Andy Worthington's Blog, page 80

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

Last week — delayed for a week because of bad weather — the 24th Periodic Review Board took place at Guantánamo, for Yasin Ismail (aka Yassin Ismail), a Yemeni prisoner who is reportedly 36 years old — although, years ago, one of his lawyers stated that his year of birth had incorrectly been recorded as 1979, when he was actually born in 1982, which would mean that he is currently 33 years old. I note that no one, apart from Human Rights First, has actually written about this PRB.

The Periodic Review Boards were established in 2013 to review the cases of prisoners regarded as “too dangerous to release” by the the high-level, inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force that, in 2009, had reviewed the cases of all the prisoners held when Barack Obama took office. Alarmingly, these men — 46 in total — were given this description even though the task force acknowledged that insufficient evidence existed to put them on trial. In other words, rumor, hearsay and unreliable statements by the prisoners themselves, or by their fellow prisoners, hinted that they were dangerous, when that might not have been true at all.

25 other prisoners, initially recommended for prosecution, were also made eligible for the PRBs after the basis of their trials collapsed following a series of devastating rulings by the court of appeals in Washington, D.C., which ruled that Congress had invented a raft of war crimes, and had used them to illegally prosecute prisoners in Guantánamo’s already discredited military commission trial system.

Since the PRBs began in November 2013, 20 prisoners have had decisions made by the review boards, and in 17 cases — a whopping 85% of the cases decided — the prisoners reviewed have been recommended for release. This is good news for those of us who were always opposed to the deeply flawed description of people as “to dangerous to release,” but unfortunately 40 men are still awaiting reviews, and unless President Obama makes a concerted effort to speed up the PRBs this year, they will not all be completed before leaves office, even though, when he issued an executive order in March 2011 approving the ongoing imprisonment of those deemed “too dangerous to release,” he promised that reviews of their cases — the PRBs — would be completed within a year.

Yasin Ismail is one of the 46 men regarded as “too dangerous to release.” The son of a sheep farmer, he had his habeas corpus petition turned down by a District Court judge in April 2010, a decision that was upheld on appeal a year later. The judges were not persuaded by his claims that he had been kidnapped in Afghanistan and sold to the US, and it may well be that, as I explained at the time his habeas petition was turned down, that he probably “attended the al-Farouq training camp, traveled with others to the Tora Bora mountains, where a showdown took place between al-Qaeda and US forces in November and December 2001, and where he was eventually captured, and, on three occasions while he was in Afghanistan, saw Osama bin Laden make speeches.”

However, as I also explained when he lost his appeal, Senior Judge Laurence H. Silberman, “one of the most conservative jurists in the federal system,” according to SCOTUSblog, “issued the following alarming declaration about the perceived difference between dangerous people being released in the criminal justice system (because proof of guilt cannot be established) and prisoners from Guantánamo being released,” which demonstrates the hysteria with which prisoners like Yasin Ismail have come to be regarded by parts of the US establishment.

Judge Silberman noted:

In the typical criminal case, a good judge will vote to overturn a conviction if the prosecutor lacked sufficient evidence, even when the judge is virtually certain that the defendant committed the crime. That can mean that a thoroughly bad person is released onto our streets, but I need not explain why our criminal justice system treats that risk as one we all believe, or should believe, is justified.

When we are dealing with detainees, candor obliges me to admit that one can not help but be conscious of the infinitely greater downside risk to our country, and its people, of an order releasing a detainee who is likely to return to terrorism.

Analyzing Judge Silberman’s comments, I stated, “What is particularly depressing about these passages is that, while Judge Silberman is correct to defend the criminal justice system’s adherence to the law, he thoroughly betrays those principles by treating the Guantánamo prisoners as some kind of exceptional beings beyond the law, super-terrorists who would wreak havoc on America in an instant, when, to be honest, someone like Yasein Ismael [Yasin Ismail], a foot soldier for the Taliban, is not someone ‘likely to return to terrorism,’ as he was never involved in terrorism in the first place.”

For his Periodic Review Board, this distinction was acknowledged by the authorities at Guantánamo, who “judge[d] that he had connections with and access to some senior members [of al-Qaeda] but did not play an organizational role in the group.” The authorities also claimed that his “behavior and statements while at the Guantánamo Bay detention facility indicate that he retains extremist views, although he has told US officials that he does not intend to reengage in terrorist activity.” The authorities also claimed that he “has repeatedly expressed interest in extremist conflicts and a strong dislike for the US and has attempted at times to incite other detainees against the guard force,” although most of his “infractions” took place during 2013, when he was a prominent hunger striker in the prison-wide hunger strike that took place that year.

The authorities also noted that he “has expressed a desire to be transferred to an Arab or other Muslim country and probably would struggle to integrate into a culture different from his own.” Although it was also noted that, if he were to be repatriated, “he probably would seek out support from family members or other former associates. some of whom have ties to AQAP [Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula], the truth is that the entire US establishment is unwilling to repatriate any Yemenis from Guantánamo, and, for him to be released, a third country would have to be found that would be prepared to take him in. Irrelevant, therefore, is the authorities’ concern that his “paternal cousin, Rashad Muhammad Sa’id Ismail, is a longtime al-Qa’ida affiliate and AQAP recruiter who would be well-placed to help [him] reengage in terrorism.” As an aside, it was also noted that Rashad Ismail’s brother is former Guantánamo prisoner Sadiq Ismail (ISN 069), who was repatriated in 2007. The authorities noted that there was “no reporting indicating that [he] has reengaged in terrorism,” although it was also noted that they do not know “whether he has reintegrated successfully into society.”

Below, I’m posting the statements made by Yasin Ismail’s personal representatives (military personnel appointed to help prisoners prepare for their PRBs) and by his lawyer, David Remes. The personal representatives spoke about how he “has used his years in GTMO actively learning about nutrition and medicine,” and as a result he “has started counseling other detainees in nutrition to increase their knowledge in an effort to assist with their quality of life.” David Remes added that Yasin had given up his hunger strike, which he viewed “as a form of peaceful protest, the only means of expression open to him,” Remes also noted that he “well-respected by other detainees,” and reminded the board that another relative of his is held at Guantánamo, Abdalmalik Wahab (aka Abdel Malik Wahab al-Rahabi, ISN 037) who was approved for release by a PRB in December 2014.

Periodic Review Board Initial Hearing, 26 Jan 2016

Yassin Qasim Mohammed Ismail Qasim, ISN 522

Personal Representative Opening Statement

Members of the Board, we are the Personal Representatives for Yassin Qasim Mohammed Ismail Qasim. When I first went to meet Yassin, I was uncertain if he would participate in the meeting since he was on a hunger strike. During our first meeting, he explained to me that he was very happy that we were there and he felt hopeful for the future as being detained made him feel as if there was no tomorrow. He went on to explain that the reason for his hunger strike was not out of rebellion but that he wanted to bring focus to being detained so that he could get some sort of resolution, but not cause animosity. He just felt hopeless. He offered that day to stop his hunger strike because he felt that he could see hope for the future. His demeanor is one of a serious, thoughtful man which both my partner and I can confirm.

Yassin comes from a large family that owns a farm which has been in the family for generations in Yemen. He has learned how to work this business growing up throughout his school years with his father. This farm is now so large that the family has to hire extra helpers. Upon his release, even if he is not able to return to Yemen, this farm’s value and the money generated from it will help financially support Yassin wherever he is reintegrated. In addition, he has two brothers that work in Saudi Arabia that can assist him. His brothers work in business which Yassin is considering as an employment option. His goals for his future involve continuing his education, building a family and reconnecting with the family.

As we were getting to know Yassin, we learned that he has spent much of his time reading and learning while in GTMO. We listed the many health and medical books and journals he has read as an exhibit in his case file. In fact, because of his passion for health, he has started counseling other detainees in nutrition to increase their knowledge in an effort to assist with their quality of life. Yassin has used his years in GTMO actively learning about nutrition and medicine which he may continue to study once he leaves here. As you will see during his opening statement, he is also working on his English. He will not leave GTMO the same way he entered but he will have broadened his mind. He will have the support of his family and is looking forward to creating a successful future. We appreciate you taking time to hear his case and your consideration for transfer.

Yassin understands that in order to be recommended for transfer he must first gain the board’s approval. Therefore he is willing and ready to answer your questions.

We and the PC [Private Counsel] are here throughout this proceeding to answer your questions.

Periodic Review Board Initial Hearing, 26 Jan 2016

Yassin Qasim Mohammed Ismail Qasim, ISN 522

Opening Statement of Private Counsel David H. Remes

Good morning. I am David Remes, private counsel for Yassin Qasim Mohammed Ismail (ISN 522). (His name is Yassin, not Yassim.)

