthington Joins Panel at Homeless Film Festival’s 50th Anniversary Screening of Ken Loach’s ‘Cathy Come Home’, LCC, Fri. Nov. 18

21. Brexit: Leaked Memo Reveals Tories Have No Clue How to Implement Brexit

22. Protest music: Andy Worthington’s Band The Four Fathers Play Three London Gigs in New Cross, Deptford and Brockley on Nov. 27, Dec. 10 and 17

23. Save the NHS: Save the NHS: Tories’ Own Auditor Finds “Financial Problems are Endemic and This is Not Sustainable” for NHS’s Survival

24. Racism, Brexit: Demonising the ‘Other’: Tackling the Rise of Racism and Xenophobia

25. Brexit: Brexit: Opposition to Leaving the EU Builds, While Theresa May Reminds EU Citizens Living and Working in the UK That They Are Pawns in Her Inept Game

26. Brexit: Brexit Hits Voters Where It Hurts – In Their Wallets – As Majority Reveal They Don’t Want to Be Worse Off By Leaving the EU

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.

View more on Andy Worthington's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on January 03, 2017 13:59

Andy Worthington: An Archive of Guantánamo Articles and Other Writing – Part 20, January to June 2016

Andy Worthington with Roger Waters and cellist Alexander Rohatyn on Democracy Now! in January 2016.

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

This article is the 20th in an ongoing series of articles listing all my work in chronological order. It’s a project I began in January 2010, when I put together the first chronological lists of all my articles, in the hope that doing so would make it as easy as possible for readers and researchers to navigate my work — the nearly 2,750 articles I have published since I first began publishing articles here in May 2007, which, otherwise, are not available in chronological order in any readily accessible form.

It is also a project for which I receive no institutional funding, so, if you appreciate what I do as a reader-funded journalist and activist, please consider making a donation via the Paypal ‘Donate’ button above. Any amount, however large or small, will be very gratefully received — and if you are able to become a regular monthly sustainer, that would be particularly appreciated. To do so, please tick the box marked, “Make This Recurring (Monthly),” and fill in the amount you wish to donate every month.

I first began working full-time researching and writing about the Bush administration’s “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo, and the 779 men (and boys) held there nearly eleven years ago, in March 2006, when the Pentagon lost a FOIA lawsuit and was obliged to release 8,000 pages of documents relating to the prisoners. My analysis of these documents led to the creation of my book The Guantánamo Files, and, since then, I have continued to write about Guantánamo, and the men held there, on an almost daily basis, as an independent journalist and activist, first under George W. Bush, and for the last eight years under Barack Obama, whose failure to close the prison as he promised means that this wretched and unacceptable prison will remain open under the unpredictable and troubling figure of Donald Trump.

As I note every time I put together a chronological list of my articles, my mission, as it has been since my research first revealed the scale of the injustice at Guantánamo, continues to revolve around four main aims — to humanize the prisoners by telling their stories; to expose the many lies told about them to supposedly justify their detention; to push for the prison’s closure and the absolute repudiation of indefinite detention without charge or trial as US policy; and to call for those who initiated, implemented and supported indefinite detention and torture to be held accountable for their actions.

The period covered by this 20th list, from January to June 2016, was a good period for the release of prisoners, with 28 men freed, and it was also good for the approval of other prisoners for release (nine in total), via the Periodic Review Boards, which were set up in 2013 to assess the cases of men not already approved for release, and not facing trials — but in many ways, of course, it was a case of too little, too late on the part of President Obama.

Also included is coverage of my annual US visit, to coincide with the anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, in January, and promotion of the Countdown to Close Guantánamo, an initiative I launched through the Close Guantánamo campaign that I co-founded in 2012 with the attorney Tom Wilner, when I appeared on Democracy Now! with music legend Roger Waters.

In this period, when time allowed, I also covered other aspects of British politics, culminating, sadly, in the thoroughly depressing EU referendum, which continues to cast a baleful shadow over British politics. The articles dealing with British politics are listed separately, at the end of the monthly chronological lists of articles related to Guantánamo.

An archive of Guantánamo articles: Part 20, January to June 2016

January 2016

1. War, torture, protest music: Videos: Andy Worthington’s Band The Four Fathers Play “Masters of War” and “81 Million Dollars”

2. Life after Guantánamo: Former Guantánamo Prisoner Younous Chekkouri Illegally Imprisoned in Morocco; As Murat Kurnaz Calls for His Release, Please Ask John Kerry to Act

3. Guantánamo anniversary, US visit: Close Guantánamo Now: Andy Worthington’s US Tour on the 14th Anniversary of the Prison’s Opening, January 8-18, 2016

4. Prisoners released from Guantánamo: Two Yemeni Prisoners Released from Guantánamo to Ghana; 105 Men Remain

5. Shaker Aamer, Life after Guantánamo: Seven Ex-Guantánamo Prisoners Unite in London to Call for Prison’s Closure on Jan. 11; Shaker Aamer Photographed With Inflatable Figure of Himself Outside US Embassy

6. Guantánamo anniversary, US visit: Jan. 11 Protest at the White House: Rights Groups Call for President Obama to Close Guantánamo

7. Video, Guantánamo anniversary, US visit, Shaker Aamer: Videos: On 14th Anniversary of Opening of Guantánamo, Andy Worthington Speaks Outside the White House, Shaker Aamer Speaks in London

8. Prisoners released from Guantánamo: Fayiz Al-Kandari is Free! The Last Kuwaiti in Guantánamo Is Released, Plus a Saudi: Now 103 Men Remain

9. Video, Guantánamo anniversary, US visit: Video: Will Guantánamo Ever Close? Andy Worthington, Karen Greenberg and Tom Wilner at New America on Jan. 11

10. Prisoners released from Guantánamo: Ten Yemenis Freed from Guantánamo, Given New Homes in Oman; Now 93 Men Remain

11. Video, Guantánamo anniversary, US visit: Video: Andy Worthington Discusses the Struggle to Free Shaker Aamer from Guantánamo, Plays “Song for Shaker Aamer” at Revolution Books, NYC

12. Closing Guantánamo: Pentagon Blocks Prisoner Releases from Guantánamo – Including 74-Pound Yemeni Hunger Striker

13. Guantánamo campaigns: The “Countdown to Close Guantánamo” Launches: Send in Your Photos Asking President Obama to Fulfill His Promise to Close the Prison

