Andy Worthington's Blog, page 70

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

There was good news from Guantánamo last week, as 15 men were released, to begin new lives in the United Arab Emirates. The release was the largest single release of prisoners under President Obama, and takes the total number of men held at Guantánamo down to 61, the lowest level it has been since the prison’s first few weeks of its operations, in January 2002.

12 of the 15 men released are Yemenis, while the remaining three are Afghans. All had to have third countries found that would offer them new homes, because the entire US establishment refuses to repatriate any Yemenis, on the basis that the security situation in Yemen means they cannot be adequately monitored, and Afghans cannot be repatriated because of legislation passed by Congress. The UAE previously accepted five Yemenis prisoners from Guantánamo last November.

Of the 15 men, six — all Yemenis — were approved for release back in 2009 by the high-level, inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force that President Obama established shortly after taking office for the first time. This article tells the stories of those six men, while another article to follow will tell the stories of the other nine.

The six were part of a group of 30 Yemenis who were approved for release by the task force, but were then placed in a sub-category of “conditional detention” — conditional on a perceived improvement in the security situation in Yemen. No indication was given as to how this would be decided, and as a result 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 last week’s releases, had led to 19 men being given new homes — in the UAE, Ghana, Oman, Montenegro and Saudi Arabia. Now just five men from this group are left.

The first of the six, Mohammed al-Adahi (ISN 033), born in 1962, and identified by the US as Muhammad Ahmad Said al-Adahi, was seized by Pakistani soldiers after accompanying his sister to Afghanistan to be married. As I explained in 2007 in my book The Guantánamo Files:

Married with two children, al-Adahi had never left Yemen until August 2001, when he took a vacation from the oil company where he had worked for 21 years to accompany his sister to meet her husband … As he told his tribunal [his Combatant Status Review Tribunal, a cursory review system established by the Bush administration in July 2004], “In Muslim society, a woman does not travel by herself.” After flying to Karachi, they traveled to Kandahar, where his brother-in-law was living. Al-Adahi stayed in Afghanistan for a month, “to ease his sister’s transition to life in Afghanistan,” and then made his way back to Pakistan, where he was arrested by soldiers while traveling on a bus. “They were capturing everybody with Arabic features,” he said. “I gave them my passport and that shows that I’m an Arab. They said, ‘why don’t you follow us, we need you at the Center.’ From that point on they brought us over here.”

It had always struck me as ridiculous that al-Adahi was not released, and, exactly seven years ago, on August 21, 2009, a US District Court judge, Gladys Kessler, agreed. As I wrote at the time:

Judge Kessler explained, “There is no question that the record fully supports the Government’s allegation that Petitioner had close familial ties to prominent members of the jihad community in Afghanistan.” The brother-in-law, it appears, was “a prominent man in Kandahar,” who had fought the Russians in Afghanistan, and Judge Kessler also noted that it was “undisputed” that Osama bin Laden “hosted and attended [the] wedding reception in Kandahar,” that al-Adahi “was briefly introduced to bin Laden,” and that “A few days later, al-Adahi met bin Laden again and the two chatted briefly about religious matters in Yemen.”

However, Judge Kessler refused to accept the government’s contention that these familial ties and the two brief meetings with bin Laden proved that al-Adahi “was part of the inner circle of the enemy organization al-Qaeda,” and accepted instead that there was no reason to doubt that al-Adahi’s visit was, as he stated, to accompany his sister to her wedding (and also to receive medical treatment for a back problem). She noted also that he had not tried to hide the fact that he had met bin Laden, and that he had, in addition, stated that it was “common for visitors to Kandahar” to do so.

As in May [2009], when she granted the habeas appeal of another Yemeni, Alla Ali Bin Ali Ahmed, Judge Kessler had serious doubts about the manner in which the government established its case, which focused primarily on its claim that its various allegations should be considered as part of a “mosaic” of intelligence, to be viewed as a whole, rather than being examined in isolation. Dismissing this approach, she stated that, although she understood that “use of this approach is a common and well-established mode of analysis in the intelligence community … at this point in this long, drawn-out litigation the Court’s obligation is to make findings of fact and conclusions of law which satisfy appropriate and relevant legal standards as to whether the Government has proven by a preponderance of the evidence that the Petitioner is justifiably detained.”

Judge Kessler also made reference to two unreliable witnesses in al-Adahi’s case, who were revealed, in his classified military file, which was subsequently released by WikiLeaks, as two of the most well-known unreliable witnesses at Guantánamo — Abd al-Hakim Bukhari (ISN 493), a Saudi tortured by Al-Qaeda as a spy, who “identified [him] as a supervisor in UBL’s security forces,” and Abd al-Rahim Janko (ISN 489), a Syrian who was also tortured by Al-Qaeda as a spy, who “identified [him] as a trainer at the al-Faruq [aka al-Farouq] Training Camp.”

The WikiLeaks file also revealed that al-Adahi has been very ill during his 14 years at Guantánamo, noting that he was “on a list of high-risk detainees from a health perspective,” and that, although he “is in fair health,” he “has chronic stable medical problems”: “hypertension, hyperlipidemia, migraine headaches, asthma, and gastro-esophageal reflux,” as well as “a history of depression and schizoaffective personality disorder.”

The second of the six “conditional detention” prisoners, Abdel Qadir al-Mudafari (ISN 040) aka Abdel Qadir al-Mudhaffari, who was born in 1976, was regarded by the US authorities as one of the so-called “Dirty Thirty,” allegedly bodyguards for Osama bin Laden, who were seized by Pakistani soldiers after crossing from Afghanistan into Pakistan in December 2001. The “Dirty Thirty” scenario was always suspicious, however, primarily because so many of the men in question had been in Afghanistan for such a short amount of time that it was inconceivable that they would have been trusted with protecting al-Qaeda’s leader.

As I described it in a profile I wrote in September 2010, according to the US authorities al-Mudafari “apparently stated that he wanted a struggle or jihad and chose to travel to Afghanistan rather than Palestine,” but was subjected to several dubious allegations (beyond the most obvious — that he was a bodyguard for Osama bin Laden). It was also alleged that he was “identified as a trainer” at al-Farouq, and it was also stated that he was identified by “an al-Qaeda operative” as being “a friend of Osama bin Laden’s personal secretary,” and was also “identified as being at a Taliban Supreme Leader’s [sic] compound.” Confusing matters were notes that he had received instruction in Yemen from Sheikh Muqbil al-Wadi (who was actually opposed to bin Laden), his own claims that he traveled to teach the Koran, and a claim by another unidentified source, who “stated that he did not think that the detainee ever fought with the Taliban because he was against the Taliban.”

Further details about these dubious allegations can be found in his classified military file, released by WikiLeaks in 2011.

The third “conditional detention” prisoner is Mohsen Aboassy (ISN 091), identified by the US authorities as Abdul al-Saleh or Abd al-Muhsin Abd al-Rab Salih al-Busi.

Born in 1979, Aboassy was a survivor of the Qala-i-Janghi massacre in November 2001, which, as I described it in an article in September 2010, “followed the surrender of the northern city of Kunduz, when several hundred Taliban foot soldiers — and, it seems, a number of civilians — all of whom had been told that they would be allowed to return home if they surrendered, were taken to a fortress run by General Rashid Dostum of the Northern Alliance. Fearing that they were about to be killed, a number of the men started an uprising, which was suppressed by the Northern Alliance, acting with support from US and British Special Forces, and US bombers. Hundreds of the prisoners died, but around 80 survived being bombed and flooded in the basement of the fort, and around 50 of these men ended up at Guantánamo.”

In that article, I also explained how:

[A]l-Saleh [Aboassy] said that he had answered a fatwa calling for young men to travel to Afghanistan, but felt that “the Taliban cheated him because he was fighting the Northern Alliance, which was not a cause that he believed in; therefore, it was not really a jihad for him.” He also denied knowing any members of al-Qaeda, and stated that, if returned to Yemen, he would “get married” and would “disregard anyone who suggests that he fight jihad.”

In a phone call just before his release, he told his lawyer, Shelby Sullivan-Bennis, of Reprieve, “Over the time that I have been in Guantánamo, thirteen children have been born in my family. I miss playing with my nephews and nieces. I have a photograph of them and when I get sad, I look at the photo to cheer myself up. After almost fourteen years in Guantánamo I realise that when I leave this place it will just be a bad memory. Determination, will, and ambition will overcome any ordeal and any difficulty.”

Sullivan-Bennis also stated, “Mohsen, whose favorite movie is Kung Fu Panda, has never, for a moment, been a threat to our national security — something the Obama administration realized nine long years ago when it cleared him for release. Yet there he languished, a fate lived by many Yemeni detainees, while the government took its time finding him a suitable country in which to resettle. It is to his credit that he is full of enthusiasm; excited about his new life in the United Arab Emirates, about reconnecting with his family and about becoming a carpenter. How many of us could cope so well with such a senseless ordeal? What might Mohsen have achieved had he not lost fifteen years of his life? How many more lives are going to be wasted at Guantánamo Bay?”

She also noted how he had stated in his recent phone call, “I would like to be a carpenter. I used to work like one here at Gitmo so I have learned things. I have used cardboard to make things like shelves and desks and so on. Making these things out of cardboard is very difficult. Outside, I will have wood and tools to make things so it will be easier.”

The fourth of the “conditional detention” prisoners to be released is Abd al-Rahman Sulayman (ISN 223) aka Abdul Rahman Sulayman, born in 1979, whose habeas corpus petition was turned down by a US judge in 2010, the same year that President Obama’s task force recommended his release if security concerns could be met.

As I explained at the time, Sulayman had claimed that a facilitator for jihad in Afghanistan, Ibrahim Baalawi, had recruited him under false pretences with tales of the good life in Afghanistan. I wrote:

He “promised me that I’d be able to get married in Afghanistan. He may have had different intentions for me other than the marriage, but I didn’t know,” he [Sulayman] told his tribunal, adding that he was also told, “you can go to certain counties and they’ll give you a house, even if it’s an old house, and some financial assistance to get married. That’s without having to contribute anything at all. It’s a charity type of thing from these people. If you put yourself in my shoes, what would you do?”