I have represented Yassin in his habeas corpus case since July 2004 and have met with him dozens of times. I have also met members of his immediate and extended families on several of my trips to Yemen. In addition, I currently represent Abdalmalik Wahab (ISN 37), a second cousin of Yassin by marriage, whom the PRB cleared in December 2014, and I represented Yassin’s second cousin Sadeq Ismail (ISN 69), who was repatriated to Yemen in June 2007. I spoke with Sadeq on January 3, 2016, and with one of Yassin’s brothers on December 20, 2015. I am submitting a separate statement summarizing those conversations.

Yassin is intelligent and perceptive. He is serious and well-mannered. He is a fine writer and a natural teacher. He thinks through his actions and makes his own decisions. I especially value my meetings with Yassin because he is a close observer of life in the camps and provides context for detainees’ concerns. I can confirm that he is well-respected by other detainees. Yassin is also deliberate. He viewed his hunger strike as a form of peaceful protest, the only means of expression open to him. He was only trying to make himself heard. I know if he had some other form of peaceful protest, he would have stopped his strike. In light of this proceeding, he has stopped his strike and hopes to persuade the Board to clear him for transfer.

Yassin is not a threat to the national security of the United States. His cousin started a family after he returned to Yemen and lives a peaceful life as a day laborer. His brother, who also has a family, is pursuing a Ph.D. in engineering. The Board has cleared his cousin Abdalmalik Wahab for transfer. Wherever Yassin is sent, he will likewise have a family and live a normal life. He aspires to teach Arabic, which my habeas linguist, a master of classical Arabic, considers him well qualified to do. At age 36, Yassin has lost the wanderlust and thirst for adventure he had at age 22. After fourteen years at Guantanamo, he has no appetite for politics and simply wants to get on with his life.

Yassin prefers to go to an Arabic-speaking country, but his goal is release, and he is ready to go wherever the United States sees fit to send him. He is ready to accept such security conditions as the U.S. may require and to take part in rehabilitation and reintegration programs. He does not require continued detention. I urge the Board to approve him for transfer. 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,’ is available for download or on CD via Bandcamp — also see here). 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.

Come and See My Band The Four Fathers Play at Vinyl in Deptford on Saturday February 13

Next Saturday, February 13, my band The Four Fathers are playing a gig at Vinyl, a wonderful record shop with an old school rock and roll basement located at the bottom of Tanners Hill in Deptford, in south east London. The full address is 4 Tanners Hill, London SE8 4PJ, phone number 07930 421113. There’ll be a bar, plus tea and coffee and some special pre-Valentine’s Day snacks, so if you’re anywhere near, come and check out our rocking, roots reggae sounds first-hand! If you’re coming, please let us know on the Facebook page (just click “Going”).

The gig is free, and we’ll be playing our first set — of topical songs about love and loss — at 8pm. At 8.30 there’ll be a beatboxing set from my son Tyler (aka the Wiz-RD), and at 9pm we’ll be playing a political set of original songs including live favourite Fighting Injustice, Tory Bullshit Blues, Song for Shaker Aamer (featured in the video for the We Stand With Shaker campaign), 81 Million Dollars (about the US torture program) and several brand-new songs, including Riot and London, which we played live for the first time at our recent gigs at Deptford Cinema and at the Bird’s Nest, also in Deptford, and guitarist Richard Clare’s song She’s Back, about Pussy Riot.

Below, I’m re-posting a video I made available yesterday of me singing “Song for Shaker Aamer” at an event in Washington, D.C., after I had also spoken about the campaign to free Shaker Aamer, during my recent US tour to call for the closure of Guantánamo on and around the 14th anniversary of its opening. The version I played has lyrics I amended to reflect Shaker’s release in October, and I hope we’ll be able to record the new version in the not too distant future.

The version of “Song for Shaker Aamer” recorded with The Four Fathers is available as a download via our Bandcamp page, for just $1.25/80p, although you can pay more if you wish. It’s also featured on our album, “Love and War,” which is available as an 8-track download (or you can buy individual tracks) or on CD, with two additional tracks, including our cover of Bob Dylan’s “Masters of War.” The CD can, of course, be sent anywhere in the world.

And also, if you’re interested in having me or The Four Fathers play — with or without the option of me also talking about my work on Guantánamo — then please get in touch. We are available for pub gigs, festivals and parties, and we’re also very interested in playing at political events.

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

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

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

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

[image error]On January 10, while I was in Washington, D.C. as part of a short tour to call for the closure of the prison at Guantánamo Bay on and around the 14th anniversary of its opening, I was delighted to be asked to speak at “Visions of Homecoming: Close Guantanamo!” an event put together by Witness Against Torture and Code Pink, and also featuring Bronx-based spoken word performers The Peace Poets.

The event — at a place called Impact Hub DC, around the corner from the church where the Witness Against Torture activists were staying — was mainly to recall the visit the groups made to Cuba, in November, to call for the closure of Guantánamo, and also to prepare us all for the protest outside the White House the day after, and I was honored that I was asked to also talk about the success of the campaign to free Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo, and in particular my work with the We Stand With Shaker campaign, which I set up in November 2014 with the activist Joanne MacInnes.

After a short discussion of the campaign, I also played an acoustic version of “Song for Shaker Aamer,” the song I wrote and recorded with my band The Four Fathers, which was featured in the campaign video for We Stand With Shaker. Since Shaker’s release, I have amended the words to reflect his freedom, and this was the version I played.

Yesterday, I was delighted to find that Justin Norman, photographer, filmmaker and designer for Witness Against Torture, was celebrating his return from an eventful work trip to Nigeria by posting some additional videos from the January Guantánamo actions, including, I was delighted to note, the video of me playing “Song for Shaker Aamer,” which is posted below, via YouTube. It is also on Facebook.

I hope you have time to watch it, and that you will share it if you like it. If you want to buy the version I recorded with The Four Fathers, it’s available as a download via our Bandcamp page, for just $1.25/80p, although you can pay more if you wish. It’s also featured on our album, “Love and War,” which is available as an 8-track download (or you can buy individual tracks) or on CD, with two additional tracks, including our cover of Bob Dylan’s “Masters of War.” The CD can, of course, be sent anywhere in the world.

And if you’re interested in having me or The Four Fathers play — with or without the option of me also talking about my work on Guantánamo — then please get in touch. We are available for pub gigs, festivals and parties, and also for political events, with a repertoire of songs celebrating socialism and opposing the greed of the 21st century and the Tories’ cynical age of austerity, as well as anti-war songs, and songs about Guantánamo and the US torture program.

As well as Song for Shaker Aamer, these include our roots rocking anthem and crowd favorite Fighting Injustice, Tory Bullshit Blues, and our new songs Riot and London, and, in defense of justice, 81 Million Dollars, about the US torture program, and some other new songs that we’ll be playing very soon — one called Close Guantánamo, and another, Equal Rights and Justice For All, about habeas corpus. My fellow guitarist Richard Clare also has a new song, She’s Back, about Pussy Riot, and we have also been known to play a few love songs, as well as chosen covers — more Bob Dylan, and the Pogues, to name a few.

And finally, for now, if you’re in London, we’re playing at Vinyl, a great record shop in Deptford, London SE8, on Saturday February 13. Free entry, 8pm start, with support from my son Tyler (aka the Wiz-RD), beatboxing. Vinyl is at 4 Tanners Hill, London SE8 4PJ, phone number 07930 421113. There’ll be a bar, plus tea and coffee and some special pre-Valentine’s Day snacks!

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,’ is available for download or on CD via Bandcamp — also see here). 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 Feb. 4, Send Us A Photo for the “Countdown to Close Guantánamo,” Telling Obama He Now Has Just 350 Days to Close It

I wrote the following article for the “Close Guantánamo” website, which I established in January 2012 with 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.

Two weeks ago, as the co-founder of “Close Guantánamo,” I launched a new initiative, the Countdown to Close Guantánamo, with music legend Roger Waters, on Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman. See the video of that show here.

We encouraged people to take photos of themselves with posters counting down to the end of the Obama presidency, urging President Obama to fulfill the promise he made to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay, as he promised on his second day in office in January 2009, and to send them to us — with personalized messages, if they wish. Supporters can also let us know where they are, to demonstrate the breadth of support across the US, and around the world.

Following the launch, we set up two dedicated pages for photos of supporters — Celebrity Photos and Public Photos — and also posted photos on social media, on our Facebook and Twitter pages.

Support initially came from Roger, from Brian Eno, from British MPs including John McDonnell, the Shadow Chancellor, and from five former Guantánamo prisoners, including Shaker Aamer, the last British resident held in the prison, who was released in October.

I had co-founded another campaign, We Stand With Shaker, in November 2014, to call for Shaker’s release. That campaign had focused on getting celebrities and MPs to be photographed standing with a giant inflatable figure of Shaker Aamer, but it had also involved concerned members of the public, from around the world, sending in photos of themselves with signs in support of Shaker — later replicated in the Fast For Shaker initiative just before his release — and these were the inspiration for the Countdown to Close Guantánamo.