14. Guantánamo campaigns, US visit: Video: On Democracy Now! Roger Waters and Andy Worthington Discuss the Countdown to Close Guantánamo and the Campaign to Free Shaker Aamer

15. Radio, Guantánamo anniversary, US visit: Radio: As the Prison at Guantánamo Begins Its 15th Year of Operations, Andy Worthington Speaks on US Radio

16. Prisoners released from Guantánamo: Seriously Ill Egyptian and a Yemeni Freed from Guantánamo in Bosnia and Montenegro; Another Refuses to Leave

17. Guantánamo, Periodic Review Boards: Two Yemenis Approved for Release from Guantánamo Via Periodic Review Boards As “Highly Compliant” Afghan and Another Yemeni Also Seek Release

18. Radio, Guantánamo: Radio: Andy Worthington Discusses the Potential Closure of Guantánamo with Chris Cook in Canada and on South African Radio

19. Life after Guantánamo: Fawzi Al-Odah Speaks: First Interview with Kuwaiti Released from Guantánamo in 2014

February 2016

20. Guantánamo media: “America’s Shame,” Rolling Stone’s Detailed – and Damning – Article About Guantánamo

21. Guantánamo campaigns: For Feb. 4, Send Us A Photo for the “Countdown to Close Guantánamo,” Telling Obama He Now Has Just 350 Days to Close It

22. Video, Guantánamo media, US visit: Video: Andy Worthington Sings “Song for Shaker Aamer” at Guantánamo Event in Washington, D.C.

23. Guantánamo, Periodic Review Boards: 24th Periodic Review Board Held at Guantánamo for Yemeni Who Has Become A Health Adviser to His Fellow Prisoners

24. Guantánamo, Periodic Review Boards: Guantánamo Lawyers Complain About Slow Progress of Periodic Review Boards

25. Photos, Guantánamo anniversary, US visit: Photos: Close Guantánamo Protest in Florida, Part of Andy Worthington’s US Tour, Jan. 9, 2016

26. Life after Guantánamo: Ex-Guantánamo Prisoner Younous Chekkouri Finally Freed in Morocco After 149 Days’ Imprisonment; Thanks Supporters

27. Closing Guantánamo: Obama Plans to Move 24 Guantánamo Prisoners to US Mainland, Send A Dozen for Trials in Other Countries

28. Photos, Guantánamo anniversary, US visit: Photos: “Close Guantánamo” Protest Outside the White House, Jan. 11, 2016

29. Guantánamo campaigns: The Struggle to Close Guantánamo and to Free Shaker Aamer: A Talk by Andy Worthington at Exeter University Amnesty International Society, Feb. 25

30. Photos, Guantánamo anniversary, US visit, Black Lives Matter: Photos: Close Guantánamo with Roger Waters and Justice for Tamir Rice with Witness Against Torture

31. Life after Guantánamo: Former Guantánamo Prisoner Younous Chekkouri’s First Interview Since Being Released from Prison in Morocco

32. Closing Guantánamo: Time’s Running Out: My Analysis of the Guantánamo Closure Plan Delivered to Congress by President Obama

33. Guantánamo, Periodic Review Boards: Guantánamo Reviews: US Accepts that Former “Black Site” Prisoner, Like Five Others, Wasn’t Part of Al-Qaeda Plot, As Another Prisoner is Approved for Release

March 2016

34. Guantánamo, Periodic Review Boards: Afghan Approved for Release from Guantánamo, as Lawyer Presents Persuasive Case for Release of Yemeni Who Has Become A Prolific Artist

35. Guantánamo campaigns: Write to the Guantánamo Prisoners in President Obama’s Last Year in Office

36. Guantánamo campaigns: The Countdown to Close Guantánamo: For Mar. 25, Send Us Your Photos and Tell Obama He Has Just 300 Days Left to Close the Prison

37. Guantánamo, Periodic Review Boards: Yemeni Is 27th Guantánamo Prisoner to Face Periodic Review Board; 4th Man Has Detention Upheld, 36 Others Await Reviews

38. Guantánamo, Periodic Review Boards: Saifullah Paracha, Pakistani Businessman and “Very Compliant” Prisoner, Faces Guantánamo Review Board

39. Guantánamo, Periodic Review Boards: 29th Periodic Review Board at Guantánamo – for Sharqawi Ali Al-Hajj, Alleged Al-Qaeda Facilitator

40. Guantánamo campaigns: Please Ask Your MPs to Support Caroline Lucas’s Early Day Motion Calling for the Closure of Guantánamo

41. Guantánamo campaigns: In the Countdown to Close Guantánamo, Photos Remind President Obama He Has Just 300 Days Left

42. Guantánamo lawyers: The American Lawyer’s Six Guantánamo Bar Profiles: Thomas Wilner, David Remes, Jennifer Cowan, Wells Dixon, David Nevin and Lee Wolosky

April 2016

43. Guantánamo, Periodic Review Boards: 20th Guantánamo Prisoner – Part of the Non-Existent “Karachi Six” – Approved for Release by Review Board; 5th Man’s Detention Upheld

44. Prisoners released from Guantánamo: Who Are the Two Libyans Freed from Guantánamo and Given New Homes in Senegal?

45. Guantánamo, torture: Fugitive From Justice: A Timeline of the Crimes Committed by Guantánamo’s Torture Chief, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, As He Fails to Show Up at a French Court

46. Guantánamo, Periodic Review Boards: Periodic Review Board Decides Yemeni at Guantánamo Still Poses A Threat 14 Years After Capture

47. Guantánamo media: Emad Hassan’s Story: How Knowing a Town Called Al-Qa’idah Got Him 13 Years in Guantánamo

48. Guantánamo campaigns: Two London Events for Mohamedou Ould Slahi, Best-Selling Author Imprisoned in Guantánamo

49. Guantánamo, Periodic Review Boards: Saifullah Paracha, 68-Year Old Pakistani Businessman, Has His Ongoing Imprisonment at Guantánamo Approved

50. Prisoners released from Guantánamo: Nine Yemenis Freed from Guantánamo to Saudi Arabia; 80 Prisoners Remain

51. Guantánamo, Periodic Review Boards: Guantánamo Review for Obaidullah, an Afghan Whose Lawyers Established His Innocence Five Years Ago

