Andy Worthington's Blog, page 89

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Truth, Lies and Distortions in the Coverage of Shaker Aamer, Soon to be Freed from Guantánamo

In the week since it was announced that Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo, is to be released, to be returned to his family in the UK, there has been a huge sigh of relief from the many, many people who campaigned for his release — supporters of the long-standing Save Shaker Aamer Campaign, which I have been involved with for many years, attending protests and speaking at events, of We Stand With Shaker, the campaign I established with Joanne MacInnes last November, which drew huge support for photos of celebrities and MPs standing with a giant inflatable figure of Shaker, and supporters of the Shaker Aamer Parliamentary Group, established last November by John McDonnell MP, who, at the time, was a persistent supporter of worthy causes and fighter against injustice, and, with Caroline Lucas (our sole Green MP), Jeremy Corbyn and Shaker’s constituency MP, Jane Ellison, the most consistent MP supporting Shaker’s cause.

My article celebrating the news of Shaker’s forthcoming release was liked and shared by over 1,500 people on Facebook. Posted on the Close Guantánamo page, it has reached over 21,000 people; on the We Stand With Shaker page it has reached over 11,000 people. Thank you to everyone who has supported the various campaigns to secure Shaker’s release, including the MPs who traveled to Washington D.C. in May to call for his release, meeting with Senators and Obama administration officials — David Davis and Andrew Mitchell of the Conservatives, and Jeremy Corbyn and Andy Slaughter of the Labour Party.

Now, of course, Jeremy is the leader of the Labour Party, and John McDonnell is the shadow chancellor — a wonderful development for those who care about tackling injustice. Jeremy was elected on an anti-austerity platform, and because of his honesty and decency, and all of the above was apparent in his speech as leader to the Labour Party Conference, when he specifically thanked Shaker’s supporters, and in particular the Save Shaker Aamer Campaign:

We have to be very clear about what we stand for in human rights. A refusal to stand up is the kind of thing that really damages Britain’s standing in the world. I have huge admiration for human rights defenders all over the world. I’ve met hundreds of these very brave people during my lifetime working on international issues. I want to say a special mention to one group who’ve campaigned for the release of British resident Shaker Aamer from Guantánamo Bay. This was a campaign of ordinary people like you and me, standing on cold draughty streets, for many hours over many years. Together we secured this particular piece of justice.

John McDonnell also had a few words to say. Hoping, as the Guardian put it, that Shaker “would be able to settle back into civil society,” but predicting that “the experience would be ‘quite traumatic,'” he told the BBC, “I was not sure we would ever see this day but I am absolutely overjoyed and I’m so pleased for the family and all the campaigners.”

The US media’s response

The campaigns were also recognized in the US media. The Washington Post wrote that the Obama administration “has notified Congress of its intent to send Shaker Aamer … back to Britain, yielding to a lengthy campaign to secure the British resident’s release,” and also noted, with a link to the open letter I wrote to President Obama for Independence Day, which was signed by nearly a hundred celebrities and MPs, including Roger Waters, Sting, Patrick Stewart and London’s Mayor Boris Johnson, “President Obama discussed the decision to move Aamer, whose case has become a cause celebre among rights groups in Britain, with Prime Minister David Cameron in a phone call Thursday.”

It was not all good news, however. The Washington Post casually referred to Shaker as “a suspected al-Qaeda plotter,” without asking one of his lawyers to comment on how that would square with him being approved for release by a high-level, inter-agency US government review process, and Rep. Mac Thornberry, the Republican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said, as the Post put it, that “he had ‘grave concerns’ about releasing inmates who might take up arms again.” In a statement, Thornberry (R-Tex.), said, “Shaker Aamer certainly fits that bill if he is released to the U.K. because I do not believe that the British Government has the ability to hold or try him. Despite the rhetoric of a sophisticated PR campaign, it is clear to me that this is a dangerous individual whose release will put Americans at greater risk.”

Note how the UK is accused of not being able to imprison or put on trial a man approved for release by the US and never charged with a crime, and how Thornberry insults America’s closest ally by suggesting that the British government will not be able to prevent his release “put[ting] Americans at greater risk.” Depressingly, Thornberry was then allowed to air his groundless scaremongering claims on British TV, brought in to provide the “balance” that broadcasters swear by, but which, in so many cases only allows ill-informed right-wingers to have the oxygen of publicity which they should not necessarily be entitled to have.

The New York Times also made reference to campaigners, linking to the open letter to President Obama and the We Stand With Shaker campaign in the following sentence: “Mr. Aamer has denied involvement with Al Qaeda, and his supporters say he was falsely accused of terrorism and is a victim of arbitrary detention who should long since have been reunited with his wife and children.”

Unfortunately, Charlie Savage of the Times followed this up with a lengthy summary of some of the unsubstantiated allegations found in the classified military files released by WikLeaks in 2011, without approaching Shaker’s legal team for comment. Savage wrote, “Some American officials have portrayed him as a charismatic, manipulative and potentially dangerous Islamist leader who had many links to Qaeda figures before his capture in Afghanistan in late 2001, and who encouraged hunger strikes and maybe even suicides at the Guantánamo prison, where he was taken in February 2002.”