However, in Sulayman’s habeas ruling in July 2010, Judge Reggie Walton turned down his petition after concluding, from his admission that he had attended the Taliban’s second lines, where he had received some weapons training, that, as I described it:

[H]e had been “part of” al-Qaeda or the Taliban, which is all that is required for the prisoners to lose their habeas petitions, even though much of the other supposed evidence was demonstrably false, and almost certainly produced by unreliable witnesses, either in Guantánamo or in other US-run prisons. These included ludicrous allegations that he was identified as a mortar instructor from a video made in the Tarnak Farms training camp in 2000 (before he arrived in Afghanistan), that he “was identified as an al-Qaeda spokesman and was part of Osama bin Laden’s entourage … during the escape from Tora Bora,” and that he was identified as a Taliban prison guard “who used torture techniques on inmates under his control.”

Further information about these claims can be found in his WikiLeaks file.

The fifth “conditional detention” prisoner to be released is Mohammed Khusruf (ISN 509), also identified as Mohammed Nasir Yahi Khussrof Kazaz, who was one of Guantánamo’s oldest prisoners. Born in February 1950, he was 66 years old at the time of his release.

As I explained in an article in September 2010:

Khusruf, who was seized after a bombing raid in the Tora Bora region, said that he went to Afghanistan to teach the Koran, and asked, “Is it really reasonable that al-Qaeda or the Taliban, in bad need of men to fight, have to go to Yemen to find men at 60 years old to fight? Is this logical?” (according to US records, he was actually 51 years old at the time of his capture). He admitted training at al-Farouq, but said that he only did so because the man who arranged his travel told him he needed to be able to defend himself. He also explained that, after his arrest, he was moved from a jail in Jalalabad to “an underground prison” in Kabul — possibly the CIA’s “Dark Prison,” or else an Afghan jail — where “they would interrogate and beat us.” He added that those who were wounded “were also there” — presumably some of the other men rounded up in the Tora Bora region, who also ended up in Guantánamo.

The final “conditional detention” prisoner to be released is Jamil Nassir (ISN 728) aka Abdul Muhammad Ahmad Nassar al-Muhajari, who, it seems, had traveled to Afghanistan with his wife and children, and had ended up working for Al-Wafa, a charity once regarded by the US authorities as a front for terrorism, although those claims have evidently collapsed over the years, as almost all of the dozens of prisoners allegedly connected with Al-Wafa have been released.

As I explained in an article in October 2010, Nasser —presumably after making sure his wife and children safely escaped Afghanistan following the US-led invasion — accepted an offer of safe passage to a house in Faisalabad with two other refugees, Labed Ahmed (an Algerian, released in November 2008) and Ravil Mingazov, a Russian whose release was recommended by a Periodic Review Board just last month, where, they were told, it would be easier for them to leave the country.

As I proceeded to explain:

After being accidentally delivered to Shabaz Cottage, where [the alleged “high-value detainee”] Abu Zubaydah [for whom the US’s post-9/11 torture program was first developed] was living (and where Ahmed insisted on staying), Mingazov and Nasser were then moved to the Crescent Mill guest house, where they were seized after about ten days. Any doubts about [their] innocence should have been removed not just by the ruling but also because, during a military review board at Guantánamo, Labed Ahmed had stated that, because he, Mingazov and Nassir “did not have a connection or relationship with Abu Zubaydah,” they “should have been placed in the Yemeni house.” As I have explained previously, “This indicates that, although Abu Zubaydah had some sort of contact with the [Crescent Mill guest] house, it was not a place that had any connection with terrorism, and was, at best, a place where a few foreigners fleeing from Afghanistan could be concealed alongside a group of students.”

Nevertheless, over the years Nassir had to contend with a number of outrageous allegations — that, as I described it in 2010, he “had rented a house next door to Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban,” and that he was linked by unknown sources to “the purchase of equipment used to assist al-Qaeda operatives in the production of biological weapons,” an allegation was levelled at numerous prisoners allegedly associated with Al-Wafa. As I also explained in 2010, “in light of his own claim that he traveled from Pakistan to Afghanistan to study and teach the Koran, it may be that the most reliable unidentified source is the one who stated that he was ‘not a guard nor affiliated with al-Qaeda,’ but a civilian who had ‘moved to Afghanistan with his wife and children.’”

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 161 prisoners released from February 2009 to June 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, a Palestinian and a 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.

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

On August 4, Muhammad Rahim, an Afghan, became the 56th Guantánamo prisoner to face a Periodic Review Board. The PRBs were set up in 2013, and are reviewing the cases of all the prisoners still held who are not facing trials (just ten of the remaining 76 prisoners) or who were not already approved for release by the high-level, inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force that President Obama established shortly after taking office in January 2009.

33 men have so far been approved for release via the PRBs (and eleven have been released), while 17 have had their ongoing imprisonment held. This is a 67% success rate for the prisoners, and it ought to be embarrassing for the Obama administration, whose task force had concluded that they were “too dangerous to release” or that they should be prosecuted. See my definitive Periodic Review Board list on the Close Guantánamo website for further information.

Muhammad Rahim, who was born in November or December 1965, was the last prisoner to arrive at Guantánamo, in March 2008, when he was described as “a close associate” of Osama bin Laden. He has been described as a “high-value detainee” — one of only 16 held at the prison — but if this was the case he would surely have been put forward for prosecution, suggesting that, as with so many of the prisoners held at Guantánamo, his significance has been exaggerated.

Little was subsequently heard of Rahim, but at the end of 2012 his attorney, Carlos Warner, a federal public defender for the Northern District of Ohio, released letters that showed a different side to his client than the associate of bin Laden described by the US authorities. In one letter, Rahim wrote, “I like this new song Gangnam Style. I want to do the dance for you but cannot because of my shackles.”

In other letters, he “asked Warner to appeal for help from radio personality Howard Stern,” as the Associated Press described it. “If he is the ‘King of All Media’ he can help me,” Rahim wrote. In another, “he criticize[d] Fox News’ ‘Fair and Balanced’ slogan, writing that if that were true the channel ‘would not have to say it every five minutes.’”

The AP also spoke to one of Rahim’s brothers, Abdul Basit, an asylum seeker in London, who told them that, having left Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation, his brother “eventually got a job working for an Afghan government committee responsible for eradicating opium poppies, but that he was forced from the job by members of the Taliban.”

Basit, the AP revealed, was also detained by the US military — but in Afghanistan, for five years. He said that his brother “is a well-educated man who was not particularly interested in global politics,” and suggested that he was being “held more for who he might know rather than what he has done.” In broken English, he said, “There is no reason to put him in Guantánamo for this long time.”

In September 2015, Muhammad Rahim was in the news again. For Al-Jazeera, Jennifer Fenton wrote an article entitled, “‘Detained but ready to mingle’: Gitmo’s lonely heart on Tinder and Trump,” in which he wrote, “Donald Trump is an idiot!!! Sen. McCain is a war hero. Trump is a war zero,” adding, “How can a racist run for president? At this rate, Hillary [Clinton] has a chance.”

When he heard that millions of passwords had been stolen from the infidelity dating website Ashley Madison, he joked, “This is terrible news about Ashley Madison please remove my profile immediately!!! I’ll stick with Match.com … There is no way I can get Tinder in here.” Rahim doesn’t have any dating accounts, of course, but Warner described him as “detained but ready to mingle.”

Warner also described his client as a “funny guy” with “many ideas on a wide range of issues,” as Al-Jazeera described it. He added that the letters “give insight into the type of person Rahim is and should cause people to ‘look at his case and ask why is he being held.’”

Rahim is not only a joker. In another letter he wrote, “I am not high value. They call me high value because the CIA tortured me. How do we undo this injustice. Give me a trial. Let me be free.” He has never been charged, which suggests, as I mentioned above, that the US authorities do not have much of a case against him, and there are no records of him having undergone a Combatant Status Review Tribunal, which is required if prisoners are to face trials by military commission. A military lawyer was initially appointed to his case, but subsequently retired and was not replaced. In a letter, Rahim requested a military lawyer, asking, “I thought the military commissions wanted justice? How can I get justice without a military lawyer?”

He is also mentioned in the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the CIA’s torture program, for which the executive summary was made publicly available in December 2014. According to the report, “During sleep deprivation sessions, Rahim was usually shackled in a standing position, wearing a diaper and a pair of shorts … Rahim’s diet was almost entirely limited to water and liquid Ensure meal.” He was also subjected to sleep deprivation. Nevertheless, as the report also states, “the CIA’s detention and interrogation of Mohammad Rahim resulted in no disseminated intelligence report.”

Reflecting on his torture, he wrote in another letter, “How do I get out of here? I am innocent and I was tortured. Hung from the ceiling until I was dead.” He said that “animals were treated better” and “doctors and psychiatrist got rich off my blood,” although he also wrote, as Jenifer Fenton put it, that “he prays for them now.”

Rahim was alos mentioned in a detailed Rolling Stone article about Guantánamo at the end of 2015, in which the author, Janet Reitman, who spoke to Carlos Warner and to Rahim’s brother Abdul Basit about his case, noted:

The government issued a press release about Rahim, allegedly detailing his enemy activity, but it appears to be about another person entirely. This account, which Warner views as an example of the government’s general confusion, describes a low-level Al Qaeda operative, not, as was alleged about Rahim, a close associate of Osama bin Laden with “ties to Al Qaeda … throughout the Middle East.” A subsequent government report, filed in federal court in response to Warner’s habeas corpus petition seeking Rahim’s release, portrays him as a member of bin Laden’s inner circle, information based mostly on the word of two fellow Gitmo prisoners, and an informant who may have been subjected to torture.

Warner says that there is no indication that Rahim was an associate of bin Laden’s. Rahim did fight in Afghanistan, notes his brother, Basit, who I interview via Skype from his home in London, but it was during the war against the Soviets. Indeed, he and Warner note, Rahim worked for a time with the CIA. “The irony is, the ISI [Pakistani intelligence] picked him up, and the first thing he said was he wanted to talk with the CIA,” says Warner. “He trusted them because he’d worked with them, and he thought they’d help him.”