Since the launch two weeks ago, almost a hundred people have joined the Countdown to Close Guantánamo — many, we’re glad to note, from across the US. These supporters took photos of themselves with our first poster, which reads, “President Obama, you have just 1 year left to close Guantánamo.”

The next stage of the Countdown is this Thursday, February 4, and our new poster reads, “President Obama, you have just 350 days left to close Guantánamo.”

Please join us — and the musician David Knopfler, who sent in the photo above. A founding member of Dire Straits, David is a longtime supporter of the campaign to close Guantánamo, and also supported the We Stand With Shaker campaign.

Print off the poster , take a photo of yourself with it, and send it to us — and then, please, ask your family and friends to join you.

The next poster — 300 days — will be on March 25, then 250 days on May 14, and so on.

Why Guantánamo must be closed

91 men remain at Guantánamo — and, as we are pointing out, President Obama has just 350 days left to fulfill the promise he made, on January 22, 2009, to close the prison within a year.

It is hugely important for the US’s claim to respect justice and the rule of law that Guantánamo is closed once and for all, and we believe that President Obama must continue to push for its closure without any delays.

Of the 91 men still held, 34 have been approved for release, and should be sent home, or found new homes, as swiftly as possible. Just ten are facing, or have faced trials, but it is the fate of the 47 others that is most pressing. These men are all  eligible for Periodic Review Boards, a process set up in 2013 that, to date, has approved for release 17 men (out of 20 reviewed) who were previously described as “too dangerous to release” by the high-level, inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force that President Obama established shortly after taking office.

That success rate — 85% — demonstrates how ill-advised was the description of prisoners as “too dangerous to release,” as should have been apparent when the task force acknowledged that it had insufficient evidence to put these men on trial. What that meant, of course, was that the so-called “evidence” was no such thing, as was made clear by the other co-founder of “Close Guantánamo,” the attorney Tom Wilner, in a recent article about Guantánamo in Rolling Stone:

“If you look at the evidence against these people, it’s absolutely bullshit,” says Tom Wilner … “In most cases, there is no evidence that a detainee committed a crime or trained for terrorist activities other than the word of another detainee who may, himself, have been tortured, or who told his interrogators what they wanted to hear.” Many of these informants have recanted, he says. “None of this would hold up in court. At best, it raises suspicions. And you cannot, in a democratic society, hold people based on suspicion.”

Around the same time we launched the Countdown to Close Guantánamo, defense secretary Ash Carter appeared on CNN with Fareed Zakaria, where he said, “I’ve said from the day I was nominated to be secretary of defense [that] I think, on balance, it would be a good thing to close Gitmo.” He added, however, “There are people in Gitmo who are so dangerous that we cannot transfer them to the custody of another government, no matter how much we trust that government.” Carter also said, “The reality is, this portion of the Gitmo population has to be incarcerated somewhere,” adding later that “it would have to be in the United States.”

Here at “Close Guantánamo,” we accept that Guantánamo can only be closed by bringing some men to the US mainland, overcoming a ban by Congress against bringing any Guantánamo prisoner to the US mainland for any reason. While we wait to see if this might happen through Congressional cooperation or though an executive order, we are concerned by Carter’s words about the dangerousness of an unspecified number of individuals. We believe that the US can continue to hold men under the laws of war, but we also believe they will be able to challenge their detention through the courts, and that the number moved to the U.S. should be as small as possible — hence the need for the Periodic Review Boards to be speeded up.

In closing, for now, the last thing we — or anyone concerned with justice — should accept is a claim that some prisoners remain “too dangerous to release,” and that elaborate arguments must be made for continuing to justify their indefinite detention without charge or trial, when no such justification exists.

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,’ is available for download or on CD via Bandcamp — also see here). 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.

Fawzi Al-Odah Speaks: First Interview with Kuwaiti Released from Guantánamo in 2014

Via the Arabic language newspaper Al-Rai, the Kuwait Times last week featured the first interview with former Guantánamo prisoner Fawzi al-Odah since his release from the prison in November 2014, which I’m posting below with some minor changes of my own to the English language translation to make it more comprehensible.

Fawzi hasn’t speak before, because he was in a rehabilitation center in Kuwait for a year after his release, and because no one in Kuwait wanted to do anything that might jeopardize the release of Fayiz al-Kandari, the last Kuwaiti in Guantánamo, who was freed just three weeks ago. I visited the rehabilitation center during a visit to Kuwait in February 2012, to work towards securing the release of Fawzi and Fayiz, and the photos below are from that visit. At the time the facility, located next to Kuwait’s main prison, was empty, but it had briefly been used for the two prisoners previously released, who returned to Kuwait in 2009. The government had staffed it, and had clearly spent money — and was still spending money — that was only for Fawzi and Fayiz, and yet they remained entangled in the absurd bureaucracy of Guantánamo.

I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the story that Fawzi told the Kuwaiti media. In Guantánamo, for example, he always maintained, as I described it in 2007 in my book The Guantánamo Files, that he “took a short vacation and travelled to Afghanistan in August 2001 ‘to teach and to help other people.’ After finding a liaison in the Taliban, which ‘was necessary because that was the government in Afghanistan at that time,’ he was ‘touring the schools and visiting families,’ teaching the Koran and handing out money, until his activities were curtailed after 9/11.” As I explained after his release, “He said he was then advised to leave the country, and given instructions about how to do so, and ended up, with other men, crossing the border into Pakistan, where they were then handed over to the Pakistani authorities.”

Speaking to the Kuwaiti media, he said that he had not visited Afghanistan, but had only undertaken charity work in Pakistan, where he was seized and sold to US forces.

Nevertheless, whether in Afghanistan or Pakistan, no clear case was ever established that he took up arms against US forces, and it was ridiculous that he spent nearly 14 years in Guantánamo, which included him having his habeas corpus petition turned down in August 2009. He was only finally released after successfully negotiating a Periodic Review Board in July 2014, an ongoing process that I have been following closely for the last few years. Incidentally, when Fawzi succeeded in convincing his PRB that he didn’t pose a threat, Fayiz failed to persuade his, and had to wait another year for a second chance, which led, finally, to his recommendation for release in September.

In his interview, Fawzi also spoke about the abuse to which prisoners were subjected the hunger strikes that have punctuated the prison’s history, and the difficulty of not reacting to abusive staff. Asked, “Was there a time when you lost your temper while dealing with a Guantanamo guard?” he replied, “There were many instances. The person who feels injustice will defend himself, and I was beaten hard and punished because of that.”

Not included in the interview, but mentioned in the introduction to it, was a question about what he had requested from his lawyers and his family during visits from his legal team. “I was asking for vegetarian pizza and sodas from my lawyer, while my mother used to send me some sweets,” he said.

The interview is below:

Q: When did you leave Kuwait?

Fawzi al-Odah: I left Kuwait in August 2001, and before that I worked as a teacher at the Dar Al-Quran (Quran house) run by the Awqaf Ministry. Before that I worked at Zakat House for six months, so I had experience in Quranic activities.

Many Afghans were suffering at that time, and my destination, when I left, was the Pakistani border with Afghanistan, where many refugees live in miserable conditions, with a shortage of medicine, food, education, homes and the most simple of living requirements. I did not enter Afghanistan. I went there with a little money to give to the Afghan refugees. Afghans view Arabs as the children of the companions of the Prophet (PBUH), and consider their arrival to teach them the Quran as something great, raising their morale and brightening life for them.

Q: What happened to you after the September 11 attacks?

Fawzi al-Odah: The Americans forced the Pakistani government and other neighboring governments to arrest any Arab citizen in Pakistan, regardless of the reason for their presence, in exchange for $5,000. The US interrogated those arrested, and the Pakistani government had nothing to do with it. This is a black page in the history of the US, and, 14 years later, America was not able to convict me of anything.

Q: Did you leave Kuwait alone on a personal basis, or was it an establishment work [work for an institution or organization]?

Fawzi al-Odah: It was personal, and a fresh start for me, as I wanted to experience charitable activity.

Q: Did you go alone or with a group? Did you enter Afghanistan?

Fawzi al-Odah: I left on my own, and I never entered Afghanistan. I was on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

Q: How were you arrested?

Fawzi al-Odah: I was in a border area called Kouta, and the people there asked me to remain in a house until things calmed down, and it could be arranged for me to return to the Pakistani capital, then Kuwait. But my stay took longer as things worsened, so I went to the Pakistani security people and told them I was a Kuwaiti and was doing charity work, and I wanted to be taken to the Kuwaiti embassy. I was surprised when the Pakistani police took me to a military prison. A month later, the Americans came and interrogated me in the Pakistani prison before taking me to an American base in Kandahar, Afghanistan, where I remained for two months before being sent to Guantánamo.

Q: How did the American authorities treat you when you were arrested?

Fawzi al-Odah: The treatment was very bad, just because I was an Arab in that place at that time. I was treated like an enemy, I was beaten badly and exposed to various types of physical and psychological harm.

Q: What do you mean by psychological harm?