It is one thing to repeat descriptions of Shaker’s behaviour in Guantánamo, and how he was perceived, whether we agree with the analysis or not, but it is irresponsible to air allegations about al-Qaeda connections without questioning them, and allegations that Shaker may have had something to do with men committing suicide. These are grave allegations that should not have been aired so lightly.

Unsubstantiated allegations

Elsewhere, outrageous myths about Shaker were, predictably, peddled by Robin Simcox, of the Henry Jackson Society, a right-wing British think-tank that is racist and Islamophobic, and yet, in the interests of “balance,” is regularly allowed to air its objectionable views in the media. I appeared last year on BBC World News with Simcox, and I also recommend readers to watch this interview featuring Clive Stafford Smith and Simcox, when the latter’s presence merely detracted from the time Clive had to discuss what needed to be discussed.

Unfortunately, Simcox was able to sell a disgraceful fable about Shaker to the Daily Beast, which should have known better than to publish something that should only have appealed to fanatical right-wing ideologues. Simcox repeated allegations from the classified military file on Shaker, compiled in 2007, as though what is contained in the files released by WikiLeaks bears any relation to reality. In fact, the files are full of unreliable statements made by prisoners who were subjected to torture or other abuse at Guantánamo, in CIA “black sites” or in other facilities in the “war on terror,” where they were regularly — often relentlessly — shown photo albums, referred to as “the family album,” of other prisoners, and sometimes of genuine terror suspects, until they acknowledged knowing them, or having seen them, whether that was true or not (see this article for an example from a proxy CIA torture prison in Jordan). Prisoners were also bribed with better living conditions, or had mental health issues that were remorselessly exploited by their interrogators, while other prisoners, unable to cope with the unending interrogations, gave up resisting and, by their own admission, said yes to every allegation that was suggested to them, without any care for its relationship to the truth.

The information in the files is, therefore, almost completely worthless without being backed up by further independent investigation, and yet Simcox parades verifiably unreliable witnesses as though they were truthful — Abu Zubaydah, for example, for whom the torture program was invented, whose desperate lies litter the files, Muhammad Basardah, a Yemeni notorious as Guantánamo’s most prolific liar, whose unreliability was well-known to the US authorities, and Abdul Bukhary (aka Abdul-Hakim Bukhari), another recognized liar, who had been imprisoned by al-Qaeda as a spy, and was liberated by US forces from a Taliban jail before being sent, inexplicably, to Guantánamo. As the New York Times explained in April 2011, Bukhari’s file contained the following acceptance, by the US authorities, of his unreliability: “Detainee admitted that he provided information in a deliberately misleading manner in order to receive incentives from his debriefers.”

This is how I described Basardah when I worked with WikiLeaks on the release of the Guantánamo files in 2011:

Yasim Basardah (ISN 252), a Yemeni known as a notorious liar. As the Washington Post reported in February 2009, he was given preferential treatment in Guantánamo after becoming what some officials regarded as a significant informant, although there were many reasons to be doubtful. As the Post noted, “military officials … expressed reservations about the credibility of their star witness since 2004,” and in 2006, in an article for the National Journal, Corine Hegland described how, after a Combatant Status Review Tribunal at which a prisoner had taken exception to information provided by Basardah, placing him at a training camp before he had even arrived in Afghanistan, his personal representative (a military official assigned instead of a lawyer) investigated Basardah’s file, and found that he had made similar claims against 60 other prisoners. In January 2009, in the District Court in Washington D.C., Judge Richard Leon (an appointee of George W. Bush) excluded Basardah’s statements while granting the habeas corpus petition of Mohammed El-Gharani, a Chadian national who was just 14 years old when he was seized in a raid on a mosque in Pakistan. Judge Leon noted that the government had “specifically cautioned against relying on his statements without independent corroboration,” and in other habeas cases that followed, other judges relied on this precedent, discrediting the “star witness” stlll further.

Also see the Guardian‘s article about Basardah, and the graphic showing Basardah and Abu Zubaydah’s unreliability.

The US and UK intelligence services’ responsibility for Shaker’s long imprisonment

In other important articles in the last week, a number of respectable commentators have highlighted the role of the US and UK intelligence services in Shaker’s long imprisonment; in particular, the eight years he has been held since he was first told that the US no longer wanted to hold him. As I described it on Facebook, promoting one of these articles, what has without doubt led to “certain dark forces in the US and the UK work[ing] to oppose his release” is “his knowledge of the rendition of  Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi to torture in Egypt, where al-Libi [the head of an independent training camp in Afghanistan] lied about connections between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein that were used to justify the illegal invasion of Iraq, his insights into the night three men died in Guantánamo, allegedly by committing suicide, in June 2006, and his assertion that British agents were present when he was brutally assaulted by US forces in Afghanistan, prior to being sent to Guantánamo.”

I have written extensively about these issues over the years (see here and here, for example), and in a powerful article for the Guardian, which I’m cross-posting below,  Clive Stafford Smith, the founder of Reprieve, who has represented Shaker for many years, mentions Shaker’s knowledge of the rendition of al-Libi, whose tortured lies were used to justify the illegal invasion of Iraq, and, more generally, recognizes how those who brutalize others seek to demonize them to justify their position, and explains how “various members of the US military and the UK intelligence services will start briefing against Aamer. They will do this because they know they have done him wrong, and they hate him for it. They feel a very human urge to prove that they were justified and, in their distorted morality, that can only be true if he is a very, very bad man indeed.” As Clive also notes, they have done this before — in 2009, for example, when Binyam Mohamed was released, and in 2005, when a number of British nationals were released.