52. Photos, Guantánamo campaigns: Photos and Report: Parliamentary Meeting for Guantánamo Prisoner Mohamedou Ould Slahi, April 19, 2016

53. Video, Guantánamo campaigns: Video: On RT, Andy Worthington Discusses the Relaunched Gitmo Clock, the Countdown to Close Guantanamo and Whether Obama Will Close the Prison

54. Guantánamo, Periodic Review Boards: 31st Periodic Review Board Takes Place, for Yemeni at Guantánamo, as 8th Prisoner Has His Detention Upheld

55. Abu Zubaydah, Guantánamo, torture: 14 Years Incommunicado: Abu Zubaydah, Guantánamo Prisoner, CIA Torture Victim, and the Al-Qaeda Leader Who Wasn’t

May 2016

June 2016

An archive of articles about British politics, January to June 2016

[image error]1. Bedroom tax: Appeals Court Rules That Tories’ Hated, Useless Bedroom Tax Involves “Unlawful Discrimination”; But Will It Ever Be Scrapped?

2. Protest music: Come and See My Band The Four Fathers Play at Vinyl in Deptford on Saturday February 13

3. Photos, Trident: Photos: Stop Trident National Demo, Trafalgar Square, London, Feb. 27, 2016

4. Julian Assange, WikiLeaks: Julian Assange: 600+ Rights Groups and Individuals Condemn UK and Sweden for Failing to Recognize UN Arbitrary Detention Finding

5. Save the NHS: Save the NHS: Please Sign Petition and Ask Your MP to Attend 2nd Reading of the NHS Reinstatement Bill This Friday, Mar. 11

6. Housing: Call for an End to Housing Greed: Come to the National Demonstration Against the Housing Bill in London, Sun. Mar. 13

7. Photos, housing: Photos: The Kill the Housing Bill March, Seeking Housing Justice, London, Mar. 13, 2016

8. Save the NHS: Save the NHS from the Tory Butchers: How Doctors Saved Me and My Family, and How People Forget That Insurers Don’t Cover Pre-Existing Conditions

9. Photos, refugees: Photos from the ‘Refugees Welcome’ Rally in Trafalgar Square, Mar. 19, 2016

10. Battle of the Beanfield: Breach Theatre On Tour With Acclaimed Theatre/Video Dramatization of the Battle of the Beanfield

11. Islamophobia: David Cameron, Zac Goldsmith and Andrew Neil Owe Suliman Gani An Apology for Calling Him “Repellent” and an IS Supporter

12. Refugees: Heartless: The 289 Tory MPs Who Voted To Prevent 3,000 Refugee Children from Joining Their Relatives in the UK

13 Islamophobia: On Polling Day, Friends of Muslim Community Organiser Suliman Gani Launch Petition Demanding Apology from David Cameron for Making False Allegations Against Him

14. London Mayoral Election: Ha Ha! The Tories Lose London

15. Housing: The Tories’ Wretched Housing Bill is Passed; Another Step Towards the Death of Social Housing

16. Battle of the Beanfield: It’s Now 31 Years Since the Battle of the Beanfield: Where is the Spirit of Dissent in the UK Today?

17. Brexit: The End of Reason: Lies, Distortions and Misplaced Anger in the EU Referendum’s Brexit Camp

18. Brexit: UK Votes to Leave the EU: A Triumph of Racism and Massively Counter-Productive Political Vandalism

19. Brexit: Life in the UK After the EU Referendum: Waking Up Repeatedly at a Funeral That Never Ends

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.

View more on Andy Worthington's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on January 01, 2017 12:07

Another Yemeni Approved for Release from Guantánamo: Did He Make the List of Prisoners Being Freed in the New Year?

Yemeni prisoner Mohammed al-Ansi, in a photo from the classified military files released by WikiLeaks in 2011.

Please support my work! I’m currently trying to raise $3000 (£2400) to support my writing and campaigning on Guantánamo into 2017.

Just before Christmas, it was announced that Mohammed al-Ansi aka Muhammad al-Ansi (ISN 029), a Yemeni prisoner at Guantánamo, had been approved for release by a Periodic Review Board. The decision made al-Ansi the 38th prisoner to be approved for release by a PRB, and the seventh to be approved for release not after a first review, but after a second review. The decision also means that, of the 59 men still held, 23 have been approved for release.

The PRBs — consisting of representatives of the Departments of State, Defense, Justice and Homeland Security, as well as the office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — were set up in 2013 to review the cases of all the prisoners not already approved for release or facing trials, and 64 men have had their cases reviewed, with just 26, to date, having their ongoing imprisonment upheld. That’s a success rate of 59% for the prisoners, which rather undermines the alleged basis of their ongoing imprisonment when the PRBs were set up.

41 of the 64 men had been described as “too dangerous to release” by the previous review process, the Guantánamo Review Task Force that President Obama established shortly after taking office in 2009, even though the task force acknowledged that there was insufficient evidence to put them on trial, while the 23 other men had been recommended for prosecution until the basis for prosecutions largely collapsed under judicial scrutiny. For further information, see my definitive Periodic Review Board list on the Close Guantánamo website.

Al-Ansi had his case reviewed on February 23, 2016, when both his personal representatives (military personnel appointed to help the prisoners with their PRBs) and his attorney at the time, Lisa Strauss, stressed to the board members how al-Ansi has become a prolific and talented artist at Guantánamo, how he has a supportive family and chronic health issues, and how he bears no ill-will towards the United States. It was difficult to square this assessment with the US authorities’ ongoing efforts portray him as one of the so-called “Dirty Thirty,” men seized crossing from Afghanistan to Pakistan in December 2001, who, while mostly young, and mostly recent arrivals in Afghanistan, were unconvincingly portrayed as bodyguards for Osama bin Laden, but he was approved for ongoing detention on March 23, 2016.

A file review — an administrative process guaranteed every six months — took place on September 13, 2016, resulting in the following statement from the board members: “After reviewing relevant new information related to the detainee as well as information considered during the full review, the Board, by consensus, determined that a significant question is raised as to whether the detainee’s continued detention is warranted and therefore an additional full review should be conducted.”