Nevertheless, in their unclassified summary for Rahim’s PRB, the US authorities maintained their claims about his significance, describing him as “one of a small number of Afghans to become trusted members of al-Qa’ida,” and adding, “He served as a translator, courier, facilitator, and operative for the group’s senior leadership, including Usama Bin Ladin [sic]. His proficiency in several languages, including Arabic, made him invaluable for communicating with foreign fighters and local populations in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as facilitating the movement of al-Qa’ida leaders and rank and file between the two countries, particularly after the start of Operation Enduring Freedom.”

It was also claimed that he “had advance knowledge of many of al-Qa’ida’s major attacks, including advanced knowledge of 9/11,” although I find that unlikely, and, it was also claimed, he “progressed to paying for, planning, and participating in attacks in Afghanistan against US and Coalition targets by al-Qa’ida, the Taliban, and other anti-Coalition militant groups.” The summary also notes that he “has admitted to working as a translator for al-Qa’ida,” but “claims to have done so only for the money,” which , if accurate, rather plays down much of the above.

Turning to Guantánamo, the authorities noted that he “has been generally compliant with the guard staff” since his arrival at the prison in March 2008, “and has been highly compliant since August 2015, according to Joint Task Force Guantánamo.” The summary also noted that, although he “has committed relatively few disciplinary infractions compared to the general population at Guantánamo, he has remained mostly uncooperative and defiant,” adding, “He crosses the line into noncompliance when he thinks he is being disrespected, mistreated, or perceived as being weak.”

The summary also claimed that Rahim “views his time in detention as a continuation of jihad,” adding, “He claims the guard staff and the detainees’ lawyers are enemies, and has reprimanded fellow detainees for showing the slightest courtesy toward them. He has sought to intimidate and taunt his captors even if it means never being released and dying as a martyr, which he appears to welcome.” This, of course, is an analysis that makes no sense when compared with the letters made publicly available by Carlos Warner, and Warner’s own appraisal of his client, and I cannot see how the description in the summary can stand up against this alternative view.

The juxtaposition between the man revealed in the letters and the US authorities’ view continues in the assessment of him as “a hardened al-Qa’ida member and devoted Bin Ladin follower when he arrived at Guantanamo,” who “has become even more deeply committed to the group’s jihadist doctrine and Islamic extremism in general since that time.” The summary added, “He continues to view the US and the West as enemies, has expressed support for and praised attacks by other terrorist groups, and has said he intends to return to jihad and kill Americans.”

In conclusion, the summary’s authors “assess that given his language proficiency, al-Qa’ida bona fides, and extensive extremist connections established before his capture, [Rahim] has multiple conduits for reengaging should he be released,” adding that “one of his brothers in particular, Abd Basit Zahdran, could also provide him a path to reengage.”

In the publicly available documents for the PRB, nothing was made available by Carlos Warner, and nothing is known, as yet, of what Rahim himself said, although Courthouse News reported that “Walter Ruiz, one of the defense attorneys for suspected 9/11 plotter Mustafa al-Hawsawi, appeared at the table with Rahim during the hearing but did not offer an unclassified statement.”

However, in their opening statement, Rahim’s personal representatives (military personnel appointed to help prisoners prepare for their PRBs) also painted a portrait at odds with the military’s analysis, noting that he has shown regret for his past actions, which, he reiterates, he did only for the money, and hoping only for a peaceful life, and to be reunited with his two wives and his seven children. The opening statement is posted below.

Periodic Review Board Initial Hearing, 4 Aug 2016

Muhammad Rahim, ISN 10029

Personal Representative Opening Statement

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen of the Board. We are the Personal Representatives for ISN 10029, Mr. Muhammad Rahim.

Rahim has attended all scheduled meetings. During the meetings he has been respectful and eager to participate in the PRB. He has also shown regret for his past actions, saying he only did what he did for money, so he could feed his family.

Rahim has two wives and seven children. He eagerly wants to be reunited with his family. He believes he needs to be present to help guide his children on a peaceful path. He worries that without him there to guide them, they could be taken advantage of.

Rahim has spoken of wanting a peaceful life in the future.

Rahim has stated in our meetings that he has never had any ill will towards the US and this will continue in the future. We stand ready to answer any questions you have.

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.

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

I wrote the following article for the “Close Guantánamo” website, which I established in January 2012, on the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, with the US attorney Tom Wilner. Please join us — just an email address is required to be counted amongst those opposed to the ongoing existence of Guantánamo, and to receive updates of our activities by email.

Dear friends and supporters,

Thanks to everyone who has supported the Countdown to Close Guantánamo initiative that we launched in January, when our co-founder Andy Worthington appeared on Democracy Now! with the music legend Roger Waters.

The Countdown began on Jan. 20 with supporters taking photos of themselves with posters reminding President Obama that he had just one year left to close Guantánamo, and has been followed by posters counting down every 50 days — 350 days on Feb. 3, 300 days on Mar. 25, 250 days on May 14, and 200 days on Jul. 3. Over 400 photos have been submitted to date, which can be found here, here and here.

The next significant date is Aug. 22, when President Obama will have just 150 days left to fulfill the promise he made on his second day in office back in January 2009, and we’re hoping that you’ll be able to join us in seeking to keep Guantánamo on the radar as the presidential race threatens to drown it out.

Please print off a poster , take a photo with it and send it to us.

We will be publicizing the Countdown reaching the 150-day mark, and also posting your photos on the website and on social media (on Facebook and Twitter). Please also feel free to include a message to President Obama, and, if you wish, let us know where you are, so we can show the geographical breadth of support for closing Guantánamo.

We maintain that the existence of the prison at Guantánamo Bay is as much of an affront to U.S. values now as it was when it opened in January 2002, because no country that claims to respect the rule of law should be holding people indefinitely without charge or trial. Soldiers should be held according to the Geneva Conventions until the end of hostilities — and not in a phony “global war” that seems to have no end — and terrorists should be charged and tried in federal courts. Every day that Guantánamo remains open is a source of shame for all decent Americans.

Because of pressure — from a variety of sources, including campaigners — President Obama has renewed his efforts to close Guantánamo in the last three years, releasing many dozens of prisoners, after a long period in which he did very little, after Congress raised obstacles, and he was unwilling to spend political capital bypassing lawmakers, even though he had the means to do so.

Just 76 men are left at Guantánamo, and 34 of those men have been approved for release — 13 by the high-level, inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force that President Obama established when he first took office in 2009 (the last 13 of the 156 men the task force recommended for release), and 21 others by Periodic Review Boards, another high-level process, involving 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, that began its deliberations in 2013.

32 men in total have been approved for release by the PRBs, and eleven of dos even have been freed. 16 others have had their ongoing imprisonment held, although their cases will continue to be reviewed every year. 16 others are awaiting reviews, or the results of reviews that have already taken place, and it is to be expected that a handful of them at least will also be approved for release, raising the prospect that, at the end of his presidency, President Obama may be holding no more than 40 men — ten facing trials, and around 30 whose ongoing imprisonment has been recommended by PRBs.

We believe that it is worthwhile trying to maintain the pressure on President Obama, even though we recognize that he may not be able to close Guantánamo before he leaves office, because of legislation passed by Congress preventing any Guantánamo prisoner from being brought to the U.S. mainland for any reason. Even if he were to pass an executive order, and could find his own funding, he would still need support from the state or states that would have to house the prisoners, and it is not clear that this support would be forthcoming, such is the extent of black propaganda about Guantánamo that is pumped out by the prison’s dangerous and unprincipled supporters.

While we still hope that President Obama can succeed, we are also prepared to carry on our campaigning into the next presidency, and we hope you will stay with us if that is the case. For now, however, let us do what we can to remind President Obama that we are still supportive of his aims.

If you want to do more than just send us a photo, you can write to your Senators and Representatives to ask them to drop their opposition to prisoners being brought to the US mainland. Find your Senators here and your Representatives here.

If you do contact them, you may want to let them know how ruinously expensive it is to keep Guantánamo open — at least $445 million a year, or $5.8 million a year per prisoner currently held — as well as how damaging it is for America’s reputation abroad and for its belief in itself as a country that respects the rule of law.

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.

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

[image error]This week, Guleed Hassan Ahmed aka Gouled Hassan Dourad (ISN 10023), a Somali prisoner at Guantánamo — who arrived at the prison in September 2006, after being held in CIA “black sites” for two and a half years — became the 55th prisoner to face a Periodic Review Board. Set up in 2013, the PRBs are reviewing the cases of all the prisoners held at Guantánamo who are not facing trials (just ten of the remaining 76 prisoners) or who were not already approved for release by the high-level, inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force that President Obama established shortly after taking office in January 2009.

32 men have so far been approved for release via the PRBs (and eleven have been released), while 16 have had their ongoing imprisonment held, a 67% success rate for the prisoners, which rather demolishes the claims made by Obama’s task force that they were “too dangerous to release” or that they should be prosecuted.

Guleed Hassan Ahmed was born in April 1974, and is one of 16 “high-value detainees” who, as noted above, arrived at Guantánamo from CIA “black sites” in September 2006. He was seized in Djibouti in March 2004, by Somalis working with the CIA, but little is known of his whereabouts for the next two and a half years until his arrival at Guantánamo, or, indeed, why he ended up at Guantánamo at all. I always wondered if someone in the Bush administration wanted to have someone connected to events in Somalia at Guantánamo, simply to see if new connections could be made.

Allegedly the head of a Mogadishu-based organization, al-Itihaad al-Islamiya (AIAI), which, it is claimed, supported al-Qaeda members in Somalia, Ahmed had a Combatant Status Review Tribunal under George W. Bush in April 2007, but it reveals little about him before he returned to the silence that enshrouds all the “high-value detainees” unless they are charged and get to engage in pre-trial hearings. Ahmed, however, has not been charged, and was not even recommended for prosecution by Obama’s task force in 2009, suggesting that the government does not really have much of a case against him.

After nine years of US-imposed silence, he emerged briefly on June 2 as a witness in pre-trial hearings for Ramzi bin al-Shibh, one of five “high-value detainees” accused of planing an being involved in the 9/11 attacks. As Reuters described it, he “took the witness stand” to “back up claims” by bin al-Shibh, “who said guards at the U.S. prison used noises and vibrations to torment him.” In February, bin al-Shibh testified that “electronic devices hidden inside his cell were used to produce tremors and banging noises, disrupting his sleep for years.” Prosecutors, as Reuters explained, “responded by questioning his mental state.”