In the Daily Mail, Peter Oborne, after speaking to Clive, Gareth Pierce and me, wrote a powerful article also highlighting the dark episodes mentioned above, and Shaker’s knowledge of them. Peter also followed up on my suggestion that the British government may use the promise of a financial settlement agreed with Shaker in 2010 — as part of a deal with the former prisoners (and Shaker) to stop a civil claim for damages that was revealing shocking information about British complicity in torture at the highest levels of the Blair government, involving Tony Blair and Jack Straw — to try and buy his silence.

Peter also called for an official, independent investigation into British complicity in the US program of torture and indefinite imprisonment without charge or trial, noting, “To its everlasting credit, the US last year came to terms with its grotesque conduct when California senator Dianne Feinstein produced a no-holds-barred report into the horrifying conduct of the Central Intelligence Agency. In Britain we have had no such investigation into the role played by our own intelligence agencies — even though David Cameron promised such an investigation in the run-up to the 2010 General Election.”

To be fair to the government, there was an investigation, but all the relevant NGOs boycotted it because of its serious limitations, and a full inquiry is therefore just as necessary as it was when first promised in 2010.

Peter Oborne added, “With the belated return of Shaker Aamer to his family in London now a matter of weeks away, there can surely be no excuse for waiting any longer. We owe him a full investigation into his terrible claims. More important still, we owe it to ourselves. Otherwise, Britain will no longer be able to regard herself as a law-abiding country with values that shine like a beacon of decency around the globe.”

In the Guardian, Ian Cobain also investigated the role of the security services, noting, “The interrogators that MI6 and MI5 had sent to Bagram were warned that they must not take part in the torture that was being inflicted on the inmates; all received written instructions that ‘we cannot be party to such ill treatment nor can we be seen to condone it’. In practice, this meant that they would remove themselves from the room before the abuses began.” In Shaker’s case, however, these rules appear to have been ignored, leading to the suggestion, in Cobain’s words, that Shaker is “expected to embark upon legal proceedings against the British government once he returns to the UK.”

He also noted that “[s]enior Whitehall sources have told the Guardian that both [William] Hague and [David] Cameron were genuinely committed to doing everything they could to secure the release of Aamer. While Theresa May is said to have been less enthusiastic to see Aamer living in the UK, officials say there is no evidence of any back-channel messages being passed from the Home Office that would explain Aamer’s continuing detention.”

“According to these sources,” however, as Ian Cobain explained, “the same cannot be said of MI6, with one saying that there is a suspicion that some intelligence officers may have been dripping poisonous messages about Aamer into American ears at the same time that the prime minister and foreign secretary were attempting to secure his release. There are some ‘who still consider themselves to be above the law’, the source said.”

In the Independent, Kate Allen, the director of Amnesty International UK, also called for an inquiry. “The UK’s own shameful role in this episode is still largely hidden from public view,” she wrote, adding, “That’s why we still need a fully-independent, judge-led inquiry into that role.”

For now, I’m leaving the final word to Clive Stafford Smith, whose article is posted below, but I want to leave the penultimate word to Johina Aamer, Shaker’s daughter, who tweeted the following message after the news broke last week: “Thank you everyone for all the support. The news hasn’t hit yet. We can’t believe we might finally see our Dad after 14 years.”

When Shaker Aamer is free from Guantánamo the slurs will start

By Clive Stafford Smith, The Guardian, September 28, 2015

My maternal grandmother once gave me some advice that has never left me: when someone does you wrong, bizarrely, they will invariably hate you for it. This stems from a very human desire not to admit mistakes. Therefore if you want to salvage a relationship with the person who wronged you, you must go out of your way to be kind to them.

I have discussed my grandmother’s advice with Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo Bay. He has been done a terrible wrong — held for almost 14 years without charges, tortured over and over. He has never met his youngest son Faris, who was born on the very day he arrived in the notorious US military base.

And why has he been held so long? Because not only was Aamer a victim of abuse but he also witnessed the torture of others, most catastrophically Ibn Sheikh al Libi, who “confessed” falsely that al-Qaida was in league with Saddam Hussein on weapons of mass destruction. This was repeated by President George W Bush himself as a reason to go to war in Iraq — so here we are, tens of thousands of dead people later, and we know it was false. Al Libi merely told his torturers what they wanted to hear, to try to end the pain.

The Obama administration gave notice to Congress on 24 September that they finally plan to return Aamer to the United Kingdom. This triggers a 30-day waiting period, after which — when logistics and other bureaucracy is satisfied — he may come home.

What is not predictable is whether they will actually liberate him on 24 October, or some time much later on. For instance, the US announced on 25 June that another man, Abdul Shalabi, could be repatriated, yet he did not leave until 22 September, 89 days later. Aamer was cleared to come home in 2007, some 3,000 days ago, so when they will finally get around to reuniting him with his wife and four children is still uncertain.