That review took place on December 6, when his recently appointed attorney, Beth Jacob, made representations on his behalf. Jacob works for Kelley Drye & Warren, a national law firm, and stated at the review, “I have represented Mr. al Ansi [since] shortly after the Board’s decision on the initial review; I was not his lawyer at the time of the previous board hearing. I have met and spoken with Mr. al Ansi numerous times in the past year, and also read some of his earlier letters and the files of his case. He has been open and respectful of me in all of our interactions.”

Beth Jacob’s submission to the board also stated:

At our first meeting, Mr. al Ansi paid me the compliment of bringing a selection of his paintings where he has learned art through classes at Guantánamo. We spent the first hour discussing his artwork. After several meetings, he trusted me with his originals, and I showed them to an artist who lives and works in New York City. She was struck by his ability and innate talent, as she has written in her letter to this Board.

Both this artist and Reprieve pointed out that Mr. al Ansi’s art will stand him in good stead if he is deemed transferrable. First, it will give him something to do and a means of expression, in the first days and weeks after his transfer. Second, he will be part of a community of artists, which will provide stability and social contacts. Third, there is the possibility of earnings from his art. But Mr. al Ansi is planning for more practical ways to make a living — he told me he would like a construction job, and among the many classes that he is taking here at GTMO is one about small business.

Beth Jacob also spoke about the importance of al-Ansi’s family, describing him as one of five children, whose “siblings are educated, married and hold responsible jobs,” adding, “Although they grew up in Saudi Arabia, the family now lives in Yemen. But despite the unsettled conditions in Yemen, the al Ansi family still has resources which they are completely willing to use to help their brother start a new life after Guantánamo, as shown by the statements the family submitted to the first board and the panel. His family will be a stabilizing force when he is transferred.”

Jacob also spoke about his health, although a key passage in her submission was redacted. What was clear, however, is that he suffers from “chronic conditions,” and he “knows that managing the chronic conditions take much time, effort and attention, and that he must follow a strict diet and exercise regimen, in addition to his medications.”

Repeated from al-Ansi’s first review was a promise of assistance from The Carter Center, founded by President Carter, and from Reprieve, “through its successful Life After Guantánamo project, which has helped over three dozen former detainees, many of them Yemenis, make the adjustment from Guantánamo to life in society.”

Beth Jacob concluded her submission by stating:

Mr. al Ansi comes before you as someone who has matured during his time in Guantánamo, from a teenage to man who devotes his free tie to art, understands the importance of family, and is confronted with serious medical challenges. He has taken advantage of his years here in taking numerous cases, including learning English. He has been unfailingly polite and gentle in all of his conversations with me, and non-ideological. He is known to the guards as someone who will help mediate disputes — a peacemaker, not a troublemaker. I ask this Board to approve him for transfer.”

In approving his release, in a decision dated December 9, the board members, having determined, by consensus, that “continued law of war detention of the detainee is no longer necessary to protect against a continuing significant threat to the security of the United States,” stated that al-Ansi “demonstrated candor and provided details of his pre-detention activities and mindset, and also noted his efforts to take advantage of opportunities in detention to better himself, including academic, art, and business classes.” They also noted that he “does not appear to be driven to reengage by extremist ideology, has not made statements against the US or Western allies, and … has been mostly compliant in detention.” The board members also “considered the support network available to [him] upon transfer, from family and others, and that [he] has no known familial ties to extremism.”

It is not known if al-Ansi’s approval for release means that he is included in the 17 or 18 men that the New York Times reported last week would be free before President Obama leaves office (and which I wrote about here), but as Carol Rosenberg noted for the Miami Herald, because, by law, “Congress must get 30 days advance notice of a transfer from Secretary of Defense Ash Carter” and “[s]ince December has 31 days, the Pentagon could theoretically have sent transfer notices to Congress as late as Wednesday [December 21] and still arrange military transport from Guantánamo before Inauguration Day.”

I also await further results from the Periodic Review Boards, as the outcome of al-Ansi’s full review maintained a 100% success rate in these second full reviews, when the prisoners are once more interviewed by video link by the board members. Three other men whose ongoing imprisonment was approved by PRBs were, like al-Ansi, granted second full reviews, which have already taken place, although decisions have not yet been taken. The men in question are Moath Hamza Ahmed Al-Alwi (ISN 28), Said Salih Said Nashir (ISN 841) and Uthman Abd al-Rahim Muhammad Uthman (ISN 27). Three other me have also been promised second full reviews after file reviews, although dates have not yet been set for those reviews. These three men are Saifullah Paracha (ISN 1094), Sharqawi Abdu Ali Al Hajj (ISN 1457) and Omar Mohammed Ali Al-Rammah (ISN 1017).

I will be writing more about these reviews soon.

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.

View more on Andy Worthington's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on December 29, 2016 13:06

Emptying Guantánamo: Obama to Release 17 or 18 Prisoners Before Trump Takes Over

Muieen Abd al-Sattar, a stateless Rohingya Muslim, who is not one of the men who will be released before President Obama leaves office, despite having been approved for release in 2009. The photo is from the classified military files released by WikiLeaks in 2011.

Please support my work! I’m currently trying to raise $3000 (£2400) to support my writing and campaigning on Guantánamo into the new year.

Excellent news from Guantánamo yesterday, as Charlie Savage, in the New York Times, confirmed what those of us seeking the prison’s closure had hoped — that the majority of the 22 men approved for release (out of the 59 men still held) will be freed before President Obama leaves office.

Because of requirements put in place over many years by a hostile Congress, the Pentagon must notify Congress 30 days before a release — a “transfer” — is to take place, and the deadline for securing releases before Obama leaves office was therefore this Monday, December 19. By late in the day, officials told the Times, the administration had secured homes for 17 or 18 of the remaining prisoners, who, crucially, will be sent to Italy, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

The Gulf countries have all taken prisoners in the last two years — almost all of them Yemenis, for whom third countries had to be found because the entire US establishment is unwilling to repatriate Yemenis based on fears about the security situation in their homeland. Four were sent to Oman in January 2015, another six in June 2015, and five were sent to the UAE in November 2015. Another ten were sent to Oman in January 2016, and another 12 were sent to the UAE in August 2016 (with three Afghans, whose repatriation had been prohibited by Congress, based on fears about them ending up taking up arms against US forces). In addition, another nine Yemenis were sent to Saudi Arabia in April 2016.