Fawzi al-Odah: Insulting sacred and religious things, and insulting me verbally. Also, I was made to believe that I would be freed several times, but then I got punished for no reason.

Q: Did you meet other Kuwaiti detainees at Guantánamo? [note: there were 12 in total]

Fawzi al-Odah: We were in solitary confinement in the first years, and contact was almost impossible. After 2010, we were moved into group prisons [a block with communal facilities], and at that time it was only Fayiz [al-Kandari] and me who were left among the Kuwaitis, so he was the Kuwaiti I met the most.

Q: How did you spend your time in detention?

Fawzi al-Odah: I read the book of Allah (Holy Quran) to understand its verses, and this is what sustained me there.

Q: What about the hunger strikes you [the prisoners] carried out?

Fawzi al-Odah: The first was at Camp X-Ray at Guantánamo [in the first few months of the prison’s existence in 2002], then in 2005 we carried out a major hunger strike, during which I was force-fed for five months, and I lost almost 50 kg. We repeated the strikes in 2010 and 2013, and it was a painful process, as a pipe is inserted from the nose into the stomach.

Q: You seem to be calm. Was there a time when you lost your temper while dealing with a Guantánamo guard?

Fawzi al-Odah: There were many instances. The person who feels injustice will defend himself, and I was beaten hard and punished because of that.

Q: Was there a particular incident in this regard?

Fawzi al-Odah: I entered a cell and found the Holy Quran on the floor, and the guard did that deliberately, and though I was cuffed, I attempted to pick it up, so the soldier pushed me down and sprayed me with pepper spray. There were many similar incidents, but I do not wish to go into them.

Q: What was the difference between the Bush and Obama administrations?

Fawzi al-Odah: There was no major change, other than having groups in cells [communal facilities].

Q: What do you want to tell your lawyer Abdelrahman Al-Haroun?

Fawzi al-Odah: The lawyer Abdelrahman Al-Haroun is like my father. He was the first person to stand by my father, and dedicated his office to serve the detainees free of charge, and although the state offered him fees, he refused.

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,’ is available for download or on CD via Bandcamp — also see here). 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.

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

It’s been a busy month — firstly, with my visit to the US to campaign for the closure of Guantánamo, focused on the 14th anniversary of the opening of the prison on January 11, and then with the launch of my new campaign, the Countdown to Close Guantánamo, on January 20. That campaign was officially launched on Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman, when I appeared with Roger Waters, a supporter of my work and of the campaign to get Guantánamo closed, who also played a major role in publicizing the We Stand With Shaker campaign that I launched in November 2014, with the activist Joanne MacInnes, to secure the release of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo.

On Wednesday, I spoke to Chris Cook for his Gorilla Radio show in British Columbia. Chris and I last spoke a year ago, and our latest interview is available here as an MP3, beginning at 38:20.

Chris and I spoke about my tour, Roger Waters, the successful campaign to get Shaker released the Countdown to Close Guantánamo and how the prison might finally be closed, and I hope you have time to listen to the show.

This was how Chris described our interview:

As Barack Obama winds down his second and last term the inmates at the prison he promised to close down on day one of his presidency languish at Guantánamo Bay yet. And, as he has since 2011, Andy Worthington again crossed the Atlantic this year to mark still another anniversary of America’s Gitmo gulag. He was joined in New York by legendary musician and long-time justice advocate, Roger Waters in calling for the release of those remaining in the prison and to kick off the US leg of the Close Guantánamo Campaign.

I’d also like to mentioned that the interviewee before me was Janine Nelson, an author and journalist campaigning against pollution in the Great Lakes, a topical subject given the well-publicized water pollution in Flint, Michigan. Joyce has just written an article for CounterPunch, entitled, “Great Lakes Nuclear Waste Dump: The Battle Continues,” and this was how Chris described the interview: “Despite decades of abuse, and now the daily revelations of the criminal mismanagement of Flint, Michigan’s water supply, the Great Lakes and its tributaries are still viewed by industry, government, and sadly the citizenry at large, as a vast toilet, ready and able to handle all our societal effluence. The latest to offer up its downstream product for the Lakes’ biosphere is Ontario Power Generation, who hope to make for eternal inclusion there a nuclear waste dump next to Lake Huron.”

Also on Wednesday I spoke to Inayet Wadee for his show on Cii Broadcasting in South Africa. Over the years we have spoken many times, but the interviews have only recently become available online. My last interview, in September, is here, and our new 20-minute interview is available here as an MP3.

In it, I had the opportunity to talk in detail about who is still held at Guantánamo and the various categories in which they find themselves — the 34 men approved for release, the ten facing, or having faced trials, and the 49 others, awaiting Periodic Review Boards, or the results of their PRBs. This process, which began in 2013, was designed to assess whether they too can be approved for release, having initially been designated as “too dangerous to release” by the high-level, inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force that President Obama established shortly after taking office in 2009, which, shamefully, also acknowledged that there was insufficient evidence to put them on trial; in other words, that it was not evidence at all. For more on this, please see my definitive article about the Periodic Review Boards on the Close Guantánamo website.

I hope you have time to listen to my South African radio interview as well as my interview with Chris Cook, and that, if you like the interviews, you will share them.

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,’ is available for download or on CD via Bandcamp — also see here). 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.

Appeals Court Rules That Tories’ Hated, Useless Bedroom Tax Involves “Unlawful Discrimination”; But Will It Ever Be Scrapped?

[image error]It’s been a while since I found the time to write about the depressing realities of life in the UK under the particularly cruel and inept government of David Cameron and George Osborne, as I’ve been so busy lately with my work trying to get the prison at Guantánamo Bay closed. However, not a day goes by that I’m not enraged by their persistent efforts to destroy the state provision of almost all services in the UK, to punish the poor for being poor, and to enrich the rich for being rich.

So I’m pleased to note that there was a small victory yesterday, regarding the bedroom tax, when the appeals court ruled that it was discriminatory in two particular cases. The bedroom tax — technically, the “under-occupancy penalty” — is an abomination, and when I last wrote about it, I described it as a policy “whereby a cabinet of millionaires, with more rooms than they can count, passed legislation forcing people on benefits living in social housing who are deemed to have a ‘spare room’ to downsize, even though there are few smaller properties to move to, and many people, treated as worthless ‘units’ by the government and kicked out of their homes, have had to be rehoused in the private sector, thereby increasing the overall housing benefit bill.”

Of course, the only people who really have “spare rooms” are those like the Tories who live in mansions. Most of those subjected to the bedroom tax may have a room that, technically, is not a bedroom or a living room, but I find it unthinkable that a decent human being would begrudge another the luxury of a spare room.

That said, many of those suffering from the bedroom tax are not using their extra room as a spare room — it  is, instead, a necessary room because they have disabilities, and the so-called “spare room” is needed for equipment or for carers, or because they are single parents — most often, single fathers — and it is the only way they can have their child or children to stay, or even because the person with the spare room is “a victim of extreme domestic violence,” living in a house “fitted with a secure panic room to protect her from a violent ex-partner.”

Those are the Guardian‘s descriptions of the situation faced by a single mum, in whose case, the appeals court ruled, the government’s bedroom tax policy “amounted to unlawful discrimination.” The other case was “brought by Paul and Sue Rutherford, grandparents of Warren, who is seriously disabled child and who needs overnight care in a specially adapted room.” See Paul Rutherford’s response here on the Victoria Derbyshire Show on BBC2.

“In both cases,” as the Guardian described it, “the claimants faced a cut in housing benefit because they were deemed to be ‘under-occupying’ the additional rooms which were classified as spare.”

The Guardian also noted that campaigners “welcomed the ruling and called on the government to change the rules to protect women who need special sanctuary schemes, and to give disabled children the same rights as disabled adults” — developments that are of course hugely important.

For anti-bedroom tax campaigners in general, however, it remains imperative for the bedroom tax be scrapped altogether. This is also the position taken by the Labour Party (a position it held even before Jeremy Corbyn became the party’s leader), and it is also taken by some Tory MPs, who either fear an electoral backlash, or have recognised that it is yet another policy that has not been thought through — the kind at which Cameron and his cabinet excel.

As the Guardian also explained, “A DWP evaluation of the policy published last month found that it it was not meeting its key aim of freeing up larger council properties Just one in nine affected tenants were able to avoid the tax by moving to a smaller property.” That evaluation, by the Cambridge Centre for Housing and Planning Research and Ipsos Mori, also found that “[t]hree-quarters of people affected by the bedroom tax [said] they have had to cut back on food,” while “46% said they had cut back on heating, 33% on travel and 42% on leisure.”

Responding to the news of the appeals court verdict, which, disgracefully, the government has pledged to take to the Supreme Court (prompting anger from Paul Rutherford), the following message appeared on the JeremyCorbyn4PM Facebook page:

The hated bedroom tax has seen families forced from their homes, panic rooms for domestic violence victims classified as ‘spare rooms’ and two third of those hit by it suffer from disabilities. It has saved no money, freed up almost no space and dragged thousands of families through court. It’s now the Tories’ day in court, as just a couple of months after parts of the welfare cap were ruled unlawful, they have lost a key legal battle on the bedroom tax as well. How much more of the Tories’ welfare policy is illegal as well as immoral?