According to Reuters, Ahmed told the court, “Shibh told me that he’s got a problem … and I have the same problem that he’s got. They have mental torturing in the Camp Seven,” where the “high-value detainees” are held. “Speaking in broken English,” as Reuters put it, Ahmed “described vibrations in his cell floor, a constant ‘stinky smell’ and noises that sounded ‘like someone on the roof … hitting hammer.’”

When the prosecutor, Edward Ryan, “accused Ahmed of lying and questioned him on his disciplinary record at the prison,” asking, “Do you remember the time you spit out a food tray slot at a guard?” Ahmed replied by saying, “Yes, I did,” adding, “If you were there in the camp, you would do the same.”

In their unclassified summary for the PRB, the US authorities continued to describe Ahmed as significant, with no clue given as to why, if that was the case, he would not be facing a trial. It was noted that, in 1995, he “traveled from Sweden to Afghanistan to receive training, probably from al-Qa’ida, that he could use for jihadist purposes in his native Somalia,” a rather misleading claim, as Osama bin Laden was still in Sudan at the time, and a rather weak one, as revealed by the use of the word “probably.”

It was then noted that he “went to Somalia in 1997, joined the radical Muslim group Al-Ittihad al-Islami (AIAI), fought against the Ethiopian military and provided training to AIAl members,” although as Courthouse News reported, according to the Mapping Militants Project by Stanford University, “AIAI was initially nonviolent but later took up arms against Somali dictator Siad Barre — which drew wide national support — and later launched attacks in Ethiopia against mostly soldiers in an effort to control part of the country.” Their article added, “The US says Ahmed participated in the attacks against the Ethiopian military and trained other group members. However, the Stanford project says the group announced its transition from militancy to politics in January 1997, the same year the US says Ahmed worked with the group.”

Subsequently, however, according to the US authorities, Ahmed “served as a key member of al-Qa’ida in East Africa’s (AQEA) network in Somalia,” who “provided logistical and operational support to AQEA leaders, including almost certainly casing Camp Lemonier in Djibouti, the target of an AQEA plot.”

The authorities also noted that, “[d]espite initially admitting to his al-Qa’ida associations and providing a great deal of information about his support to AQEA, [Ahmed] over the course of his detention has sought to downplay his connection to the group.” They added that he “almost certainly remains a committed extremist and retains a worldview aligned with al-Qa’ida’s global jihadist ideology,” explaining that, “although he generally has been compliant with guard staff” at Guantánamo, “he has expressed hatred toward the West and support for violent extremism,” although the examples given do not necessarily back this up.

It was noted that, during interviews, he “has maintained to US officials that the only jihad he supports is the regional conflict in East Africa,” a point reiterated in an observation that he says that “he only supports regional insurgent efforts.” This, however, was described as an example of how he “has consistently attempted to deceive US officials,” even though it might just indicate that his only concerns are with the regional conflict in Somalia, and not anything else.

In conclusion, the US authorities claimed that it was “unclear” whether Ahmed “has become more radical during his time in detention — having possibly been influenced by more senior detainees — or if he always possessed anti-Western views and over time has become less hesitant to express them.” The authorities added the he “has expressed interest in reengaging in extremism if released,” and also stated that “[h]e does not appear to have direct contact with extremists outside Guantánamo, but some of his closest associates prior to detention have emerged as leaders in al-Shabaab, which almost certainly would provide avenues for [his] reengagement.”

In contrast, his personal representatives (military officials appointed to help prisoners prepare for their PRBs) painted a picture of someone who “wants nothing to do with extremism anymore and does not consider himself to be a threat to anyone,” who “harbors no enduring ill will to the US,” and who, moreover, wants only to be reunited with his wife and his four children, who live in Kenya — all positive comments for prisoners to make who are seeking to persuade US officials, in a process that is most closely akin to a parole board, that they are no threat, bear no ill-will towards the US, and have constructive and peaceful plans for life after Guantánamo.

The personal representatives’ opening statement is posted below. Courthouse News reported that Ahmed appeared before the PRB “in a long-sleeve, white tunic and looked intently engaged during the 20-minute hearing … viewed from the Pentagon in a closed-circuit feed,” and also noted that he “appeared without an attorney” at his PRB, and “had no legal representation.”

Periodic Review Board Initial Hearing, 02 Aug 2016

Guleed Hassan Ahmed, ISN 10023

Personal Representative Opening Statement

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen of the Board. We are the Personal Representatives for ISN 10023, Mr. Guleed Hassan Ahmed. He has met with us on multiple occasions over the past month and has never missed a meeting. From the start he has been cooperative and enthusiastic about his PRB.

Guleed has family in both Canada and in the US. All are ready and willing to support Guleed upon his transfer. He is especially looking forward to reuniting with his wife and four children who live in Kenya.

As an HVD he has not had access to as many classes and programs as the other detainees. He has however tried to participate in anything that was offered. Guleed likes to watch National Geographic movies, Blue Planet documentaries, and anything about science or nature. He likes to read religious books, Harry Potter books, the Economist and Newsweek.

Guleed would like the chance to leave detention at GTMO and start a new simple and peaceful life. He has had experience in Computer Engineering and small business in the past that could be useful in setting up a new life.

In our meetings with Guleed, he has stated to us that he harbors no enduring ill will to the US. Additionally, he has stated he wants nothing to do with extremism anymore and does not consider himself to be a threat to anyone. He wants only to live a peaceful life with his wife and children.

Thank you for your time and attention. We stand ready to answer any questions you have.

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.

Two Yemenis Approved for Release from Guantánamo, as Detention of Two Saudis Upheld, Including Torture Victim Mohammed Al-Qahtani

With just 168 days left for President Obama to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay, as he promised when he first took office in January 2009, the reassuring news is that there are now just 76 men held, and 34 of those men have been approved for release. 13 of those 34 were approved for release in Obama’s first year in office, by an inter-agency task force he established to review the cases of all the prisoners held at the start of his presidency, while 21 others have been approved for release since January 2014 by Periodic Review Boards. See my definitive Periodic Review Board list here on the Close Guantánamo website.

The PRBs, another inter-agency process, but this time similar to parole boards, have been reviewing the cases of all the men who are not facing trials and who had not already been approved for release, and, to date, 56 reviews have taken place, with 32 men being approved for release (and eleven of those already freed), and 16 approved for ongoing imprisonment, while eight decisions have yet to be taken. This is a 67% success rate for the prisoners, and ought to be a source of shame for the Obama administration’s task force, which described these men as “too dangerous to release” or recommended them for prosecution back in 2009.

In the cases of those described as “too dangerous to release,” the task force acknowledged that insufficient evidence existed to put them on trial, but clearly failed to recognise that their recommendations were based on extreme, and, it turns out, unjustifiable caution. In the cases of those recommended for trials, embarrassingly, the basis for prosecution collapsed in 2012-13 when appeals court judges struck down some of the only convictions secured in the troubled military commission trial system on the basis that the war crimes for which the men had been convicted were not internationally recognized, and had been invented by Congress.

Four of these decisions in the Periodic Review Boards were announced in the last week and a half, after the most recent decisions I reported — to approve for release Ravil Mingazov, the last Russian in Guantánamo, and to approve for ongoing imprisonment Haroon Gul, known to the authorities as Haroon al-Afghani, who is one of the last prisoners to arrive at Guantánamo, in 2007.

Of the four, two men, both Yemenis — Musa’ab al-Madhwani (ISN 839) and Hail Aziz Ahmed al-Maythali (ISN 840) — were recommended for release. Both men were seized in Karachi, Pakistan on September 11, 2002, the first anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, and, as the US government acknowledged, were mistakenly described as members of an Al-Qaeda cell.

The first to be approved for release, Musa’ab al-Madhwani, had his case reviewed on June 28, 2016, and the decision was taken on July 28, 2016. The decision to release him was unsurprising, and it is only a shame that it has taken so long. In December 2009, a judge reluctantly turned down his habeas corpus petition, because of the narrowness of the requirements for turning down habeas requests, and as I explained at the time of al-Madhwani’s PRB, District Judge Thomas F. Hogan “did not think Madhwani was dangerous,” noted that he had been a “model prisoner” since his arrival at Guantánamo in October 2002, and explained, “There is nothing in the record now that he poses any greater threat than those detainees who have already been released.”

In its final determination, the board members, “by consensus, determined 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.”

The members also provided a rundown of how al-Madhwani had addressed all of their concerns. They described how they had considered that his “degree of involvement and significance in extremist activities has been reassessed to be that of a low-level fighter,” and also noted that he “has taken advantage of educational opportunities while at Guantánamo,” as well as describing his “lack of expression of support for extremist ideologies [or] anti-American sentiment,” his “lack of ongoing extremist ties,” and his “strong familial support network,” plus the fact that he “has been highly compliant throughout detention.”

Al-Madhwani will now be held until a third country is found that will offer him a new home, as the entire US establishment agrees that no Yemenis can be repatriated from Guantánamo because of fears about the security situation in Yemen.

On August 1, another of the “Karachi Six,” Hail Aziz Ahmed al-Maythali (aka Hayil al-Maythali), was also approved for release. His PRB took place on June 30, 2016, and, as I explained at the time, his lawyer, Jennifer Cowan, particularly explained how her client’s initial anger about his imprisonment had been replaced by a maturity and self-awareness that was obviously recognized by the board. As she stated, “he has grown substantially as a person. He recognizes that he made bad decisions in the past and he has no interest in repeating these mistakes. Hayil realizes that it was a mistake to go someplace else and fight for a cause that was not his. He does not blame America for his current situation, he blames himself for his actions.”

In their final determination, the board members, having, as with all the men approved for release, determined, by consensus “that continued law of war detention … is no longer necessary to protect against a continuing significant threat to the security of the United States,” focused in particular on how his “degree of Involvement and significance in extremist activities has been reassessed to be that of a low-level fighter,” and how, although he “admitted to fighting with the Taliban, he explained his rationale for doing so and articulated his regret.”