There is one matter that is beyond all doubt: various members of the US military and the UK intelligence services will start briefing against Aamer. They will do this because they know they have done him wrong, and they hate him for it. They feel a very human urge to prove that they were justified and, in their distorted morality, that can only be true if he is a very, very bad man indeed.

They always do this. In 2009, when Binyam Mohamed was released from Guantánamo, someone at the Pentagon leaked to the BBC a classified copy of the confession tortured out of him. Binyam had been sent to Morocco where a razor blade was taken to his penis every fortnight for 18 months. Naturally he told them what they wanted to hear. To the credit of the BBC — and in compliance with the UN convention against torture — ultimately the corporation decided not to defame Binyam with this statement.

Before that, the US military timed a leak smearing four other British nationals to coincide with their return from Guantánamo in January 2005. It was not enough that they had spent years in detention without charge or trial; the US authorities wanted to prove that this derogation from the Magna Carta was justified because they were very dangerous people. Given that none has done anything wrong in the ensuing decade, we can now decide for ourselves whether this was true.

In Aamer’s case, the defamation has already begun. The moment the 30-day notice was given, Texas Congressman Mac Thornberry leaked the news to the Washington Post, along with a statement that Aamer was far too dangerous to be released — apparently forever. The Republicans started the mess that is Guantánamo, and it is too much to expect them to admit that it has been a disaster.

More worrying yet, one major British newspaper has already received a “scoop” about Aamer from a “former informant” for the UK security services. Of course, such a leak would violate the Official Secrets Act unless it had been approved by the spooks. The paper did the right thing, checking the story out; and Aamer was not even in the UK when he was said to have had a crucial meeting. Such care reflects the best of journalistic ethics — you do not publish devastating rumours about a person who has no way to defend himself, without checking and double-checking your source.

The government has pandered to populist opinion ever since the Leveson inquiry, proposing greater restraints on the media, yet it sees no problem when government agents themselves sneak around smearing someone — even when it concerns a powerless person held incommunicado for more than a decade, like Aamer.

Aamer understands my grandmother’s advice, and he knows that the people who are responsible for his mistreatment will inevitably hate him. He tells me that he will respond with as much kindness as he can: he does not wish to see those responsible for his torture behind bars, and he has said this to the Metropolitan police, who have been investigating British complicity in what happened. He merely wants everyone to learn from these terrible mistakes, and reinforce the rules against torture, so it never happens to others.

That is admirable. But it is inevitable that some will continue to attack him and we must hope that the media continues with the ethical approach they have shown so far. Those who wish to prove that they were right to indulge in a spot of torture are very sad and misguided people.

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, the co-director of We Stand With Shaker, calling for the immediate release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, 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.

97-Pound Yemeni Hunger Striker Appears Before Periodic Review Board As Saudi is Approved for Release from Guantánamo

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.

After months of inaction on Guantánamo, there has, in recent weeks, been a flurry of activity, with two prisoners released (one to Morocco and one to Saudi Arabia), and with the approval of two prisoners for release by Periodic Review Boards (Omar Mohammed Khalifh, a Libyan, and Fayiz al-Kandari, the last Kuwaiti in the prison, who was recommended for ongoing imprisonment by a PRB last year, but was given a second opportunity in July to persuade the board that he is no threat to the United States, which was successful).

On Friday, it was also revealed that Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo, who we have written about extensively here, will be freed within the next month, and it is expected that a Mauritanian, Ahmed Ould Abdel Aziz, long approved for release like Shaker, will also be freed soon, along with two the prisoners whose cases are with defense secretary Ashton Carter, but who have not been publicly identified.

Adding to all this news, last week — largely unnoticed in the media — another prisoner was approved for release by a Periodic Review Board, the review process established two years ago to review the cases of all the men who were not previously approved for release by the high-level, inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force that President Obama established shortly after taking office, and who are not facing trials.

Most were regarded as “too dangerous to release” by the task force, which also acknowledged, however, that there was insufficient evidence to put them on trial — meaning, of course, that it was not evidence at all, but a collection of dubious tainted evidence from the widespread torture and abuse of the “war on terror.” Others were initially recommended for trials, until the military commissions began to seriously unravel.

Muhammad Al-Shumrani, a Saudi, is approved for release

19 prisoners have so far had their cases reviewed. Four cases have not been decided yet, but of the 15 others all but two have ended up with the review boards recommending their release. Two of those decisions took place on the second review — in the case of Fayiz al-Kandari, who was recommended for release on September 8, and, as revealed last week, in the case of Muhammad Abd al-Rahman al-Shumrani, a Saudi, whose case was first reviewed last May.

In al-Shumrani’s case, he had refused to attend his PRB, which involves representatives of the Departments of State, Defense, Justice and Homeland Security, as well as the office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, communicating by video-link with Guantánamo, because of the humiliating and intrusive body searches that take place when prisoners are moved from one part of the prison to another.

That unwillingness to take part had clearly not impressed the board, but after his second PRB, in August, the board members concluded, in a decision delivered on September 11, that “continued law of war detention … does not remain necessary to protect against a continuing significant threat to the security of the United States.”

The board added that they “acknowledged the detainee’s past terrorist-related activites and connections but determined [his] threat can be adequately mitigated by Saudi Arabia.” Specifically, the board noted, they had “confidence in the efficacy of the Saudi rehabilitation program and Saudi Arabia’s ability to monitor the detainee after completion of the program,” and they also “found the detainee credible on his desire to participate in the program.'”