Italy’s involvement came about because, as Charlie Savage explained, “When Prime Minister Matteo Renzi of Italy visited the White House in October for a state dinner, he made a commitment to President Obama: Italy, which resettled a Yemeni detainee from Guantánamo Bay last summer, would take one more person on the transfer list. But before the deal was completed, Mr. Renzi resigned. So a day after his successor, Paolo Gentiloni, formed a government on Dec. 14, Secretary of State John Kerry called to congratulate Mr. Gentiloni — and to urge him to follow through on the commitment, according to an official familiar with the negotiations. Mr. Gentiloni agreed, leading a rush to finalize the details and paperwork.”

Of the 22 men currently approved for release, seven were approved for release in 2009 by the Guantánamo Review Task Force that President Obama set up shortly after taking office for the first time, to review the cases of all the prisoners he inherited from George W. Bush, while the other 15 were approved for release by the latest review process, the Periodic Review Boards, which began in 2013. The PRBs were set up to review the cases of 41 men regarded as “too dangerous to release” by the task force, even though it was acknowledged that insufficient evidence existed to put them on trial, meaning that they were largely prisoners of innuendo, and 23 others later joined them, men who had been recommended for prosecution by the task force, until the basis for prosecutions at Guantánamo largely collapsed under judicial scrutiny.

126 men were approved for immediate release by the task force, and just two of these men remain — Ridah al-Yazidi (ISN 038), a Tunisian, and Muieen Abd al-Sattar (ISN 309), listed as being from the UAE, but actually a stateless Rohingya (part of the persecuted Indo-Aryan Muslim population of northern Myanmar). Sadly — shamefully — neither of these men will be freed before Obama leaves office.

Charlie Savage stated that officials told him that no country had offered al-Sattar a home, while the administration was “reluctant to repatriate” al-Yazidi, along with Sufyian Barhoumi (ISN 694), an Algerian, and Abdul Latif Nasir (ISN 244), a Moroccan, both approved for release this summer by PRBs, “for reasons having to do with their home countries,” reasons that, it should be noted, should have been resolved before now.

Sadly, both Muieen Abd al-Sattar and Ridah al-Yazidi are two of Guantánamo’s least known prisoners.

Al-Sattar’s classified military file, released by WikiLeaks in 2011, indicates that he was born in Dubai in 1974, although the UAE does not recognize him as a citizen. He has a Pakistani passport, and it seems that he lived in Mecca most of his life, where he taught at the Private Holy Koran School. In Guantánamo, he explained that a Syrian whom he had met in Karachi during a visit in September 2001 had persuaded him to travel to Afghanistan as a missionary, but he was evidently unhappy with this man, and told a tribunal at Guantánamo “that if he saw [him] again, he would be very upset with him and would want to do him physical harm for getting him into so much trouble.”

Al-Yazidi, born in January 1965, had apparently been living in Italy since the 1980s, before traveling to Afghanistan, where he reportedly served with the Taliban, but little information has emerged about him at Guantánamo. Although the task force approved him for release in 2009, when Carol Rosenberg of the Miami Herald researched his case for an article last January about the prisoners who were on the first flight into Guantánamo in January 2002, she was obliged to speculate that, in theory, he “could go home — unless he or the State Department fears sending him there.” Asked about this, his attorney, Brent Rushforth, said, “I just don’t know.” He revealed that he “met al-Yazidi only once in 2008,” and since that time he “has refused calls and invitations to other meetings.”

As Rushforth described it, “He’s certainly mysterious as far as I’m concerned; I just haven’t been able to communicate with him.”

The identity of the fifth man who may or may not be leaving has not been revealed, but he is obviously one of the remaining 18 men approved for release. Five of the 18 are Yemenis approved for release by the task force in 2009, but, with 25 others, held in what was nebulously described as “conditional detention” until it was decided that the security situation in Yemen had improved — or, as it turned out, until Obama decided to send them to third countries instead, beginning two years ago.

The other 13 were approved for release by PRBs: another eight Yemenis approved for release between May 2014 and December 2016, three Afghans, approved for release between June and September this year, a Russian, Ravil Mingazov, approved for release in July, who cannot be safely repatriated, and a Saudi, Jabran al-Qahtani, who may be repatriated to face prosecution in his home country. See my definitive Periodic Review Board list on the Close Guantánamo website for further information.

Responding to the news of the planned releases from Guantánamo, Elisa Massimino, the president of Human Rights First, said, as the New York Times put it, that “even though it appears likely that failing to fulfill his vow to close the Guantánamo prison will be part of Mr. Obama’s legacy, it was still ‘incredibly important’ that his administration did not let up on the effort to get out those men who were deemed transferable.”

“In terms of gradations of immorality, holding people for years who we have no national security interest in detaining is unconscionable,” Massimino said, adding, “This is not just about a campaign promise.”

The New York Times also spoke to Lee Wolosky, the State Department special envoy for Guantánamo closure since July 2015, who said that even if Donald Trump “fills the prison back up, he does not consider his efforts to have been in vain.”

“Looking at these cases on an individualized basis was the right thing to do legally and morally,” Wolosky said. “A number of detainees the United States government unanimously decided years ago it no longer needed to detain were finally and responsibly released from U.S. custody. That is irreversible, regardless of what policy the next administration pursues.”

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.

View more on Andy Worthington's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on December 21, 2016 15:00

Andy Worthington’s Band The Four Fathers’ Top Ten Songs on Bandcamp

For Christmas, if you want a last-minute present, why not buy some music by my band The Four Fathers? Please also feel free to like us on Facebook, and to follow us on Twitter.

We play politically-charged roots reggae and rock — mostly original songs, and mostly my own compositions —and our first LP ‘Love and War’ was released last year, and is available on CD via Bandcamp (it can be sent anywhere in the world). On our Bandcamp page you can also buy the whole album as a download, or buy individual tracks — and you can also listen to or buy our subsequent EP, ‘Fighting Injustice,’ and our song ‘Close Guantánamo,’ released as an online single, as downloads.