The board members also “noted the availability of familial and financial resources and structures within the region,” as well as al-Maythali’s “progression over the past few years to be more open to other cultures.” Finally, the members noted that he “has no known close associations with terrorists outside of Guantánamo.”

Unlike al-Madhwani, who was recommended for resettlement in any country, the board members, in al-Maythali’s case, recommended “transfer only to an Arabic-speaking country, preferably a GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] country”; in other words, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain or Oman.

Of the two men whose ongoing imprisonment was recommended, the first was Mohammed al-Qahtani (ISN 063), a Saudi prisoner and an alleged 20th hijacker for the 9/11 attacks, who was subjected to a specific torture program in Guantánamo, the first that has ever been acknowledged publicly by a senior Pentagon official.

Al-Qahtani’s case was reviewed on May 16, 2016, as I discussed here, and the decision was taken on July 18, 2016, with the board members being unswayed by al-Qahtani’s lawyers’ explanations of his severe mental health issues predating his capture, despite the fact that, as they put it, Dr. Emily Keram, an expert witness who examined him, “concluded that Mr. al-Qahtani’s pre-existing mental illnesses likely impaired his capacity for independent and voluntary decision-making well before the United States took him into custody, and left him ‘profoundly susceptible to manipulation by others.’” As the lawyers added, “These findings call into serious question the extent to which it would be fair to hold Mr. al-Qahtani responsible for any alleged actions during that period of his life. They also cast doubt on any claims that Mr. al-Qahtani would have been entrusted with sensitive information about secret plots.”

In their final determination, however, the board members, having determined, by consensus, that “continued law of war detention of the detainee remains necessary to protect against a continuing significant threat to the security of the United States,” pointed out that they had “considered [his] past involvement in terrorist activities, to include almost certainly having been selected by senior al-Qa’ida members to be the 20th hijacker for the 9/11 attacks and, after failing in that effort, returning to Afghanistan and fighting on the front lines against the Northern Alliance.”

The board members also “noted its inability to assess [his] current mindset and credibility due to this refusal to respond to questions regarding his reasons for traveling to Afghanistan and ensuing activities,” adding, “The lack of information prevented the Board from understanding how and to what extent his psychiatric condition contributed to his decisions during that time.”

In conclusion, the board members sounded a note of cautious optimism for those seeking al-Qahtani’s release, stating that they recognize “the benefits of the Mohammed bin Naif rehabilitation program” in Saudi Arabia, which has treated numerous returning Guantánamo prisoners, and others who have engaged in militancy and terrorism. They added that they also recognized “the available family support,” and encouraged “officials of the Mohammed bin Naif Counseling and Care Center to work with the detainee to begin treatment for his mental health diagnoses while at Guantanamo.”

They also welcomed “additional information from the Saudi government for consideration in future reviews,” commended al-Qahtani “for his recognition of his mental health diagnoses,” and stated that they looked forward to reviewing his file in six months, as with all prisoners whose ongoing imprisonment is recommended, as well as encouraging him “to be more forthcoming with the Board in future reviews and to cooperate with mental health officials.”

The final decision — another decision to recommend ongoing imprisonment — was for Ghassan al-Sharbi (ISN 682), described as Abdullah al-Sharbi, another Saudi whose case was reviewed on June 23, 2016, as I discussed here. The decision was taken on July 25.

Al-Sharbi doomed his chances of being recommended for release by refusing even to meet with his personal representative, a military official appointed to help prisoners with their reviews. Seized with the alleged ”high-value detainee” Abu Zubaydah and accused of being a bomb-maker, he has been persistently uncooperative at Guantanamo, even though, many years ago, I met his then-military defense lawyer and his sister, who both described a man at odds with the US military’s assessment of him.

Nevertheless, in their final determination, having determined, by consensus, that “continued law of war detention … remains necessary to protect against a continuing significant threat to the security of the United States,” the board members “considered [his] past involvement in terrorist activity to include selection by senior al-Qa’ida leaders to receive training on the manufacture of remote controlled improvised explosive devices and his attending meetings with senior al-Qa’ida leaders where they may have discussed attacks against the United States,” adding that they “also noted [his] mostly non-compliant and hostile behavior while in detention, including organizing confrontations between other detainees and the guard force.” Finally, they “considered [his] prior statements expressing support for attacking the United States, and [his] refusal to discuss his plans for the future.”

They did, however, state that they appreciated his “candor at the hearing” — which was the first mention of how he had behaved — and encouraged him “to engage with his Personal Representative for future reviews and answer questions in any future hearings.”

Note: Of the nine decisions not yet taken, most relate to the most recent reviews, although  three are overdue, as decisions are generally expected within one to two months — for Said Salih Said Nashir (ISN 841), the last of the “Karachi Six,” whose case was reviewed on April 21, for Jabran al Qahtani (ISN 696), reviewed on May 19, and for Sufyian Barhoumi (ISN 694), reviewed on May 26. The latter two were seized with Ghassan al-Sharbi, Abu Zubaydah 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.

My Photos: Wonderful WOMAD 2016

See my photo set on Flickr here!

14 years ago, in July 2002, just after my wedding, I visited — and took part in — for the first time the WOMAD festival (World of Music, Arts and Dance), a world music festival that was established by Peter Gabriel and a number of colleagues in 1982, and which, at the time, was at a site by the River Thames in Reading. I went with my wife Dot, and our two-year old son, to take part in children’s workshops run by an Australian friend, who then returned to Australia, handing on the workshops to Dot, who has run them ever since, with myself and a number of our friends and their families.

From those first days, when we drank merrily while our kids slept in their buggies, we have seen our children grow at WOMAD, and we now tend to go to sleep while they are still out clubbing. Our group of workers also shares a special camaraderie, and, of course, we have also watched a wealth of world music talent over the years. We have also worked every year with children to prepare headdresses and other creations to accompany a giant figure, designed by Dot, that, with others made by the many other groups involved in the workshops, is, every year, carried through the whole site on the last day of the festival, as part of the children’s procession that reminds all of us of the central importance of children in all our lives.

In 2007, WOMAD moved to Charlton Park, a stately home in Wiltshire, near Malmesbury, and we went with it, of course. I’ve taken photos of it every year, and have made them available on Flickr since 2012 — see the photos from 2012 here and here, from 2014 here, and from 2015 here.

This year the festival was particularly special, perhaps in part because last year was very wet, whereas this year was mostly dry, but also, perhaps, because of the need for unity in the face of the EU referendum result, which, whatever else it was, was a blow against the kind of internationalism that is so central to WOMAD. This was  made particularly clear by one of the opening acts of the festival, Asian Dub Foundation, whose guitarist, Steve Chandra Savale, spoke about how support for WOMAD was revolutionary — a little hyperbolic, perhaps, but understandable given the huge recent increase in racism and xenophobia, as European citizens have hardened their hearts against the refugee crisis sweeping across the continent, which is unprecedented in most of our lifetimes, and, in the UK, voted to leave the EU, in large part because of anti-immigrant sentiment.

I hope you enjoy my photos — of musicians that also included the legendary George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic, and, my favourite act of the weekend, Konono No. 1, wild street musicians from the Democratic Republic of Congo. There are also photos of the site, of WOMAD’s iconic flags, and of the festival-goers, and even photos of my band The Four Fathers, and my son Tyler (The Wiz-RD), a beatboxer and spoken word poet, at various open mic events we took part in. See here for The Four Fathers’ Fighting Injustice EP and our debut album ‘Love and War.’

If you haven’t yet been to a WOMAD festival, I can’t recommend them highly enough. Please check out the UK site, and also the international site for other events worldwide.

Also see the album here:

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer, film-maker and singer-songwriter (the lead singer and main songwriter for the London-based band The Four Fathers, whose 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.

 

Off to WOMAD for A Long Weekend of World Music, Back on Monday

My friends,

I’m off to WOMAD, the wonderful world music festival in Wiltshire, for the 15th year running, with a posse of good friends and their families. I’ll be back on Monday. My wife has been running children’s workshops since our kids were tiny toddlers, when WOMAD was still by the river in Reading, and now our kids are young men and the festival is happily settled into Charlton Park near Malmesbury, a wonderful site.

I never quite know who’s going to be on. One of the great joys of WOMAD is being surprised by wonderful musicians from all round the world — and, for me, especially, Africa — so I’ll report back later on my discoveries. I do know that Asian Dub Foundation are the welcoming band on the Friday night, and that George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic will be wowing us at some point.

I also hope that my band The Four Fathers (on Twitter here!) will be playing the Open Mic at Molly’s Bar at some point over the weekend, and I already know that my son Tyler (The Wiz-RD) will be beatboxing and providing some spoken word pieces at the Hip Yak Poetry Shack.

And if the sun deigns to shine on us, there’ll be plenty of hanging out and, in crew camping, probably more guitars than you can shake a stick at, and lots of acoustic versions of Four Fathers songs  — and Bob Dylan covers.

So while I’m gone, feel free to check out the songs on our recently released Fighting Injustice EP, featuring remixes from our debut album ‘Love and War’. We recently spent two days working on songs for our second album, and I hope the first fruits from those sessions will be winging your way in September, but for now, enjoy!

Fighting Injustice EP (UK version) by The Four Fathers

Fighting Injustice EP (UK version) by The Four Fathers

Fighting Injustice EP (UK version) by The Four Fathers

Fighting Injustice EP (US version) by The Four Fathers

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

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

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

Ravil Mingazov, the Last Russian in Guantánamo, Is Approved for Release, While Afghan Who Arrived in 2007 Has Ongoing Detention Upheld

So after last week’s news that torture victim and best-selling author Mohamedou Ould Slahi has been approved for release from Guantánamo by a Periodic Review Board, there has been more good news this week, as Ravil Mingazov, the last Russian in the prison, has also been approved for release (on June 21), bringing to 30 the number of men approved for release by the PRBs. Just 14 men have had their ongoing imprisonment upheld by the review boards, although one of those decisions also took place last week — for Haroon Gul, known to the US authorities as Haroon al-Afghani, who was one of the last prisoners to arrive at Guantánamo in 2007.

With these 44 results, the success rate for the prisoners is 68%, which is remarkable when you consider that the men in question were all described as “too dangerous to release” or were recommended for prosecution by the last review process, the Guantánamo Review Task Force, which reviewed all the prisoners’ cases in 2009. With such results, it would be impossible not to conclude that the task force overreacted massively in its recommendations, contained in its final report in January 2010.