They also noted his “strong desire to engage in scholarly religious discussion and receive guidance from clerics at the rehabilitation centre about Islam and his willingness to submit to the authority of the Saudi government.” The board also noted that al-Shumrani had been “candid with the board, including regarding his presence on the battlefield and world view, and articulated a commitment to fulfilling his role within his family over taking up arms or continuing to engage in jihad.”

The Miami Herald noted that al-Shumrani’s attorney, Martha Rayner, said in an email that he “looks forward to participating in the Saudi rehabilitation program and reuniting with his family.” The newspaper also picked out a comment made in August by his personal representatives (military personnel appointed to represent him), who noted that he had “slipped quietly into middle age” during his 13 years at Guantánamo.

If the cases of Muhammad al-Zahrani and Abdul Rahman Shalabi, the other two Saudis approved for release by a PRB, are anything to go by, al-Shumrani will be repatriated sometime in the next few months, making him one of the more fortunate prisoners at Guantánamo. Just three of the 13 men so far approved for release by PRBs have been freed — a Kuwaiti and the two Saudis mentioned above. The others awaiting release include six Yemenis, to add to the 37 other Yemenis approved for release by the task force, back in 2009, but still held. A refusal to repatriate Yemenis, shared across the entire US establishment, means that these men cannot be freed until third countries are found for them, and this is a slow process.

The case of Moath Al-Alwi, a Yemeni hunger striker weighing just 97 pounds

On September 22, another Yemeni, Moath al-Alwi (aka Muaz al-Alawi) became the 18th prisoner to appear before a Periodic Review Board. I have written about his case extensively over the years. In 2009, his habeas corpus petition was turned down, because, as I explained when his appeal was also turned down later that year:

Although al-Alawi was in Afghanistan before the 9/11 attacks, and was fighting with the Taliban against the Northern Alliance, Judge Leon ruled that he was an “enemy combatant” because he endorsed the government’s claim that, “rather than leave his Taliban unit in the aftermath of September 11, 2001,” al-Alawi “stayed with it until after the United States initiated Operation Enduring Freedom on October 7, 2001; fleeing to Khowst and then to Pakistan only after his unit was subjected to two-to-three US bombing runs.”

In other words, as I described it when al-Alwi’s habeas petition was turned down:

Judge Leon ruled that Muaz al-Alawi can be held indefinitely without charge or trial because, despite traveling to Afghanistan to fight other Muslims before September 11, 2001, “contend[ing] that he had no association with al-Qaeda,” and stating that “his support for and association with the Taliban was minimal and not directed at US or coalition forces,” he was still in Afghanistan when that conflict morphed into a different war following the US-led invasion in October 2001. As Leon admitted in his ruling, “Although there is no evidence of petitioner actually using arms against US or coalition forces, the Government does not need to prove such facts in order for petitioner to be classified as an enemy combatant under the definition adopted by the Court.”

Al-Alwi’s case was later turned down by the Supreme Court (in 2012), and the following year he was part of the prison-wide hunger strike that drew international criticism for President Obama’s loss of interest in Guantánamo in the face of Congressional opposition. He continued his hunger strike after most of his fellow prisoners had given up, and, last year, complained to his lawyer, Ramzi Kassem of the City University of New York: “It is all political. It is all theater, it is all a game.” Earlier this year, his lawyers sought a new avenue to his release, submitting his case to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and in June he wrote an op-ed for Al-Jazeera asking why he was still held, after President Obama had declared that the war in Afghanistan was over.

Writing about al-Alwi’s case, Human Rights First noted that he “was captured in 2001 by Pakistani authorities alongside a group identified as the ‘Dirty 30′ – a name given to them because of allegations that they had served as bodyguards for Osama bin Laden. However, these allegations were primarily based on statements by Mohammed al-Qahtani — a detainee who had been tortured at Guantánamo and who later withdrew his false allegations — and confessions by two other detainees that a US court recently proved false. In fact, only three of the ‘Dirty 30′ have any substantiated allegations relating to al Qaeda involvement.”

In fact, the government has clearly walked back from much of its former hyperbole about the “Dirty 30.” In the profile of al-Alwi for his PRB, he was described as “an al-Qa’ida-affiliated fighter who spent time with Usama Bin Ladin’s security detail but probably was not one of Bin Ladin’s bodyguards.” It was also claimed that he “probably trained with al-Qa’ ida, and possibly helped manage an al-Qa’ ida guesthouse” (italics added to emphasize the vagueness of the claims) and also allegedly “developed relationships with many prominent extremists in Afghanistan and spent time with al-Qa’ida and Taliban fighters on the frontlines, although we do not know whether he engaged directly in combat.” It was also noted that he “has caused a great deal of trouble for the staff” at Guantánamo, and has frequently expressed anti-American sentiments, although whether that proves anything is open to question. 23 years old at the time of his capture, he is now 36 years old, and has lost a third of his life in brutal and lawless conditions that would make many people angry.