As long ago as August 2013, the Independent demonstrated how idiotic the bedroom tax was. In an article entitled, “‘Big lie’ behind the bedroom tax: Families trapped with nowhere to move face penalty for having spare room,” Emily Dugan explained how “96% of benefit claimants who will be penalised cannot be rehoused.”

Her article stated:

[M]ore than 19 out of 20 families hit by the bedroom tax are trapped in their larger homes because there is nowhere smaller within the local social housing stock to take them. This is shown by figures provided by councils in response to Freedom of Information requests by the Labour Party.

For the 38 councils that provided full data, 99,079 families are expected to be affected by the bedroom tax, but only 3,803 one and two-bedroom social housing properties are available — just 3.8 per cent of the homes required to rehouse the families who are hit.

At the time, Liam Byrne, the shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, captured the full unjust stupidity of the bedroom tax. “The big lie behind this Government’s spiteful bedroom tax is now plain for all to see,” he said. “Ministers like to claim it’s not a tax, but the truth is more than 96 per cent of those hit have nowhere to move to. This hated tax is trapping thousands of families, forcing vulnerable people to food banks and loan sharks, and there is now a serious danger it could end up costing Britain more than it saves as tenants are forced to go homeless or move into the expensive private rented sector. David Cameron’s bedroom tax is the worst possible combination of cruelty and incompetence. He should drop it now.”

Two and a half years later, the wretched bedroom tax is still in place, and Liam Byrne’s words are now echoed by the new shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, Owen Smith, who said yesterday, “This victory in the court of appeal is a massive blow to the Tories’ bedroom tax. Labour has long argued that the bedroom tax is deeply unfair and discriminatory, which is why we have campaigned so hard against it. Surely the time has now come for the Tories to discover a conscience, listen to the courts as well as the public, and scrap the hated bedroom tax.”

They might also want to listen to David Cameron’s former speech writer Clare Foges, who, in June, argued that the Tories should “move on from the bedroom tax.” She wrote, “It is not working as had been hoped,” and called on the party to “[h]ave a principled mea culpa moment and move on.”

Last week, I was shocked to hear about the death of Frances McCormack, who was just a year older than me. She “was found hanged in same house her son took his life,” and “had been badgered over the removal of the spare room subsidy,” as the Daily Mail described it. Shockingly, she is by no means the only person to have committed suicide since the bedroom tax was introduced, and this alone should dictate that the disgraceful policy is scrapped.

However, if you want to know more about the many ways in which vulnerable people are being pushed to breaking point by our callous leaders, I recommend the website My Spare Room, described by one its creators, Eileen Alexander, as a site where “people describe in their own words their experience of the bedroom tax accompanied by a photo they’ve taken of the room in question.” She added, “These accounts show how people are driven to spend money they don’t have to hold on to their homes – often the only piece of security they feel they have. People make financial sacrifices that strip them of their dignity, their social life and their health.”

She added:

As Rob from South Yorkshire describes: “It’s very hard paying the £44 a month. I’m not working, I’m on the sick. And I have to find the money somehow. Paying the bedroom tax means I miss out on social activities, it affects my mental health, I have to buy cheap food, I can’t afford new clothes. But I pay it. I resent paying the bedroom tax, but I feel like I have to pay it because I didn’t want to lose my home.”

And finally, for now, if you are concerned about the Tories’ assault on social housing, not just via the bedroom tax, then please come and protest their disgraceful new Housing Bill, at the March Against The Housing Bill this Saturday, which begins at the Imperial War Museum at noon, reaching David Cameron’s taxpayer-funded residence at 10 Downing Street at 2pm. More details are on the Facebook page here, and for some background here’s a great letter in the Oxford Mail, and this Guardian article from January 12, “Tory bill could cost UK nearly 200,000 council houses, warns Labour.”

The bill passed the House of Commons two weeks ago (see this verdict by a housing expert), but also see the Morning Star on the House of Lords’ second reading of the bill just two days ago. It has yet to go to the committee stage, but as we should know by now, the Cameron government also has contempt for the Lords, so let’s make Saturday’s march even more impressive than the March for Homes that took place exactly a year ago. See my photos of that march here.

Please also note that the People’s Assembly Against Austerity is holding a national demonstration in London on Saturday April 16, the March for Health, Homes, Jobs, Education, so let’s make it as big as possible, like the huge anti-austerity march last June.

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,’ is available for download or on CD via Bandcamp — also see here). 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 Via Periodic Review Boards As “Highly Compliant” Afghan and Another Yemeni Also Seek Release

I wrote the following article for the “Close Guantánamo” website, which I established in January 2012 with 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. Please also get involved in the new Countdown to Close Guantánamo.

Two weeks into the Guantánamo prison’s 15th year of operations, the last of a wave of recent releases has taken place — with 16 men freed between January 6 and January 20 — but progress towards the prison’s closure continues.

Of particular significance on this front are the ongoing Periodic Review Boards. Of the 91 men still held, 34 have been approved for release. 24 of those men were approved for release six unforgivably long years ago, by the high-level, inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force that President Obama established shortly after first taking office in January 2009, but ten others have been approved for release in the last two years, by Periodic Review Boards, set up to review the cases of most of the other men still held at Guantánamo. Just ten of these men are facing– or have faced — trials, leaving 47 others awaiting PRBs, or the result of PRBs, or, in a few cases, repeat reviews. Just ten of the men still held are facing, or have faced trials.

Initially, the PRBs were meant to be for 48 men recommended for ongoing detention by the task force in January 2010 on the basis that they were “too dangerous to release,” even though the task force’s members acknowledged that insufficient evidence existed to put them on trial. President Obama at least tacitly acknowledged that this was a disgraceful basis on which to deprive people of their liberty, by promising periodic reviews of the men’s cases when he authorized their ongoing detention in March 2011, although he failed to spell out why — because, of course, not having enough evidence to try someone means that the information you hold is not evidence at all, but rumors, hunches and hearsay, from frontline interrogations made shortly after capture, when the use of violence was widespread, and from other statements made by the prisoners later, about themselves and about each other, in interrogations at Guantánamo — or, in some cases, “black sites” — where the use of torture, abuse and bribery (the promise of better living conditions) was widespread.

Nevertheless, it took until 2013 for the PRB process to begin, and when it did those eligible for review also included 25 men who had initially been recommended for prosecution by the task force — until the basis for prosecution fell apart under scrutiny by appeals court judges, who concluded that the war crimes trials taking place at Guantánamo (the military commissions) consisted mainly of war crimes that were not internationally recognized, and had, in fact, been invented by Congress. The media coined a powerful description of the men eligible for PRBs — Guantánamo’s “forever prisoners,” caught in a disturbing and completely unacceptable legal limbo.

Since the reviews began, in November 2013, 20 men have had decisions announced after their PRBs, and, in 17 cases, have been recommended for release, a success rate of 85%, which rather discredits the whole notion that they were “too dangerous to release.”

Two problems remain, however.

The first involves the lamentably slow speed of the PRBs. With 41 men awaiting reviews, they will not be complete until long after President Obama leaves office, unless he puts pressure on the Pentagon, and on the other departments and agencies involved in the process — the Departments of State, Justice and Homeland Security, as well as the office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — to do so. There is no excuse for inaction, as, in the president’s executive order promising periodic reviews in March 2011 (when he authorized the ongoing detention without charge or trial of 48 men), he promised that the reviews would be completed within a year.

The second problem is that, of the 17 men approved for release, just seven have been freed, leaving critics to conclude that, in many ways, it is, yet again, an inadequate way of delivering anything resembling justice to men held, for the most part, for 14 years without charge or trial. The first man recommended for release by a PRB. for example, Mahmud al-Mujahid, a Yemeni, was approved for release on January 7, 2014, and yet is still held. See the full list of PRB decisions, and those eligible, here.

*****

The two most recent decisions to release prisoners were taken on January 12. The first decision to be announced related to Zahir Hamdoun (aka Zahir Bin Hamdoun), a Yemeni, who had his case reviewed last month, when, as I noted at the time, he had recently told his lawyers at the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, “I have become a body without a soul. I breathe, eat and drink, but I don’t belong to the world of living creatures. I rather belong to another world, a world that is buried in a grave called Guantánamo.”

Seized in a house raid in Karachi, Pakistan in February 2002, Hamdoun was just 22 years old at the time, but is now 36, and there has never been any reliable evidence against him indicating that he bore ill will towards the US. After the decision was announced, CCR issued a press release, pointing out that:

In clearing Mr. Hamdoun, the board, an inter-agency body including senior military and intelligence officials, noted Mr. Hamdoun’s “sustained record of compliance” at Guantanamo, his “credible desire to start a new life,” and “the ability and willingness of his family and others to support him” after transfer.