With less than six months remaining of the Obama presidency, ten results are still awaited, and ten reviews are still to take place. For further information about the PRBs, see my definitive Periodic Review Board list on the Close Guantánamo website.

The prisoner approved for release, Ravil Mingazov (ISN 702), had his case reviewed on June 21, which I wrote about at the time, making reference to how, like Mohamedou Ould Slahi, he had his release ordered by a judge over six years ago, in response to his habeas corpus petition, but the government appealed, and, like Slahi’s, his case “ha[d], shamefully, not been dealt with in the six years since, leaving Mingazov in a disgraceful state of limbo.”

An ethnic Tatar, Mingazov had been subjected to religious persecution, and, as a result, had left the country, ending up in a guest house in Faisalabad, Pakistan, in March 2002, where he was seized, with over a dozen other men, mostly young and mostly Yemeni, on the same night that a separate raid led to the capture of the alleged “high-value detainee” Abu Zubaydah, for whom the US’s post-9/11 torture program was implemented.

In their final determination, 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,” added that they had “some concern with [his] failure to demonstrate sufficient cantor related to events prior to detention,” but with appropriate security assurances found that “the risk [he] presents can be adequately mitigated.”

The board members also “considered that [he] did not express any intent to reengage in terrorist activities nor has he espoused any anti-US sentiment that would indicate he views the US as his enemy.” They also noted that his “degree of involvement and significance in extremist activities appears to be that of a low-level fighter,” and noted his “record of compliance while at Guantánamo and history of positive engagements with the guard force,” as well as ”multiple letters of support, to include willingness to provide [him] with financial and integration support upon transfer.”

It now remains to be seen where Mingazov will be sent, as he obviously cannot be repatriated with any assurance of safety. In 2009, at the instigation of the Pioneer Valley No More Guantánamos group, the town of Amherst, Massachusetts passed a resolution welcoming cleared prisoners, and focusing on two prisoners including Ravil Mingazov. Similar resolutions were later passed in Leverett, Massachusetts, and Berkeley, California, but sadly Congressional restrictions prevent any Guantánamo prisoner from being brought to the US mainland for any reason.

A better bet is the UK, where, as the Guardian explained last November, “his Washington DC-based lawyers have filed an official application with the UK Home Office appealing for Mingazov to be allowed to rejoin his family, who were granted political asylum in the UK last year. His 15-year-old son Yusef and former wife Dilyara Mingazov live in Nottingham along with several relatives.” The Guardian added that, “In the application, Mingazov’s family promises to provide [him] with full housing and financial support should he be released from Guantánamo.” As the document says, “They are ready to do everything they can to receive and heal Ravil Mingazov after his long nightmare in GTMO.”

The prisoner whose detention was upheld, Haroon Gul, known to the authorities as Haroon al-Afghani (ISN 3148), arrived at Guantánamo in June 2007, and was alleged to have been a senior commander of Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin (HIG), an Afghan political party that has been militarily opposed to the US presence in Afghanistan. As I explained at the time of his PRB, he “was not given an administrative review after his arrival at Guantánamo — a Combatant Status Review Tribunal (CSRT) — which would have made some information about him publicly available, and he is the only prisoner not to be assigned a number specific to Guantánamo. His number, ISN 3148, is actually a number from Bagram. The conclusion to be drawn from all this can only be that he was never regarded as a significant threat — as a CSRT is required to be eligible for a military commission trial.”

Al-Afghani also had no legal representation until very recently, when Shelby Sullivan-Bennis of Reprieve began representing him, meeting him for the first time a week before his PRB. As she explained, “Very little is known to the world about Haroon, and Guantánamo’s secrecy laws currently ban me from filling in the blanks.” She added that she was able to say that “the bright-eyed, chatty young man I met for the first time last week is not allowed to meet me alone for more than ten minutes before government representatives forcibly remove him from the room,” and that, at his PRB, he would “not be allowed to see the evidence against him; the Board can hold its findings against him without ever asking him if the information is true.”

In their final determination, the board members, by consensus, “determined that continued law of war detention of the detainee remains necessary to protect against a continuing significant threat to the security of the United States,” and explained that, in making this determination, they had “considered the long-term membership and leadership position in Hezb-e-lslami Gulbuddin (HIG) and his extensive time spent fighting Coalition forces.” In addition, they “noted [his] lack of a realistic plan for the future,” adding that, “Due to his lack of credibility and truthfulness, as well as his evasiveness and vague answers,” they were “unable to assess [his] intentions for the future and claimed change of mindset.”

In conclusion, the board members encouraged al-Afghani “to continue to work with his family and representatives on his future plans and to be forthcoming with the Board in future reviews,” which begin, in six months, with an administrative file review, but will include a full review within one to two years at which al-Afghani will be allowed, if he wishes, and if he is able, to thoroughly address the board’s concerns.

Reprieve were unimpressed. In a press release, “Gitmo refuses to release ‘mistaken identity’ prisoner after 9 years without lawyer,” they described al-Afghani, 33, as Haroon Gul, and explained how he was “an apparent case of mistaken identity by the US government.”

Reprieve noted that the board members decided that Gul “must continue to be detained indefinitely without charge or trial because his plan for what he would do post-release was insufficient,” and that they “also seemed unimpressed by Mr. Gul’s insistence that the government’s allegations against him are false.” This is one of the quandaries of the PRBs — as a parole-type process, the purpose is not to establish innocence or guilt, but to establish if it is safe for prisoners to be recommended for release; in other words, to ascertain whether they show remorse, whether they demonstrate a lack of violent intent towards the US, and whether they can demonstrate a coherent and peaceful post-release plan for their lives. On this basis, Gul would be better showing remorse than arguing that he had nothing to be remorseful for.

Reprieve’s press release continued by explaining that Gul’s hearing was “the first time in nine years” that he “has been given the opportunity to defend himself,” and yet “the process was inadequate and unfair,” because “neither Mr. Gul’s attorney nor his military representative were allowed to discuss the allegations with him under attorney-client privilege, nor was he given the chance to rebut the classified allegations against him before the Board.” Reprieve also explained that his efforts to secure an attorney, since his arrival at Guantánamo, had been “desperate and persistent.”

Evidently still in the process of finding out information about their new client, Reprieve cited an Al-Jazeera report about Gul by Sami Yousafzai and Jenifer Fenton, from January this year, in which they tracked down a relative, and “noted that Gul’s wife and young daughter now live in a refugee camp.” As Reprieve put it, however, “little more is known to the world about him.”

Commenting after the board’s decision was announced, Shelby Sullivan-Bennis was highly critical of the US authorities, discussing Reprieve’s belief that he may be a case of mistaken identity — based, it seems, on false confessions made as a result of torture — and eloquently criticizing what passes for justice at Guantánamo. She explained how Gul has worked hard at Guantánamo to improve himself, and delivered a withering condemnation of how the law has gone missing at the prison: “I went to law school to be a part of the American justice system, but in Guantánamo, I cannot find it.”

Her full statement is as follows:

We have reason to believe that Haroon is one of the many proven cases of mistaken identity, but without a lawyer, he had no capacity to challenge his detention in federal court, as others did. He was given less than three hours out of the last nine years to prepare with an attorney for this hearing that determined his fate. This is status-quo justice in Guantánamo.

When I met this bright-eyed, chatty young man I was blown away by his attitude. He was smiling and laughing and making American cultural references that even I didn’t get.

This denial is slap in the face to Haroon’s persistent efforts to toe the line the government has drawn for its prisoners. Haroon has learned English from scratch; he learned math and science and computers; he has played soccer with fellow detainees and been kind to the guards that lock his cage at night. To this day, he says he does not understand why he’s in there. “Why me?” But day after day he makes the very best of his situation and treats those who have wronged him charitably.

Haroon is not a bad man, Haroon is not even an irritable or ill-tempered man. He is a man who was tortured into speaking against himself and held captive by my government for nine years without an attorney.

The allegations against our clients in Guantánamo, to this day, include information that the government admits is wrong. We are still relying on this torture-evidence to keep men hundreds of miles from their families for years on end.

I went to law school to be a part of the American justice system, but in Guantánamo, I cannot find 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.

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

Last Thursday, July 21, a Yemeni prisoner at Guantánamo, Omar Muhammad Ali al-Rammah (ISN 1017), became the 54th prisoner to face a Periodic Review Board. The PRBs were set up in 2003 to review the cases of prisoners who had not already been approved for release, or were not facing trials, and to date 30 men have been approved for release, while 14 have had their ongoing imprisonment upheld. For further information, see my definitive Periodic Review Board list on the Close Guantánamo website.

This is a 68% success rate for the prisoners, and, as I explained in an article last week, these results are “remarkable — and remarkably damaging for the credibility of the Obama administration — because the majority of these men were described, by the high-level, inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force that President Obama set up shortly after taking office in January 2009, as ‘too dangerous to release,’ when the reality has not borne out that caution.” I added, “Others were recommended for prosecution, until the basis for prosecutions in Guantánamo’s military commission trial system largely collapsed after a series of devastating appeals court rulings, confirming that the war crimes being tried were illegitimate, having been invented by Congress.”

Al-Rammah (also identified as Zakaria al-Baidany), who is 40 years old, was, as I explained in my book The Guantánamo Files, captured far from the battlefields of Afghanistan — in Georgia, formerly part of the Soviet Union, with an Algerian, Soufian al-Hawari (ISN 1016), who was freed in November 2008. Al-Hawari explained in Guantánamo that he was formerly a drug user and petty thief in various European countries, but that he then became a devout Muslim, and traveled in 2001 to meet an old friend from Algeria called Abdul Haq in Georgia, where, as I described it, he said he “was captured on a bridge 50 miles from his friend’s house under the most extraordinary circumstances.”

Al-Hawari said, “The Americans didn’t capture me. The [Russian] Mafia captured me. They sold me to the Americans … When I was captured, a car came around and people inside were talking Russian and Georgian … We were delivered to another group who spoke perfect Russian. They sold us to the dogs. The Americans came two days later with a briefcase full of money. They took us to a forest, then a private plane to Kabul.”