We’re currently working on our second album, which will be released next year, featuring a number of songs that are becoming prominent in our live shows: ‘How Much Is A Life Worth?’ (about how white westerners regard their lives as more important than others), ‘London’ (about gentrification, and how London has changed over the last 30 years), ‘Riot’ (about the need to end inequality), ‘Equal Rights And Justice For All’ (about the importance of habeas corpus) — as well as two songs by guitarist Richard Clare — ‘When He Is Sane’, about mental health, and ‘She’s Back’ (about ‘Pussy Riot’) — and some love songs, ‘Tell Me Baby’ (about love and aging), ‘Dreamers’ (written for a friend’s 50th birthday) and ‘River Run Dry’ (about the end of a relationship, a song I wrote as a young man).

For now, however, feel free to check out our ten most popular songs on Bandcamp and have a listen — or buy them if you’d like, which would, of course, delight us!

1. Song for Shaker Aamer

The Four Fathers’ best-known song, ‘Song for Shaker Aamer’ was featured in the campaign video for We Stand With Shaker, a campaign to secure British resident Shaker Aamer’s release from Guantánamo and his return to his family in the UK, which I launched with the activist Joanne MacInnes in November 2014. The song features Shaker’s voice, recorded by a TV crew in Guantánamo, as he called out for justice. Shaker was released in October 2015, and this version features revised lyrics reflecting his release. The video has, at the time of writing, had over 5,700 views.

2. Sweet Love and Ever After

An autobiographical love song for my wife and son, which was the first new song I had written for a long time, when I wrote it in the summer of 2014.

3. Fighting Injustice

A live favourite, ‘Fighting Injustice’ is a rocking roots reggae anthem, and a rallying cry for those opposed to the Tories’ cynical austerity policies, and the crimes of the banks who crashed the global economy in 2008 but were then bailed out. This version, with a re-recorded guitar part, was featured on the ‘Fighting Injustice’ EP that we released in July 2016.

4. Tory Bullshit Blues

A rollicking rock and roll defence of socialism, taking aim at Margaret Thatcher and her baleful influence on politics, and on the contemporary threat to decency posed by Nigel Farage and UKIP. This version, with re-recorded vocals and guitar, was featured on the ‘Fighting Injustice’ EP that we released in July 2016.

5. 81 Million Dollars

This song was written after the executive summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report into the CIA’s post-9/11 torture program was released, in December 2014, which revealed that the two psychologists who led the torture, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, were paid 81 million dollars for doing so, even though torture is illegal and morally repugnant, and the program didn’t yield valuable intelligence. Mitchell and Jessen are currently being sued by some of the victims of the torture program.

6. Rebel Soldier

An old folk song which I gave a new tune and a roots reggae rhythm while living in Brixton in the 1980s.

7. Close Guantánamo

The first song to be released from our forthcoming second album, ‘Close Guantánamo’ is featured in a promotional video for the Close Guantánamo campaign, and was released on November 10, 2016. I co-founded the Close Guantánamo campaign with the US attorney Tom Wilner in 2012, and the video, by drummer Brendan Horstead, features photos of some of the 500+ campaigners and celebrities who have stood with posters reminding President Obama of how many days he had left to close Guantánamo at 50-day intervals throughout 2016 as part of the Countdown to Close Guantánamo.

8. City of Dreams

An urban country lament that I wrote in Brixton in 1987 — and wrote a second verse for in 2015 — which partly derived from my disgust for the Canary Wharf development that took place under Margaret Thatcher.

9. Sea Shanty for Helena

A poignant love song by Richard Clare.

10. Neo-Liberal Bullshit Blues

A version of ‘Tory Bullshit Blues’ for the US release of the ‘Fighting Injustice’ EP, with a new guitar part and a new vocal recording, featuring references to Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump instead of Margaret Thatcher and Nigel Farage.

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.

View more on Andy Worthington's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on December 19, 2016 13:25

Periodic Review Boards Approve Another Two Yemenis for Release from Guantánamo

Salman Rabei'i, in a photo from Guantanamo included in the classified military files released by WikiLeaks in 2011.

Please support my work! I’m currently trying to raise $3000 (£2400) to support my writing and campaigning on Guantánamo into the new year.

Attentive Guantánamo-watchers will recall that, in September, the first round of Periodic Review Boards was completed at Guantánamo, for prisoners assessed as being “too dangerous to release,” or as eligible for prosecution by the high-level, inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force that President Obama set up shortly after taking office for the first time in January 2009. For full details, see my definitive Periodic Review Board list on the Close Guantánamo website.

On both fronts, the decisions taken about these men back in 2009 were dubious. For those deemed “too dangerous to release,” the task force acknowledged that insufficient evidence existed to put them on trial, rather undermining the credibility of their assessment, because, if information cannot be produced at a trial, it is fundamentally unreliable and does not rise to the level of evidence — and with Guantánamo, of course, torture and abuse run through everything, distorting all manner of claims regarding the credibility of the US authorities’ information about the prisoners.

41 men put forward for the PRBs were regarded as “too dangerous to release,” while 23 others had been recommended for prosecution, until the basis for prosecutions at Guantánamo — in the much-criticized military commission system, dragged unwisely from the history books after 9/11 — largely collapsed as a result of a number of appeals court rulings, which overturned some of the few convictions secured in the commissions, on the basis that the war crimes for which the men in question had been convicted were not internationally recognized, and had, in fact, been invented by Congress.

Of the 64 men whose cases were considered, 37 have been approved for release, while 27 others have had their ongoing imprisonment without charge or trial upheld — although everyone whose imprisonment is upheld receives subsequent administrative file reviews every six months, and the men are also guaranteed full reviews every three years. In reality, these have taken place within a much shorter timeframe, and in fact, of the 37 men approved for release, six initially had their ongoing imprisonment upheld, and were only approved for release in subsequent reviews.

This has just happened in the cases of two prisoners, and, as a result, of the 59 prisoners still held at Guantánamo, 22 have now been approved for release — seven by the 2009 task force, and 15 as a result of the PRBs. The other 22 approved for release by PRBs have already been freed.

Salman Rabei’i approved for release

The first of the two men to have his release approved after a second review is Salman Yahya Hassan Mohammad Rabei’i aka al-Rabie (ISN 508), a Yemeni who was nothing more, at most, than a foot soldier for the Taliban, and who may, in fact, have only gone to Afghanistan to bring back a brother. His initial review took place in July 2015, but he had to wait until May 2016 to be told that his ongoing imprisonment had been approved, an extraordinarily long wait based, presumably, on the fact that the members of the review board — consisting of representatives of the Departments of State, Defense, Justice and Homeland Security, as well as the office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — had been unable to reach a unanimous decision, and no prisoner can be approved for release unless it is by all the members of the board.