Hamdoun’s main lawyer, CCR Senior Attorney Pardiss Kebriaei, said after the news was announced, “The PRB’s decision means that senior government officials from a cross-section of the national security community have agreed that Mr. Hamdoun can be safely transferred out of Guantánamo. In contrast, those who continue to stoke fear about the releases of detainees approved for transfer are without fail people who have never sat across from a detainee nor reviewed all of the government’s information on him.”

She added, “Mr. Hamdoun has made clear that he is willing to be transferred anywhere, and that he has strong family and institutional support for his reintegration. The administration can and must act to make these the final weeks of Mr. Hamdoun’s painful 14-year imprisonment.”

Also approved for release was Mustafa al-Shamiri, 37, another Yemeni, whose story attracted media attention last month when it was admitted by the Pentagon that he was a case of mistaken identity. As I explained at the time, in his “Detainee Profile,” the Pentagon conceded that he was “previously assessed” as “an al-Qa’ida facilitator or courier, as well as a trainer, but we now judge that these activities were carried out by other known extremists with names or aliases similar to [his].” The profile added, “Further analysis of the reporting that supported past judgments that [al-Shamiri] was an al-Qa’ida facilitator, courier, or trainer has revealed inconsistent biographical, descriptive, or locational data that now leads us to assess that [he] did not hold any of these roles.”

In announcing its decision, the review board “noted that the most derogatory prior assessments regarding the detainee’s activities before detention have been discredited and the current information shows that the detainee has low level military capability. Further, the detainee has been largely compliant with the guard force during detention and has engaged constructively with other detainees and the guards to resolve issues.” It was also noted that, “During the hearing, the detainee was open with the Board regarding his past activities, identified his past decisions as mistakes, and the Board observed an absence of any evidence of an extremist mindset. The Board also noted the detainee’ s family’s commitment to support the detainee upon transfer and the absence of evidence that the detainee’s family members have terrorist connections.”

In the Miami Herald, Carol Rosenberg, writing of the Pentagon’s acknowledgment that al-Shamiri was not who they had tried to make him out to be, wrote, “The episode served as a cautionary tale about the military’s system of profiling Guantánamo’s captives, and the unreliability of 2008-era US military assessments of the captives that were leaked in later years by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks.”

*****

As these two men await release, two other men took their turn presenting their cases by video link to the review board members, who meet at a secure facility on the US mainland.

First up, on January 12, was Haji Hamidullah (ISN 1119), also known to the US authorities as Ahmid Al Razak, who is probably 52 or 53 years old. As I explained when discussing the possibility of the US releasing all, or most of the remaining Afghans in 2012, he is “the son of a Mullah and someone with political influence, who explained that he had been imprisoned by the Taliban, and had then fled to Pakistan, only returning after the US-led invasion, when, he said, an opponent fed false information about him to US forces, alleging that he controlled a cache of weapons and led a group of 30 men who had conspired to attack coalition forces near Kabul.”

His “Detainee Profile,” prepared for the board by the Pentagon, claimed that he “was an Afghan militant who probably ordered and conducted attacks against Afghan and Coalition personnel during Operation Enduring Freedom.” For his part Hamidullah only acknowledged that he fought with Hezb-e-lslami Gulbuddin (HIG) during the Soviet War in Afghanistan, disputing the US’s claims that he “retained ties to the group thereafter, and probably collaborated with the Taliban and possibly with al-Qa’ida.” The Pentagon conceded that “the nature of the relationship remains unclear,” adding that “a body of reporting — mostly from Afghan National Security Directorate sources — refutes” Hamidullah’s own claims.

In Guantánamo, however, it was noted that he “has been highly compliant with the guard staff,” and “has committed far fewer infractions than most other detainees.” It was also noted that he “has acted as a leader of the other Afghan detainees and probably has sought to moderate their behavior, demonstrating that he is willing to cooperate with US officials when it serves his or his fellow detainees’ interests.” It was also noted that he “met regularly with interrogators before late 2013, probably because he believed that cooperating would increase his chances of being repatriated and because be enjoyed interacting with interrogators. However, he has provided little information of value.”

It was also noted that his “behavior and statements” at Guantánamo led the board “to assess that he does not support al-Qa’ida’s jihadist ideology.” The board added, “He has not expressed any intent to engage in extremist activity, and probably does not view the US as his existential enemy. However, his family’s history of anti-Coalition and criminal activities, coupled with the widespread extremist activity in his home village in Afghanistan, would put him at risk of being drawn back into the fight if he were repatriated.”

Below, in contrast, is the assessment made of him by his personal representatives, military personnel appointed to meet with and represent those undergoing the PRB process, followed by a statement by his personal counsel, the attorney Stephen D. Brown (where he is described as “Haji Hamdullah”). I found myself moved by the latter’s description of an “elderly man” with diabetes, plus “knee and back problems as well as memory loss,” and who, in addition, “has no technical skills, such as how to use a computer or cell phone,” and “is still learning to read and write.” Perhaps it’s because he’s around the same age as me, or, more probably, it’s because, again and again, when the US seized more or less insignificant Afghans in Afghanistan, and dragged them halfway around the world, their imprisonment in horrendous isolation has always seemed, palpably, to do absolutely nothing to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people.

Periodic Review Board File Review, 12 Jan 2016

Haji Hamidullah, ISN 1119

Personal Representative Statement

Good morning, Ladies and Gentlemen of the Board. We are the Personal Representatives for ISN 1119. Thank you for the opportunity to present Mr. Hamidullah’s case.

From our initial encounter and all subsequent meetings, Mr. Hamidullah has been fully cooperative and supportive in the preparation for his Periodic Review Board. From our first meeting, Mr. Hamidullah has repeatedly stated that “he does not support extremist groups” such as the Taliban, al-Qa’ida, Daesh, or ISIL. He believes Islam is a peaceful religion and desires no part with those who feel otherwise. In his approximately twelve years at GTMO, he has been very compliant with very few disciplinary infractions. Mr. Hamidullah is reclusive in the detention center as he does not believe in splashing, striking, or hunger strikes. He believes these acts to be of the devil and not condoned or supported by Islam.

Mr. Hamidullah is rather uncertain about his future. He knows in his heart that he is not a continuing or significant threat to the United States of America but does not know what country would welcome him. He was a thriving businessman prior to his detention making a good living flipping houses and cars (buying cheap, making repairs, and selling for a profit). He has spent most of his time in detention learning to read and in the process he has memorized the entire Koran. In addition to the Koran, he reads an assortment of religious books. He longs for his release and to be reunited with his family ; however, he would gladly stay at GTMO if someone would assure him that his family would be safe and provided for.

Mr. Hamidullah is a nephew, brother, father, grandfather, and was an up and coming member of his tribe. He has always shared the same beliefs that conflicts should be resolved using peaceful means, not violence. He no longer has any ties to his tribe although they have volunteered their support by selling land to assist in his reintegration back to society to live out his life in peace. His family stands ready and willing to provide any necessary support.

PC’s Statement on Behalf of Haji Hamdullah ISN 1119

My name is Stephen D. Brown and I am a Retired Partner at Dechert LLP, where I served as a partner from 1991 to December 31, 2014. I am private counsel to Haji Hamdullah. Thank you for allowing me to speak with you this morning on behalf of Mr. Hamdullah. Mr. Hamdullah is an Afghan in his early 50’s who has neither the ability, nor the motive, nor the opportunity, to present a continuing and significant threat to the safety of the United States if he were released from Guantánamo.

He has been an exemplary prisoner in the 13 years he has been at Guantánamo. Mr. Hamdullah is regarded by the guards as a model detainee. He has had zero incidents of self-harming gestures, statements or attempts. He has had a mere 35 disciplinary infractions since November 21, 2003. In other words, he has had a disciplinary infraction only once out of every hundred and twenty-five (124.8) days – or every four months. He has never expressed anti-US sentiment or ill-will, and is one of the most compliant residents at Guantánamo Bay. He is a peaceful man who moderates the behavior of other detainees.

Mr. Hamdullah is in his early 50’s. He does not know his exact age, because records were not kept in his village when he was born. His estimated age of an Afghan male in his early 50’s equates to a US man in his 70’s. As the World Health Organization statistics show, an average life expectancy for a man born in Afghanistan is 60 years old (ranking 167th in the world) whereas the US average male expectancy is 76 years old. Further, be suffers many of the ills one would expect of a 70 year-old man here in the United States. He was diagnosed with diabetes two years ago, and takes daily medication to control that diabetes, plus he has knee and back problems as well as memory loss. He has no technical skills, such as how to use a computer or cell phone, and he is still learning to read and write.

Mr. Hamdullah has never been a member of Al Qaeda or the Taliban. In fact, he was imprisoned by the Taliban in the late 1990s, but was able to escape after approximately a year and a half. He is a devout Muslim who uses his religion properly as a source of faith and strength, not as a tool to justify violence.