When asked who was with him, al-Hawari replied, “There were four of us. Myself, my friend Abdul Haq, a Yemeni guy named Zakaria [al-Rammah], and a Chech[en] driver, who was killed.” According to a Cageprisoners report, based on accounts provided by former prisoners, they were sold to the Americans for $100,000. Al-Rammah has not spoken at Guantánamo in any publicly released records, but, according to two reports, he was subjected to brutal treatment in the early days of the prison’s existence.

Cageprisoners reported that he “would be held with his hand tied behind his back and his feet chained to the floor while being subjected to extremely cold temperatures,” and “would not be allowed to use the toilet or eat,” and Juma al-Dossari, a prisoner released in Saudi Arabia in July 2007, described how al-Rammah “went on a hunger strike because of the abuse that he was subjected to during interrogations, but was still interrogated every day for more than twelve hours.” He added that “the interrogator ordered the guards to keep him awake and he was then placed in solitary confinement.” Al-Dossari explained, “You have no idea of what the solitary isolation cells in Camp Delta are like; they cause psychological illnesses. They beat him in solitary and I heard his screams when they were beating him.”

In the unclassified summary for al-Rammah’s PRB, the US authorities admitted that they had no information establishing that he was anything more than a low-level facilitator working with Muslim freedom fighters in Chechnya. The summary stated that he “probably was a low-level mujahidin fighter since the mid-1990s, when he probably participated in the Bosnian jihad, and a facilitator since the late 1990s when he became associated with an extremist network affiliated with al-Qa’ida.” The doubtfulness in the above, with the double use of the word “probably,” continued in the following description of how he “may have trained at al-Qa’ida-associated camps in Afghanistan before relocating to Georgia in mid-2001 to support the Chechen jihad.”

The summary added, “While in Georgia, he was part of a force led by Chechen mujahid Ruslan Gelayev and may have fought against Russian or Abkhaz forces in the breakaway region of Abkhazia.” After 9/11, he “continued to work as a trusted but low-level mujahidin facilitator while he aspired to enter Chechnya to fight. He arranged to acquire fraudulent passports; and sought to acquire weapons, ammunition, and other supplies for mujahidin operations in Chechnya.” It was also claimed that he “probably received some training under Abu Atiya, who led a toxin network while in Georgia, but probably had no other inyolvement in its operations.” Captured in April 2002 by Russian forces, he arrived at Guantánamo in May 2003 after being held in a variety of CIA “black sites” and US-run secret prisons in Afghanistan.

Moving on to his behavior in Guantánamo, the summary noted that, although he has been “moderately compliant,” he “has refused to cooperate with US personnel and probably retains an extremist mindset” — again, the use of the word “probably” does not inspire confidence that this is necessarily an accurate assessment. The summary added that al-Rammah “has made no effort to reconnect with family,” although this claim is contradicted by his civilian lawyer, Beth Jacob, who, in her submission to the board, posted below, explicitly states that “despite several efforts by the International Red Cross (which my firm has confirmed independently through conversations with the ICRC) and others — he has not been able to make contact with his family since his arrival at Guantánamo.”

The summary also noted that al-Rammah “probably does not want to be repatriated to Yemen” (although he would not be allowed to anyway, as the entire US establishment is agreed that no Yemenis can be repatriated from Guantánamo, because of the security situation in their home country). It was also noted that he “has little formal education and has not articulated any plans or hopes for his life after release, suggesting that he lacks the social and vocational skills to support himself without comprehensive assistance.” This does not augur well for his PRB, because, as a process similar to parole, what is required, as well as contrition, is a serious and convincing plan for life after Guantánamo.

In closing, the summary noted that there are “no indications” that al-Rammah “has current associations with active extremists,” although it was noted that “Soufian Abar Huwari [aka al-Hawari] was arrested by Belgian authorities in July 2015 for criminal activities.”

Below, I’m posting the opening statements made by al-Rammah’s personal representative (a military officer appointed to help him prepare for his PRB) and his attorney Beth Jacob, who refers to him as Zakaria, the name by which he is best-known. Both statements are revealing of a young man of limited education who made some terrible life choices, but whose ramifications he has understood.

The PR also noted how, as a “rebellious youngster,” he “focused on playing soccer, dancing and having fun,” and Jacob noted how, “through watching American movies he learned about open societies and cultures where men and women can interact freely,” and, as a result, his ambition now is for “a life with friends both male and female, and his dream is to be able to go out dancing at night with his wife and then come home to their children.” His PR also noted how is hoping to “marry a woman who is educated,” and to “live somewhere where she doesn’t have to keep her head covered.”

In reading through the opening statements, I actually found myself feeling rather sad for al-Rammah, who, like many of the men held at Guantánamo, has developed an enthusiasm for US culture in spite of the way that the US government has treated him. The saddest moment, however, as I mentioned above, came with Beth Jacob’s explanation that al-Rammah has not been able to communicate with his family at all since his capture, and, as she described it, his “last conversation with his mother was in 2002 from Georgia, when she told him to come home.”

Periodic Review Board Initial Hearing, 21 Jul 2016

Omar Mohammed Ali Al-Rammah, ISN 1017

Personal Representative Opening Statement

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen of the Board. I am the Personal Representative for Omar Mohammed Ali Al-Rammah (ISN I017), who goes by a nickname Zakariya. Thank you for this opportunity to show Zakariya is not a continuing significant threat to the United States.

Zakariya, whose birth name is Faysal Mohammed Alawi Ali Salem, was born and raised in Jedda Saudi Arabia, although his family is Yemeni by blood. Zakariya comes from a moderate family that highly values education. In fact, both his older brothers pursued advanced degrees at foreign universities. As a typical rebellious youngster, Zakariya did not put much effort into his schooling and instead, focused on playing soccer, dancing and having fun. He also chose not to attend mosque or practice Islam until he reached high school when someone at a nearby mosque showed him a video describing heaven and hell. This scared him enough that he turned towards a more strict faith. This eventually led him to head for Bosnia in the 1990’s so he could help protect the Muslims from the atrocities of that period. After only a month of basic training his barracks was shelled, injuring his leg and forcing him back home to get proper care. After a couple years spent recovering and completing additional schooling, someone at mosque showed him videos of the Chechen conflict and he again felt the need to go help the Muslims there. After a short stay in Afghanistan to finish his basic training, he ended up in Georgia.

Once Zakariya arrived in Georgia, the Chechens there essentially told him they didn’t trust Arabs to do any fighting and sent him to provide support in the rear areas of the conflict. This left Zakariya to spend his time performing menial tasks such as loading food for transport. One day, Zakariya took a cab between towns and the cab was ambushed. Zakariya and two other passengers were apprehended while the Chechen driver was killed next to Zakariya. He was eventually handed over to Americans and, after being held an extended time in Afghanistan, he was finally transferred to Guantanamo Bay. His traumatic capture experience finally brought home the brutal reality of his choices and forever altered his view of armed conflict.

While at Guantánamo, Zakariya has settled into a much more moderate practice of Islam, sometimes even earning the displeasure of other detainees for his willingness to speak with female guards and staff members. He participated in numerous class offerings and likes to spend his time playing video games and watching American movies. Zakariya greatly admires Western culture and wants to move to an accommodating country with religious freedoms, preferably in Europe. He wants to marry a woman who is educated, who he can take dancing and live somewhere where she doesn’t have to keep her head covered. He understands that he has limited education and job training and is willing to accept any job he can to provide for a family. Zakariya is ready to answer any and all questions to prove he is not a continuing significant threat to the United States. Thank you.

Attorney’s Opening Statement

Good morning. I am Beth Jacob, a member of the law firm Kelley Drye & Warren, private counsel for Faysal Alawi Ali Salem, also known as Zakaria al Baidany. He has been called Zakaria for most of the last dozen years, so I will use that name in referring to him.

I would like to give you a little background about myself, so you can have context to consider my comments about Zakaria. Shortly after law school I became a prosecutor in the New York City District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan, where I worked for eight years investigating and prosecuting organized crime, official corruption, white collar crime, large scale tax evasion and financial frauds. Some years after I left the District Attorney’ s Office, I defended the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey — the owner of the World Trade Center complex — in some of the litigations arising out of the September 11, 2001 attacks. On a pro bono basis, I helped victims of those attacks make claims against insurers and obtain compensation from the fund established by the United States government for that purpose. Now most of my work is representing generic pharmaceutical companies in patent infringement litigation against brand pharmaceutical companies.

Along with others in my previous and current law firms, I have represented men detained at Guantánamo since 2005.

I have known Zakaria only a few months, when he asked if I could be his private counsel at this hearing because a series of departures from the firm that had been working with him left him without a lawyer. But in those few months, I have spoken and met with him almost a dozen times. I talked with his previous lawyers and read their notes. He has always been friendly and polite; I do not wear a headscarf or a skirt when we meet; and he shakes my hand and thanks me profusely at the beginnings and ends of our meetings.

At Guantánamo, Zakaria has taken many classes, and you have letters from two of his teachers. But what he likes best is to play videogames and to watch American movies — he likes adventure movies and romantic stories, where he can follow the plots despite his limited English. He told me that when he watches movies, he is transported to another world. And he told me that through watching American movies he learned about open societies and cultures where men and women can interact freely. Now, Zakaria’s ambition is a life with friends both male and female, and his dream is to be able to go out dancing at night with his wife and then come home to their children. His thoughts about employment are modest and realistic — he would like to work in a store, perhaps one selling sweets or drive a taxi.

Zakaria is not someone who is interested in political or religious philosophy, or who wants to change the world or other people. When he was young, he liked music and dancing (even though that was not accepted in Saudi Arabia where he grew up), and playing soccer. He then made what he readily admits were wrong decisions that he regrets intensely. He was scared by a story of heaven and hell, got religion as a result and was guided to Bosnia and then Chechnya to support his fellow Muslims, decisions that he now regrets deeply. He was captured in a violent ambush in Georgia where the young man sitting next to him was shot dead before his eyes — a shock that still reverberates when he talks about it today. He was transferred to American custody and held in CIA black sites before he was transferred to Guantánamo.

These experiences traumatized him — especially the death of the young man, the first death he had seen.