However, the decision to continue holding him was accompanied by a note that he would “receive a file review as soon as practicable,” and on September 1, just over three months after the decision to continue holding him was announced, a file review took place, which established that, “After reviewing relevant new information related to the detainee as well as information considered during the full review, the Board, by consensus, determined that a significant question is raised as to whether the detainee’s continued detention is warranted and therefore an additional full review should be conducted.”

That review took place on November 1, and it is clear that the role played by his latest attorney, Shelby Sullivan-Berris of Reprieve, was significant. As she explained to the board members at the hearing, “Stepping in suddenly for former counsel at the time of Salman’s review, I had the chance to meet neither Salman nor his family before making my submissions. Since that date, I have visited with both multiple times, and as a result, have a much better sense of which resources might be needed upon his resettlement, and which will be unnecessary.”

Sullivan-Berris further explained that “we very strongly believe there have been a variety of material changes to Salman’s case that warrant this full review, and you will find that Salman is eager to use this opportunity to answer questions that may have been left unanswered in his first board. Among the changes that are relevant to this board is his representation. The fact of new counsel comes with it the promise of post-release support that Salman otherwise lacked. As Reprieve’s client, Salman will be the beneficiary of our ‘Life After Guantánamo’ program, which provides a host of vital support mechanisms that carry our clients through the stages of re-integration. For several clients who were resettled and repatriated by both Administrations, we worked closely with the State Department and host governments on transition plans for clients; we have served as an ongoing point of contact for local authorities; and have facilitated financial support and referrals for needs ranging from job placement to mental health care.”

Adding information about her client and his family, Sullivan-Berris noted, “Salman arrived at Guantánamo when he was only 22. He sits before you today as a 37-year old man, the majority of his maturing having been done inside these walls. As with many of my clients, he has taught himself English from scratch. I will say that of those clients, Salman’s language proficiency is the best. This comes as no surprise when you understand his background. When I met with one of his sisters living in the UK, she told me repeatedly that education was uniquely prized in his family, and that theirs was the only [family] in the village in which each child — male and female — had gone to college. Though Salman was not able to finish, his education continued here at Guantánamo. You will have seen, in his file review submission, pages upon pages of meticulously written homework assignments, mostly self-delegated — English phrases repeated over and over, translated and conjugated back and forth. Our intent in submitting these was not to misuse your precious time, but to show you how dedicated Salman is — a trait that will serve him well in application to a new trade [and] in learning new skills upon release.”

As she also stated, “Salman has an impressive network of family to provide both emotional and financial support, wherever he is resettled. He has five siblings living stable, peaceful lives in three different countries. In the words of his sister, “‘he has five moms’ — referring to his four sisters and mother — ‘Anything, anything he needs, he will have it. He will not need any help. We will help him.’” I can personally attest to his family’s ability to help Salman get on his feet financially, and I will speak more to that end in a separate submission.”

She also stated, “I think you will recall from having met him last year, that Salman is a respectful and reserved man. At the risk of embarrassing him, I will go so far as to call him shy. Given his small number of infractions and demonstrated ability to get on with guards and prisoners alike, I strongly believe that the Board’s concerns do not lie in his behavior while in detention, nor in his personal capacity to find gainful employment — given his language skills and young age — but rather his alleged affiliations. We are confident that we can resolve those concerns in other submissions and in this hearing today.”

In approving his release, in a decision dated December 1, the board members, determining, by consensus, that “continued law of war detention of the detainee is no longer necessary to protect against a continuing significant threat to the security of the United States,” explained that, in making their determination, they had “considered [his] low level of involvement with fighting and minimal training prior to detention,” and “also noted that [he] demonstrated greater candor than in his initial meeting and provided details of pre-detention activity consistent with the available detainee profile.” They also noted that he “does not currently demonstrate an extremist mindset or appear to be driven to reengage by extremist ideology,” and that he “has been mostly compliant in detention.” Finally, the board members also “considered the support network available to [him] upon transfer from family and others, and the family’s disapproval of terrorist involvement by two of [his] brothers and efforts to separate themselves from those brothers.”

Yassin Ismail is approved for release

Yassin Qasim Mohammed Ismail (ISN 522), a Yemeni known to the US authorities as Yassim Qasim Mohammed Ismail Qasim, has his case reviewed on February 2, 2016 and he was approved for ongoing detention on March 3, 2016. However, on September 1, he too had a file review at which it was decided that, “After reviewing relevant new information related to the detainee as well as information considered during the full review, the Board, by consensus, determined that a significant question is raised as to whether the detainee’s continued detention is warranted and therefore an additional full review should be conducted.”

Another low-level foot soldier, Ismail had his habeas corpus petition turned down in April 2010, a decision that was upheld on appeal a year later, but to be honest there was nothing about his case to suggest that he actually constituted any kind of threat to the US.

A statement from his attorneys has not been made publicly available, but his personal representative — a military official appointed to represent him in his PRB — spoke on his behalf at his second full review (on November 8), and clearly explained the changes in his behavior and attitude that led to his approval for release in his second review. The personal representative spoke about how he/she had been representing him for a year, and had seen “changes in his demeanor as he moved into communal living almost a year ago.” Ismail had been held in an isolation block because he had been a long-term hunger striker and was evidently regarded as uncooperative, and the move mentioned by the personal representative was to the communal living in Camp Six, where all the prisoners are now held except the “high-value detainees” in Camp Seven, after the isolation block, Camp Five, was closed in August this year.

The personal representative also stated, “When I first met Yassin, he stated hopelessness was the reason for his non-compliance. But, while I know he still worries and desperately wants to go home, there is a definite change in his demeanor. After receiving a negative final determination [in a PRB], there is always a possibility that a detainee can fault the process. But Yassin did not change for the negative but instead, he wanted to know what he could do to improve himself. He was not trying to mark off checkboxes, but something in him had changed. In my opinion, the change in Yassin came from taking Art classes. As he took to heart the final determination recommendation, to take advantage of educational opportunities, he found an area he was passionate about and one that he excelled in. While I know he still worries about his detention, his personality has opened up over there last year becoming a more relatable person. This makes for easy conversations that have allowed me to get to know him.”