Mr. Hamdullah has a large and supportive family with whom he has remained in contact during his period at Guantánamo Bay. His family will support him wherever he goes.

He has never alleged to be part of any anti-US efforts preceding 9/11, and has had no extremist or radical, religious contacts.

I understand that this is not the place to address the bases for his detention, but I do note that to the extent any of these allegations suggest there was an adversary of Mr. Hamdullah, his adversary was the Northern Alliance, not the United States. There is no suggestion that he had any power or influence outside of Afghanistan. Thus any concern about any ”threat” can be extinguished by sending him to a Muslim country (other than Afghanistan or Pakistan) where he would not have the resources or the ability to pose a threat to anyone, including the Northern Alliance.

In sum, he is an elderly man without resources or any motivation to present any threat, let alone a continuing, significant threat, to the security of the United States. I request that Mr. Hamdullah be sent to a Muslim country, other than Pakistan or Afghanistan, so that he can spend the remainder of his years with his two wives in peace, and without concern for his own safety.

*****

On January 19, a review took place for Majid Mahmud Abdu Ahmed (ISN 41), a 35-year old Yemeni, who was just 21 when he was seized crossing from Afghanistan to Pakistan in December 2001. The group of around 30 men he was captured with were identified, by their captors, as the “Dirty Thirty,” and implausible claims were made that this group of generally very young Yemenis were somehow bodyguards for Osama bin Laden, something that I have always found implausible, as bin Laden, from what I have been able to ascertain, relied more for protection on older men with far greater experience, who included Egyptians.

In a profile of Majid Ahmed (aka Majid Ahmad) in September 2010, I wrote that:

[H]e apparently admitted that he “first learned of jihad in Afghanistan” at an institute in the Yemen, “and then wanted to fight along with the Taliban.” He added that he “prayed and fell in love with the idea of dying for the sake of God,” and after being given a fatwa by a sheikh, who told him during a telephone call that “it was a good thing for Muslims to go fight jihad,” traveled to Afghanistan and “fought for the Taliban the two years he was in Kabul.” Nevertheless, as with the majority of the so-called “Dirty Thirty,” there appears to be no basis for the claim that he “was an Osama bin Laden bodyguard and was usually by his side.” He has repeatedly stated that he never met bin Laden and has also stated that “the attack on the World Trade Center was wrong because Islam did not permit people to kill innocent people.”

In its “Detainee Profile” for the PRB, the Pentagon repeated the “Dirty Thirty” claims, adding that he “has been relatively compliant during his time at Guantánamo, although he has been largely uncooperative with interrogators. In early interviews, [he] would either disengage or provide fabricated stories. including claiming that he had traveled to Afghanistan for peaceful purposes. Later, he recanted and told interviewers that he had trained and fought with the Taliban but still provided information of minimal value probably to gain incentive items.”

The profile also contained an assessment that he “still harhors anti-US sentiment and holds conservative Islamic views that may make transfer and reintegration to many countries difficult,” and also noted that he “maintains contact with multiple former Guantánamo detainees, and has received letters from one former detainee known to have re-engaged in terrorist activities but with whom we assess [he] does not have a close relationship.” I have only recently become aware of receiving letters from former prisoners being considered a potential sign of dangerousness, but it strikes me as unfair to tar a passive recipient of a letter, whether requested or not, as somehow responsible for receiving it and for sharing the sender’s views.

The Pentagon also noted Ahmed’s “communication with family members, none of whom appear to have any involvement in terrorist activity,” and made an assessment that he would probably prefer to return to Yemen, to be with his family — although that will not happen, of course, if the board approves him for release, as the entire US establishment agrees that no Yemeni is to be repatriated from Guantánamo, and third countries must be found that will offer them new homes.

Below are the statements made for his PRB by his personal representatives and his private counsel, David Remes, who described him as a compliant prisoner, popular with the prisoners, who has availed himself of the educational opportunities made available to him in Guantánamo.

Periodic Review Board Initial Hearing, 19 Jan 2016

Majid Mahmud Abdu Ahmed, ISN 041

Personal Representative Opening Statement

Good morning ladies and gentlemen of the Board. We are the Personal Representatives of Majid Mahmud Abdu Ahmed. We will be assisting Mr. Ahmed this morning with his case, aided by Mr. David Remes.

Mr. Ahmed has been overjoyed and eager to participate in the Periodic Review Process. He has maintained a record of perfect attendance for meetings with his Personal Representatives and Counsel.

We were surprised by Mr. Ahmed’s youthful appearance when we first met with him, despite spending the last 14 years in detention at Guantanamo Bay. This ascribes to the very young age at which he was recruited to go to Afghanistan.

We were favorably impressed by Mr. Ahmed’s candor. He has proven forthright and honest in his interactions with us. He discussed his path to Afghanistan, from his home in Yemen through his eventual capture, with us in a clear manner.

Mr. Ahmed has proven to be engaging and extremely polite throughout his interactions and discussions with us. He is quick with a smile and exudes a warm personality.

He has taken advantage of all opportunities for education and personal enrichment while detained at Guantanamo. These opportunities include courses in Mathematics, Languages, Health and Art. We have provided examples of his coursework in his case submission.

Later, Mr. Ahmed will discuss both his past life and his desire for a better life for himself in the future.

We are confident that Mr. Ahmed’s desire to pursue a better way of life if transferred from Guantanamo is genuine. He is open to transfer to any country, but would prefer an Arabic speaking country if possible.

Thank you for your time and attention. We are pleased to answer any questions you have throughout this proceeding.

Periodic Review Board Initial Hearing, 19 Jan 2016

Majid Mahmud Abdu Ahmed, ISN 041

Private Counsel Opening Statement

Good morning. I am David Remes, private counsel for Majid Mahmud Abdu Ahmed (ISN 041 ). I have represented Majid in his habeas case since July 2004 and have met with him dozens of times. In May 2005, I met Majid’s family, and I have met Majid’s father, a retired oil refinery worker, several times since.

Majid is outgoing and liked by other detainees. He is also compliant. Majid was held in the camp for the most compliant detainees, where detainees enjoyed communal living and personal freedom long before other detainees were extended these privileges. Majid has taken advantage of educational opportunities here, receiving high marks, and he is serious about continuing his education after he is released.

Majid prefers to be resettled in an Arabic-speaking, Muslim country, but he is willing to go to any country that the United States deems appropriate. He is willing to participate in rehabilitation or reintegration programs and to accept such security conditions as the United States deems appropriate. As mentioned, his goal is getting his life back on track.

We ask the Board to recommend that Majid be transferred to a third country, without special conditions.

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,’ is available for download or on CD via Bandcamp — also see here). 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.

Seriously Ill Egyptian and a Yemeni Freed from Guantánamo in Bosnia and Montenegro; Another Refuses to Leave

On Wednesday, with exactly one year left until the end of Barack Obama’s presidency, two more prisoners were released from Guantánamo, leaving 91 men still held. A third man was supposed to have been freed, but he refused at the last minute.

One of the two men freed, Tariq al-Sawah (ISN 535), also identified as Tariq El-Sawah, who is 58 years old, had gained some notoriety in the past — first as a disillusioned former training camp instructor who had become a welcome informant in Guantánamo, and then as he became seriously overweight, endangering his health. At one point, he weighted 420 pounds, double his weight on arrival at the prison in 2002.

In 2013, as his lawyers sought his release because of his ill-health and his cooperation, I explained how he “had high-level support for his release,” having “received letters of recommendation from three former Guantánamo commanders,” as the Associated Press described it. I stated, “One, Rear Adm. David Thomas, recommended his release in his classified military file (his Detainee Assessment Brief) in September 2008, which was released by WikiLeaks in 2011 … In that file, al-Sawah’s health issues were also prominent. It was noted that he was ‘closely watched for significant and chronic problems’ that included high cholesterol, diabetes and liver disease.”

As I also noted:

There was also a letter from an unnamed official who spent several hours a week with al-Sawah over the course of 18 months, who noted that he had been “friendly and cooperative” with US personnel, and stated, “Frankly, I felt Tarek [Tariq] was a good man on the other side who, in a different world, different time, different place, could easily be accepted as a friend or neighbor.”

Just as important is the fact that, back in March 2010, in an important article for the Washington Post, Peter Finn reported that al-Sawah and another prisoner, Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a Mauritanian whose heart-rending memoir, written in Guantánamo, has just been published as a book, even though he is still held in the prison, “had become two of the most significant informants” in Guantánamo. As a result, they were “housed in a little fenced-in compound at the military prison, where they live[d] a life of relative privilege — gardening, writing and painting — separated from other detainees in a cocoon designed to reward and protect.”

What was particularly shocking about this was the refusal of the authorities to reward the men for their extensive cooperation by releasing them. As Finn noted, “Some military officials believe the United States should let them go — and put them into a witness protection program, in conjunction with allies, in a bid to cultivate more informants,” an eminently sensible suggestion that was endorsed by W. Patrick Lang, a retired senior military intelligence officer. “I don’t see why they aren’t given asylum,” Lang said. “If we don’t do this right, it will be that much harder to get other people to cooperate with us. And if I was still in the business, I’d want it known we protected them. It’s good advertising.”