The PRBs, however, demand compliance as a key to release — or, at least, being recommended for release, and it must be reassuring, therefore, that his lawyer was able to tell the board that his client’s current disciplinary status is “compliant,” even though he is still on a hunger strike. As Human Rights First described it, he “had communicated to his personal representatives that he was willing to try and transition back to a normal diet of solid food,” but when “a PRB member asked why this transition had not occurred,” his lawyer explained that his client lacked the necessary medical support.

Below I’m posting the opening statements of al-Alwi’s personal representatives, and of his lawyer, Ramzi Kassem, which, I believe, explain his desire to rebuild his life, and also indicate a possible route out of Guantánamo should the board members agree — the fact, as Ramzi Kassem explains, that although he is a Yemeni citizen, he was born and raised in Saudi Arabia, where almost the whole of his family still lives, and he could, therefore, be easily sent back there.

The most shocking information, however, to my mind, is the fact that he weighs just 97 pounds — and if a photo of him at this weight were to be released to the general public, there would, I am sure, be an outcry, and a demand for his immediate release and the closure of Guantánamo.

Periodic Review Board Initial Hearing, 22 Sep 2015

Moath Hamza Ahmed Al-Alwi ISN 28

Personal Representative Opening Statement

Ladies and gentlemen of the Board, good morning. We are the Personal Representatives for Moath al-Alwi, ISN 028. In our submission, we have provided you with information that demonstrates Mr. al-Alwi does not pose a continuing significant threat to the security of the United States. His family is ready to provide support after his transfer, and most importantly, he is willing to attend a rehabilitation program and live his life in peace.

As Moath’s Personal Representatives, we’ve met with him face to face on more than a dozen occasions over the course of several months. Throughout our interactions, we have found him to be polite, sincere and pleasant. He has proven that he has a well-developed set of ethics and a sharp sense of right and wrong. Moath has been on hunger strike over the majority of the past several years. This has affected his health to the point where he can no longer eat a normal diet without adverse reactions. During our first meeting we asked him to attempt a transition back to a normal diet of solid food to improve his case for transfer and for his own well-being. Moath did not immediately agree to do this. However, he later sent us a message stating he would try if his representatives thought it was good for him.

Moath’s Personal Counsel, Ramzi Kassem, has met with and had regular contact with Moath’s family members, most notably his father and eldest brother. Moath’s brother has living space and a job waiting for him when he is transferred from Guantánamo. Additionally, his sister has a business of her own and has saved money to assist with Moath’s transfer, education and training. She has also agreed to assist Moath by providing start-up funds for a business when the time arises.

Personally, Moath would like to live near his family again and, eventually, start a family of his own. More than that, however, he wants to attend a rehabilitation and training center, where he will have the opportunity to continue his education. His ultimate goal is to pursue a college degree in engineering. Moath understands he needs skills if he’s to succeed with a career, a family, and a normal life. With limited resources available at Guantánamo, he’s taught himself to make cardboard furniture, how to paint, and among his favorites, how to garden. He becomes excited when discussing the possibility of learning to be a construction engineer, landscape architect or artist.

Moath is frustrated by his nearly 14 years of detainment without trial, as any reasonable human would be. However, he believes this is a function of politics, world unrest, and his citizenship. He does not believe that Guantánamo is representative of the American people or the American way of life. Notably, Moath remarked to us that he would eagerly agree to a transfer to the United States, should that ever become a possibility. He stated that living in the United States would open opportunities for education and employment that were never available to him before in his life.

Moath has demonstrated that he is open minded and willing to change when he sees hope of a better future. He is 36 years old and wishes to begin to live his life again as soon as possible. The effects of his hunger striking over the years have damaged his health to a great extent. He wishes to put this all behind him and build a normal, healthy life outside Guantánamo. Accordingly, we do not believe that Moath is a continuing significant threat to the security of the United States.

Statement by Prof. Ramzi Kassem, Private Counsel for Moath al-Alwi (ISN 028)

Periodic Review Board Hearing Scheduled September 22, 2015

Esteemed Periodic Review Board Members,

I serve as pro bono counsel to Moath al-Alwi (ISN 028) before the Periodic Review Board as well as in U.S. federal court. I have represented Mr. al-Alwi since 2009. I write to provide additional information to inform your decision as to whether Mr. al-Alwi “constitutes a significant threat to the security of the United States.”

From the outset, it is worth emphasizing that although he has been in U.S. custody at Guantánamo Bay since 2002, there is no evidence or accusation that Mr. al-Alwi ever fought against the United States or any other party. Moreover, he has not been charged nor found guilty of any crime.

A Yemeni citizen born and raised in Saudi Arabia, Mr. al-Alwi traveled to Afghanistan in early 2001 to teach the Quran and live in a society that appeared from afar to honor Islamic ideals. He was 24 when he fled the conflict there, was seized by the authorities in Pakistan and likely sold into American captivity for a bounty.

At a 2008 hearing, having given Mr. al-Alwi only three weeks to review a lengthy dossier compiled by the U.S. government over seven years, a federal judge ruled his detention justified. A court of appeals found that the judge’s “haste” was hard to understand,” but upheld the decision. The U.S. Supreme Court then declined to receive Mr. al-Alwi’s final appeal. Mr. al-Alwi has recently filed a second habeas corpus petition in U.S. federal court which is now pending.