The personal representative added, “Yassin is an intelligent man who has spent much of his time as described during his first board, reading books. He has an interest in medicine and health, which was discovered in GTMO because there was not an opportunity in the years prior to his arrival here. When he ponders on a subject he considers the larger picture and therefore, he does not jump to a quick answer but is objective about how one step affects the next. Sometimes, his answers are long because he is going through how each facet can affect an outcome. But, this is just part of his personality. Since he has made the move into communal living and enrolled in classes, you can see how opening his mind to education and Art has brought him joy and actually changed him for the better. He is actively planning for ways to support himself to become a functional part of society in hopes that will be transferred from GTMO. He was unable to do this is the past, because it was hard to see a future.”

In conclusion, the personal representative added that, “As Yassin looks to the future, his family will continue to be supportive as they have showed their love over the years. They have vowed ongoing support wherever he is reintegrated.”

In their final determination, made on December 8 but only made publicly available this week, the board members stated that, in approving his release, they had “considered [his] greater candor from his first hearing regarding his pre-detention activity, which was consistent with the available detainee profile, and that his responses were thoughtful and showed an effort to realistically consider the future.” The board members “also noted [his] extensive efforts to take advantage of opportunities in detention to better himself, to include multiple academic and art classes, as well as positive engagement with mental health counsellors.” The board members also “considered that [he] no longer appears to be driven by extremist ideology,” and that he “has taken steps to sever ties with extremists,” and also noted “the lack of any recent anti-US statements along with improvement in behavior.”

Is the future for these men uncertain?

For both these men, it is almost certain that President Obama will not be able to find third countries to offer them new homes before he leaves office (new homes being necessary because the entire US establishment, fearing the security situation in Yemen, has agreed that no Yemeni can be repatriated from Guantánamo).

It is to be hoped that Donald Trump will not scrap the PRBs and fail to follow through on the decisions taken by the PRBs regarding the 22 men still held who have been approved for release. It is, however, unclear if Trump will honor the existing arrangements, as he could scrap the executive order from 2011 that Obama issued, authorizing the ongoing imprisonment without charge or trial of 48 men, who later became eligible for the PRBs, which were specifically set up to review their cases.

Moreover, this is particularly relevant because, of the 27 men whose ongoing imprisonment was approved by the PRBs, seven more men have, like Salman Rabei’i and Yassin Ismail, been granted full reviews after file reviews because, “After reviewing relevant new information related to the detainee as well as information considered during the full review, the Board, by consensus, determined that a significant question is raised as to whether the detainee’s continued detention is warranted and therefore an additional full review should be conducted,” and with the examples of Salman Rabei’i, Yassin Ismail and the four men previously approved for release after second reviews, there is to date a 100% record of men receiving second full reviews being approved for release.

The seven men are Moath al-Alwi (ISN 28), Mohammed Al-Ansi (ISN 29), Said Nashir (ISN 841) and Uthman Abd al-Rahim Muhammad Uthman (ISN 27) (whose reviews have already taken place, although no decisions have yet been taken), plus Saifullah Paracha (ISN 1094), Sharqawi Abdu Ali Al Hajj (ISN 1457) and Omar Mohammed Ali Al-Rammah (ISN 1017).

Just two men have so far had decisions taken, after file reviews, that “no significant question is raised as to whether [their] continued detention is warranted” — Khalid Ahmed Qasim (ISN 242) and Sanad Ali Yislam Al Kazimi (ISN 1453).

Two more decisions have yet to be taken, and six more file reviews are scheduled for January and February, and I’ll be writing a follow-up article soon, looking in more details at these reviews.

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.

View more on Andy Worthington's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on December 17, 2016 13:48

Please Read My Latest Article for Al-Jazeera, on Obama and Trump, Guantánamo and Torture

Dear friends and supporters,

I hope you have time to read Obama v Trump on Guantánamo and torture, my latest article for Al-Jazeera, and to share it if you find it informative.

Al-Jazeera asked me to compare and contrast the president and the president-elect in relation to Guantánamo, giving me an opportunity to run through the history of President Obama’s failures to close the prison, as he promised when he first took office in January 2009. I also briefly discussed Obama’s position on torture, and compared and contrasted Donald Trump’s views.

President Obama has repeatedly blamed Congress for his failure to close the prison, but in fact he had control of Congress in his first two years in office, but failed to capitalise on it, and later, although Congress raised considerable obstacles to his efforts to close the prison, he refused to use a waiver that existed in the legislation allowing him to bypass Congress, and he also refused, at any point, to make the closure of the prison a priority to the extent that he was prepared to properly challenge Congress and work with supportive lawmakers to find a way to get Guantánamo closed.

As the tag line for the article stated, “Obama didn’t want to spend political capital to close Guantánamo, leaving it fully functional for Trump to use.”

I’d discuss the article more, but I’d prefer you to read it — and, as I mentioned above, to share it and tweet it if you like it.

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.

View more on Andy Worthington's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on December 16, 2016 13:29

Andy Worthington's Blog, page 62

January 9, 2017

Andy Worthington Visits the US for the 15th Anniversary of the Opening of Guantánamo, and for Donald Trump’s Troubling Inauguration

January 6, 2017

Who Are the Four Guantánamo Prisoners Freed in Saudi Arabia, Leaving 55 Men Still Held?

January 5, 2017

Rights Groups, Including Close Guantánamo, Issue Statement in the Run-Up to the 15th Anniversary of the Opening of Guantánamo

January 3, 2017

Andy Worthington: An Archive of Guantánamo Articles and Other Writing – Part 21, July to December 2016

January 1, 2017

Andy Worthington: An Archive of Guantánamo Articles and Other Writing – Part 20, January to June 2016

December 29, 2016

Another Yemeni Approved for Release from Guantánamo: Did He Make the List of Prisoners Being Freed in the New Year?

December 21, 2016

Emptying Guantánamo: Obama to Release 17 or 18 Prisoners Before Trump Takes Over

December 19, 2016

Andy Worthington’s Band The Four Fathers’ Top Ten Songs on Bandcamp

December 17, 2016

Periodic Review Boards Approve Another Two Yemenis for Release from Guantánamo

December 16, 2016

Please Read My Latest Article for Al-Jazeera, on Obama and Trump, Guantánamo and Torture

Andy Worthington's Blog