He has gained a reputation as a good cook. And while I have not had the privilege of sampling his cooking, we have had discussions about food and spices, and about different kinds of coffees.

Zakaria grew up in a family that valued education and was not unduly religious. We have not been able to provide statements from his family because — despite several efforts by the International Red Cross (which my firm has confirmed independently through conversations with the ICRC) and others — he has not been able to make contact with his family since his arrival at Guantánamo. Zakaria’s last conversation with his mother was in 2002 from Georgia, when she told him to come home. He has given me the names of his family in Saudi Arabia, his mother’s family in Yemen a businessman who is a family friend and his home phone number from 15 years ago, and we are actively trying to locate them. From what he says his family is well educated and has resources, and will be able to help support him financially as well as emotionally wherever he ends up living.

But in the absence of family, before we are able to locate them, we have made arrangements to provide support and structure to ensure that he is able to make a safe and successful transition to life after transfer from Guantánamo, wherever he ends up. I am sure many of you know of Reprieve’s “Life After Guantánamo” program with its impressive track record of successfully helping several dozen detainees from Guantánamo after they were transferred. Reprieve has agreed that Zakaria can participate in that program and we have submitted a letter from them to that effect that describes the program in more detail. And Zakaria has not one, but two, international law firms — mine and his previous counsel — who are committed to continuing our work as his lawyers to give him or find for him whatever assistance is needed. I have explained all of this to Zakaria, and he is very grateful.

You will see that Zakaria will be forthright with you about his past and that his remorse is genuine. He was a young unsophisticated kid who behaved stupidly. The independent responsibilities suggested by the profile, in my opinion, would have been beyond his capabilities. He never was engaged in fighting, and his first experience of violence shocked him to his core. As Zakaria puts it, he has learned through a very hard lesson, not to follow bad advice. That this lesson remains learned is clear from his conduct at Guantánamo. For years he has been housed with the compliant and Westernized detainees and his ambition is for a future where he can go out dancing. It is clear that Zakaria will not be a threat to the United States or anyone else if he is released.

Thank you.

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.

Finally! Torture Victim and Best-Selling Author Mohamedou Ould Slahi Approved for Release from Guantánamo

I wrote the following article for the “Close Guantánamo” website, which I established in January 2012, on the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, with the US attorney Tom Wilner. Please join us — just an email address is required to be counted amongst those opposed to the ongoing existence of Guantánamo, and to receive updates of our activities by email.

Great news from Guantánamo, as the torture victim and best-selling author Mohamedou Ould Slahi has been approved for release by a Periodic Review Board, as has an Afghan prisoner, Abdul Zahir, who was charged in the first version of Guantánamo’s military commissions in January 2006 — although those charges were then dropped and never revived. The PRBs were set up in 2013 to review the cases of all the prisoners not already approved for release or facing trials, and, with these two decisions, 29 men have been approved for release and 13 for ongoing imprisonment, a success rate of 69%. See our definitive Periodic Review Board list here.

This is remarkable — and an indictment of the Obama administration’s caution — when it is recognized that, back in 2009, when President Obama set up a high-level, inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force to assess these men’s cases, these 42 men and 22 others either awaiting reviews or awaiting the results of reviews, were described as “too dangerous to release,” although the task force acknowledged that insufficient evidence existed to put them on trial, or were put forward for prosecution, until the basis for prosecutions largely collapsed under judicial scrutiny in 2012-13.

Slahi (ISN 760), a 45-year old Mauritanian, was one of those initially — and incomprehensibly — recommended for prosecution by the task force. As I explained at the time of his PRB on June 2, he “was subjected to a specially tailored torture program in Guantánamo, approved by Bush’s defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, and, though still imprisoned, is a best-selling author. While imprisoned, he wrote a memoir that, after a long struggle with the US government, was published in redacted form. Nevertheless, the power of Slahi’s account of his life, his rendition, his torture and his long years in Guantánamo, is such that the book, Guantánamo Diary, has become a best-seller.”

As I also explained, “Although the Bush administration attempted to make a case that Slahi was a member of Al-Qaeda, which was why they put pressure on the Mauritanian government to hand him over to them in November 2001, and why he was subsequently tortured in Jordan (on behalf of the US) and in Guantánamo by US operatives, the case evaporated under scrutiny. In April 2010, Judge James Robertson, a US District Court judge, after scrutinizing his habeas corpus petition, ordered his release, finding that the government had failed to establish that what looked suspicious in his case — primarily, the fact that he was related to senior Al-Qaeda member Abu Hafs, and, while living in Germany, had met some of the 9/11 hijackers and had helped them to visit Afghanistan for military training — was actually evidence of involvement with Al-Qaeda. Slahi has admitted that he had joined Al-Qaeda, but that was in 1992, when he had visited Afghanistan during the civil war that followed the Soviet withdrawal, and he insisted that he had not maintained any contact with the organization after that time.”

The government, however, refused to accept Judge Robertson’s ruling, and appealed, and in November 2010 the D.C. Circuit Court vacated that ruling, sending it back to the lower court to be reconsidered, where, as I described it in an article about Slahi’s case in April, “it has languished ever since, mocking all notions of justice every day it has remained unaddressed.”

In their final determination, dated July 14, the review board’s members determined, by consensus, that Slahi’s “continued law of war detention” is “no longer necessary to protect against a continuing significant threat to the security of the United States.”

The board members added that they had considered Slahi’s “highly compliant behavior in detention,” and also noted his “candid responses to the Board’s questions, to include recognition of his past activities, [and] clear indications of a change in [his] mindset.” The board members also “considered the extensive support network available to [him] from multiple sources, including strong family connections, and [his] robust and realistic plan for the future.”

In a press release, the ACLU, which helped to represent him, noted that “[t]he government of his native Mauritania has said that it would welcome him home.”

Nancy Hollander, one of his attorneys, said, “We are thrilled that the PRB has cleared our client. We will now work toward his quick release and return to the waiting arms of his loving family. This is long overdue.”

Hina Shamsi, another of his attorneys, and the director of the ACLU’s National Security Project, said, “We’re delighted for Mohamedou and his family, but the new chapter in his life won’t start until the Pentagon actually transfers him, and it should begin that process immediately.” She added, in an important reminder of the other men still held, “There are still dozens of other men trapped in the misery that is indefinite detention at Guantánamo. Time is running out for President Obama to fulfill his promise to close Guantánamo and prevent its injustice from tarnishing his legacy.”

In the Guardian, Mark Fallon, the deputy commander of the former Criminal Investigative Task Force at Guantánamo, called Shahi’s torture “a shameful chapter for the Department of Defense and those who served in uniform,” adding, “It was a command-sanctioned torture of a prisoner in custody. It was unwarranted, unnecessary, and obviously totally ineffective.”

The Guardian described how, in his book, Slahi “recalled being so broken by the torture that he would tell his tormentors whatever they wished to hear.” He wrote that he told his interrogators, “I don’t care, as long as you are pleased. So if you want to buy, I am selling.” He was then moved into housing reserved for cooperative prisoners, where “he was permitted to watch TV and maintain a modest garden,” and where he wrote his memoirs.

As Fallon described it, accurately, Slahi’s torture “left us with a detainee [who] continued to be held for years, not based on what he did to us, but based on what we did to him.”

76 men are still held at Guantánamo, and, with the decisions taken about Slahi and Abdul Zahir, 31 of those men have now been approved for release.

In its press release, the ACLU also noted that one piece of evidence reviewed by the PRB, which was not made publicly available at the time, was a letter of support submitted by a former military guard at Guantánamo who was assigned to Slahi for 10 months. The guard described Slahi as “polite, friendly, and respectful,” and also stated, “I did not see or hear support for violence of fundamentalist Islam from him.” Many years ago, I was contacted by a former guard who wanted to explain how positive his experiences of Slahi had been while he was guarding him, although he did not want to be publicly identified. It may be that this guard is the same man — although it is almost certain, of course, that Slahi would similarly have impressed other guards.

A campaign to free Slahi, initiated by the ACLU, secured international support. As the ACLU noted in its press release, “The ACLU and Change.org have collected more than 100,000 signatures calling for his release. The petitions have gathered high-profile supporters, including Maggie Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, and Roger Waters. In the UK, several members of Parliament signed a letter urging the British government to call on the US to release Slahi.”

The other man to be approved for release, Abdul Zahir (ISN 753), who is 43- or 44-years old, had initially been accused of a grenade attack on a vehicle carrying Toronto Star journalist Kathleen Kenna, her husband Hadi Dadashian, photographer Bernard Weil, and an Afghan driver in Zormat on March 4, 2002, but by the time of his PRB the attack, which he had always denied being involved in, was not mentioned. The summary for his PRB also noted that he was “probably misidentified” as an individual “who had ties to al-Qa’ida weapons facilitation activities.”

In their final determination, the board members considered Zahir’s “candor in discussing his time in Afghanistan and involvement with the Taliban, [his] limited role in Taliban structure and activities, and the assessment that [he] was probably misidentified as the individual who had ties to al-Qaeda weapons facilitation.”

The board members also noted that he “has not expressed any intent to reengage in extremist activity or espoused any anti-US sentiment that would Indicate he views the US as an enemy,” and also “considered [his] efforts to pursue educational and treatment opportunities while at Guantánamo, and [his] available support network and job skills to assist with reintegration.”

At the same time that the Periodic Review Secretariat released the final determinations for Slahi and Zahir, they also announced seven forthcoming reviews, all for prisoners initially regarded as “high-value detainees” — Muhammad Rahim (ISN 10029), an Afghan, on August 2, Guleed Hassan Ahmed (ISN 10023) , a Somali, on August 4, Mohd Farik bin Amin aka Zubair (ISN 10021), a Malaysian, on August 9, Bashir bin Lap aka Lillie (ISN 10022), another Malaysian, on August 11, Mustafa Faraj Muhammad Masud al-Jadid al-Uzaybi aka Abu Faraj al-Libi (ISN 10017), a Libyan, on August 16, Encep Nurjaman aka Hambali (ISN 10019), an Indonesian, on August 18, and Zayn al-Ibidin Muhammed Husayn aka Abu Zubaydah (ISN 10016) on August 23.

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.