Even if one were to credit unverified U.S. intelligence reports that form part of the unclassified and public record in his federal habeas corpus case, Mr. al-Alwi allegedly obtained less than one full day’s training at a training camp near Kabul, Afghanistan. He was never hostile to the United States and bears no ill will towards it today.

While at Guantánamo, Mr. al-Alwi has gone on hunger strike on more than one occasion, which has caused his health to deteriorate rapidly. He absolutely does not wish to kill himself, as his religion prohibits suicide. But despite the terrible toll it has taken on his health, Mr. al-Alwi chooses not to eat as a form of peaceful, non-violent protest against his continuing imprisonment at Guantánamo and against some of the conditions of his confinement.

These include humiliating groin searches, especially when prisoners are taken for phone calls with their lawyers or families; withheld medical treatment; confiscated legal papers and Qurans: solitary confinement: and other forms of unduly harsh treatment.

In response to Mr. al-Alwi’s hunger strike, the prison administration at Guantánamo has chosen to force-feed him daily in a restraint chair.

It is important to highlight that hunger striking is one of a few forms of control that Mr. al-Alwi and other prisoners retain over their lives. Moreover, like sit-ins, hunger striking is a form of peaceful and civil disobedience, not a crime under domestic or international law. It is Mr. al-Alwi’s way of demanding the attention of the U.S. government holding him captive, of the American people to whom it is beholden, and of concerned citizens the world over.

Mr. al-Alwi knows that governments do not always act in accordance with the values and views of their people. His hunger strike rests on the belief that the American people, if they knew, would not condone his continued imprisonment or the conditions of his confinement.

Mr. al-Alwi fully recognizes that people outside of prison might find his hunger strike difficult to comprehend. His own family certainly does. His mother tells me that she spends much of her rare phone calls with him pleading that he stop his hunger strike. But Mr. al-Alwi sees it as the only way he has left to cry out for life, freedom and dignity.

Today, Mr. al-Alwi’s disciplinary status at Guantánamo is “compliant.” He is not on punishment status and he presents voluntarily for tube-feeding and to be weighed (he currently weighs approximately 97 pounds).

My present understanding is that Mr. al-Alwi intends to finally end his hunger strike if he is approved for release by the Periodic Review Board. This would also doubtless please his mother. Understandably, he is concerned about readjusting to a normal diet here at Guantánamo and hopes that he would receive the necessary medical and dietary support to make that transition safely and smoothly.

If released from Guantánamo, Mr. al-Alwi intends to learn a professional skill or develop one of the skills he acquired in prison in order to rebuild his life. At Guantánamo, Mr. al-Alwi excelled in the art classes that were offered. He learned to use cardboard to fashion shelves, drawers, small tables. and other furniture, to rave reviews from fellow prisoners and the guard force alike.

Mr. al-Alwi also taught himself how to make sweets and other treats, which he offers to fellow prisoners and guards. He has prepared kunafah, an Arab dessert, and has even developed his own version of Snickers bars. Many guards cannot believe that he is able to make these treats on the cellblock using only the limited ingredients at hand.

Another prisoner who used to be a professional cook even assured Mr. al-Alwi that, with his skills. he could open a business. Recently I learned that one of Mr. al-Alwi’s sisters had asked him for one of his recipes during a phone call and that he had refused jokingly telling her that he couldn’t just give up his “trade secrets.”

Mr. al-Alwi loves the art lessons and the computer lessons he has been able to take at Guantánamo. Unfortunately, however, he has found the English lessons less useful as they are often taught by interpreters who are not themselves fully bilingual or trained to teach English as a second language. Also, his disciplinary status sometimes prevented him from enrolling in classes.

Of course, once a free man, Mr. al-Alwi also wishes to marry and start a family.

His most immediate wish, however, is to regain his freedom, be it in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, where he was born and raised and where his family still resides or in any third country that the U.S. government deems suitable.

Should Saudi Arabia accept Mr. al-Alwi he would gladly partake in its Interior Ministry’s well-established Counseling & Rehabilitation Program with the full support and cooperation of his family.

Indeed Mr. al-Alwi’s entire family has resided legally in Saudi Arabia for decades. He only has a few relatives remaining in Yemen and among them he only knows his elderly maternal aunt.

In Saudi Arabia, Mr. al-Alwi has two brothers and three sisters, all in Jeddah. One of his brothers is a small scale merchant. He is married with three sons. His other brother is still a student. Their father is a car dealer and most of his relatives are in that line of business.

Mr. al-Alwi’s immediate relatives have made it abundantly clear to me that they are prepared to provide full emotional, financial, and medical support to Mr. al-Alwi, should he be returned to Saudi Arabia or resettled in a third country.

The family has provided ample evidence to the Board, in written and video-recorded form directly attesting to their readiness to welcome and support Mr. al-Alwi. The videos feature Mr. al-Alwi’s mother, his brother, his nephews, and the family home in Jeddah, including Mr. al-Alwi’s living quarters. From my experience with a number of repatriated and resettled Guantanamo prisoners since 2005, the extent and nature of the support that Mr. al-Alwi’s family is prepared to provide set the ideal conditions for his release.

Thank you for taking into consideration the information I have provided. I remain at your disposal to assist with any questions you may have regarding Mr. al-Alwi.