Absurdly, though, al-Sawah was, for a while, punished for his cooperation by being put forward for a military commission trial under George W. Bush, and President Obama’s high-level, inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force also recommended him for prosecution in January 2010. It was not until 2013 that he was, instead, made eligible for a Periodic Review Board, set up to review the cases of everyone not already approved for release or actively facing trials (just ten men). His review took place a year ago, and he was approved for release last February.

As the Guardian noted on his release, he was a “former Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood member,” who had traveled to Bosnia in the 1990s, where he began his involvement in militant activities. Mohammed Morsi, the deposed Egyptian President and Muslim Brotherhood member who succeeded the dictator Hosni Mubarak, but was then toppled by the military, had asked for al-Sawah’s return in 2012, but the return of military rule made that unsafe, and arrangements were eventually made for him to be returned to Bosnia, where his ex-wife and his daughter live.

The second man freed is Abdul Aziz al-Suadi (ISN 578), aka Abdul Aziz al-Swidi, who is 41 years old, and the first former Guantánamo prisoner to be taken in by the government of Montenegro. He was one of 30 Yemenis approved for release by the task force in 2010, but placed in a category invented by the task force — “conditional detention” — which required a perceived improvement in the security situation in Yemen for them to be freed, although no clue was given about who would make that decision or how it would be taken. In the end, the entire US establishment has agreed that no Yemenis can be repatriated, and so the “conditional detention” tag has outworn its welcome, and al-Swidi is the 13th of the 30 to be freed in the last few months.

As I described it in an article in September 2010, al-Suadi was one of over 20 men seized in a series of house raids in Karachi, on or around February 7, 2002, from safe houses that appear to have been “part of an impromptu system developed after the fall of the Taliban to help hundreds of Arabs — including trained fighters, recent recruits and civilians — to evade capture by Afghan or Pakistani forces,” as I described it in my book The Guantánamo Files. I also explained:

[He] had been an electrician in Yemen, and stated in Guantánamo that he was recruited for jihad by a sheikh, and was also encouraged by another man “to go to Afghanistan to participate in jihad against the Russians.” The US authorities allege[d] that he arrived in Afghanistan towards the end of 2000, attended al-Farouq and another camp, Tarnak Farms, where, according to an unidentified and possibly unreliable source, he “was identified as having received exclusive instruction on chemical explosives,” and was apparently in the Karachi house for a month before his capture, along with other Yemenis waiting to travel home to Yemen.

One of his lawyers, Erin Thomas, explained that he “has, since 2010, been considered to pose a negligible threat to the US,” and, as she put it, he “has always asked his attorneys to pursue any educational opportunities open to him.”

She said he “is fluent in English and enrolled in two college-level courses at Guantánamo, in math and in English composition.” As she described it, “His singular focus has been preparing for a future life outside of Guantánamo.”

Another of his lawyers, David Remes, “called him a ‘fully westernised’ English-speaking man who at Guantánamo studied math by correspondence course at Colorado’s Adams State University,” as the Miami Herald put it. “He consistently got top grades there and was about to take his final exams,” Remes said, declaring that his client was “very happy” days ahead of his departure. “There’s no question that he will adapt to life in his new home,” he added.

The resettlement of these two men takes the total number of men released in January to 16 men, one short of the 17 announced in December. As the Guardian described it, as al-Sawah and al-Suadi left Guantánamo, Mohammed Bawazir (ISN 440), aka Mohammed Bwazir, a 35-year old Yemeni, “abruptly refused to be resettled.”

As I explained in a major article in June 2012, Guantánamo Scandal: The 40 Prisoners Still Held But Cleared for Release At Least Five Years Ago, “In the classified US military files relating to the Guantánamo prisoners, which were released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, Bawazir’s file was a ‘Recommendation for Transfer Out of DoD Control (TRO),’ dated May 30, 2007.” He was again approved for release in 2010, by President Obama’s task force — but as one of the 30 Yemenis placed in “conditional detention.”

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

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

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

As Chandler also told the Guardian, “It’s a country you and I would be very happy to go have a beer in.” He added, after explaining that “he was disappointed that his client had declined the resettlement offer, not knowing what the future held for Bawazir,” as the Guardian described it,  “I told him it was my view after all the work they did to land him a really good spot that he was likely to be there when the Obama administration leaves office next year, and God knows what’s going to happen then.”

Of the 91 men still held, 34 have been approved for release — 24 since the task force made its decisions back in January 2010, and ten via Periodic Review Boards, which have been meeting since November 2013. They have recommended 17 out of 20 prisoners for release — a remarkable 85% success rate for men ill-advisedly described by the task force in 2010 as “too dangerous to release” — but the process is moving with glacial slowness. 44 others are awaiting reviews, or the results of reviews, and without a serious effort to speed up the PRB process it will not be complete by the time President Obama leaves office, even though he promised to complete the reviews within a year when he first approved their establishment in March 2011.

Just ten men, as I noted briefly above, are facing, or have faced trials — to add to the five already prosecuted and freed — a shameful demonstration of the overall lawlessness of Guantánamo, as that total of 15 men represents just 2% of the 779 men — and boys — held throughout the prison’s ignominious 14-year history.

As I am working to demonstrate through my newly-launched Countdown to Close Guantánamo initiative, 2016 must be the year that Guantánamo is closed for good.

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,’ is available for download or on CD via Bandcamp — also see here). 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 144 prisoners released from February 2009 to January 13, 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.

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

From January 8-18, I was in the US for a brief tour to highlight the importance of closing the prison at Guantánamo Bay, coinciding with the 14th anniversary of the opening of the prison, on January 11. I visited Miami, Washington, D.C. and New York City, and videos of my various escapades can be found here, including appearing with my friend and supporter, the music legend Roger Waters, on Democracy Now!

I also took part in a number of radio shows, and am making those available below. I hope you have time to listen to them, and to share them if you find them useful. I’m keeping my description of them quite brief, as I’m snowed under with other Guantánamo-related work right now — in particular the launch of the Countdown to Close Guantánamo, a new initiative, via the Close Guantánamo campaign I set up with the US attorney Tom Wilner in 2012, asking people to print off a poster calling for President Obama to close Guantánamo before he leaves office in a year’s time, to photograph themselves standing with the poster, and to send it to us to put up on the website and to publicize via social media. I hope you will get involved!

On the morning of January 11, just before I took part in the annual protest outside the White House, and a panel discussion at New America, I spoke to Jerome McDonnell on his show “Worldview” on WBEZ 91.5 in Chicago. The show is available on Soundcloud, and is posted below, and this is how Jerome described it:

Today marks the 14th anniversary of the opening of the Guantánamo Bay prison. Throughout his Presidency, Barack Obama has vowed to shut down the prison, but so far, has not achieved his stated goal. There are currently 104 prisoners remaining [now 91]. We’ll talk about efforts to reduce the detainee population, as well as the recent release of several prisoners, with Andy Worthington, author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison and co-founder of the ‘Close Guantánamo’ campaign.

Just before I left the UK, I was interviewed by New York-based activist Cat Watters for her show “Organic News” on Awake Radio. Cat and I have spoken before, and we had a wide-ranging, hour-long discussion about Shaker Aamer and Guantánamo, which began with Cat playing “Song for Shaker Aamer” by my band The Four Fathers, which was used in the campaign video for We Stand With Shaker, the campaign I launched in November 2014 with the activist Joanne MacInnes. You can buy the song here — and our album “Love and War” is also available to download or on CD. The show is below, via YouTube (audio only):

On January 14, while I was in New York City, and about to do a talk at Revolution Books in Harlem, I spoke for the umpteenth time with the Texas-based libertarian Scott Horton. Our 23-minute interview is here, via MP3, and this is how he described the show:

Andy Worthington, author of The Guantánamo Files, discusses his lobbying effort to finally get Guantánamo closed, release the prisoners who are wrongly-held, and try the remaining few for terrorism in proper federal courts on US soil.

That interview took place after ten men had been released in Oman, bringing to total number of men held to 93, and Scott spent most of the show talking about these men, who they were, and why they never posed a threat to the US.

The day after, on January 15, I spoke — also not for the first time — to Michael Slate on KPFK in Los Angeles for his weekly show.

The hour-long show is here, via MP3, and my interview starts at 24:52 and ends at 41:20. Also speaking was Debra Sweet, the National Director of the World Can’t Wait, who, as every January since 2011, organized my visit to the US.

It was great to talk on all these shows, and while I was at the World Can’t Wait offices I was also interviewed for a Spanish language channel, HispanTV, and the video of that is also posted below, via YouTube, for Spanish speakers:

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,’ is available for download or on CD via Bandcamp — also see here). 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.