Very truly yours

Ramzi Kassem

Associate Professor of Law

CUNY School of Law

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer, film-maker and singer-songwriter (the lead singer and main songwriter for the London-based band The Four Fathers, whose debut album, ‘Love and War,’ is available for download or on CD via Bandcamp — also see here). He is the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign, the co-director of We Stand With Shaker, calling for the immediate release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, 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.

Andy Worthington’s Band The Four Fathers Release ‘Love and War’ Album for Download, With Songs About Guantánamo, Torture, Austerity and Love

Buy ‘Love and War’ here, as a download or CD — or buy individual tracks to download.

It’s been an action-packed week. Last Monday, I promoted the release as a download of my band The Four Fathers‘ Song for Shaker Aamer, which I wrote about the last British resident still held in the US prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. We recorded it last November, and it was used in the campaign video for We Stand With Shaker, a campaign I launched with my activist friend Joanne MacInnes, featuring MPs and celebrities standing with a giant inflatable figure of Shaker. The song is available — on Bandcamp — for just 80p ($1.25), although you can pay more if you wish. We are donating 25% of the takings from the song to Shaker’s family.

After sending out a press release about the download, I was almost immediately asked to appear on RT to promote it — and the Morning Star also featured it. And then, on Friday, came the welcome and long-awaited news that Shaker is to be released! Thanks to everyone who has worked to get him out of Guantánamo and back to his family in London. We anticipate that he will be home within a month, allowing for the statutory 30-day period that the US Congress has insisted on having before any prisoner is released.

‘Song for Shaker’ is just one of eight original songs on ‘Love and War.’ I wrote five other songs, Richard Clare wrote one, and one is an old folk song that I gave a punky roots reggae makeover in the late 1980s while living in Brixton. The Four Fathers are: myself on lead vocals and guitar, Richard on guitar and backing vocals, Bren Horstead on drums and percussion, Andrew Fifield on flute and harmonica, and — not a father — Richard’s son Louis Sills-Clare on bass.

Here’s the track listing. You can follow the links to hear the individual songs and, if you wish, to buy them individually. Each track costs 60p ($0.93), and the album costs £4.50 ($7), although you can pay more if you wish.

Song for Shaker Aamer

Sweet Love and Ever After (my love song for my family)

Tory Bullshit Blues (my warning of the dangers of the Tories and UKIP)

Rebel Soldier (the old folk song which I gave the roots reggae treatment)

Sea Shanty for Helena (Richard’s love song)

City of Dreams (my countryish lament for the London destroyed by Thatcher)

Fighting Injustice (my rousing new roots reggae anthem defending socialism and opposing the criminal bankers and the greed of the housing crisis)

81 Million Dollars (my call for those responsible for the US torture program to be held accountable)

The album is also available on CD, featuring two extra tracks — covers of Bob Dylan’s ‘Masters of War’ and a groovy, folky version of Gloria Gaynor’s ‘I Will Survive’ — for £7 (£10.85), and again, you can pay more if you wish.

I hope there’s something here of interest to 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, the co-director of We Stand With Shaker, calling for the immediate release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, 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 Imminent Release of Shaker Aamer from Guantánamo with Scott Horton

On September 25, as the news broke that Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo, is to be released, the radio host Scott Horton got in touch to ask for a quick interview, and I was, of course, delighted to speak to him, as we have spoken numerous times over the years since he first interviewed me in 2007. Our 15-minute interview is here, as an MP3, and I hope you have time to listen to it, and to share it if you find it useful. You can also find it on Scott’s website here.

Scott asked me to run through Shaker’s story, so I explained how he is a charismatic, eloquent man who always resisted the injustices implemented by the Bush administration in its “war on terror,” and, as a result, came to be regarded as a dangerous individual.

However, although he has persistently caused trouble — righteous, indignant trouble — in US custody, his captors never had a case against him for any activities prior to his capture at the end of 2001 in Afghanistan, where, he has always maintained, he had traveled to provide humanitarian aid to the Afghan people. As a result, in 2007, under the Bush administration, he was told that the US no longer wanted to hold him, and in 2009 he was approved for release by the high-level, inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force established by President Obama shortly after taking office.

Nevertheless, Shaker was not released, even though it should have been easy to send him home to his family in the UK — his British wife and his four British children — and campaigners and lawyers were left to conclude that there was a lack of political will to release him on both sides of the Atlantic. Over time, it also became apparent that actually the US was hoping to quietly release him to Saudi Arabia, the country of his birth, where he would be silenced — and, it should be noted, separated from his family — and it also had to be inferred that the UK was also happy for him to be returned to Saudi Arabia.

In recent years, however, the tide began to turn. The persistent campaigning of the Save Shaker Aamer Campaign (for whom I frequently appeared at speaking events, and also occasionally joined their weekly vigils in Parliament Square) led to the involvement of sympathetic MPs in his case, most noticeably John McDonnell, the Labour MP for Hayes and Harlington, who, with his close friend Jeremy Corbyn (Labour, Islington North) has always resisted all forms of injustice, along with our sole Green MP, Caroline Lucas (Brighton Pavilion).

John set up the Shaker Aamer Parliamentary Group last November (long before he and Jeremy became the leader and the shadow chancellor of the Labour Party!), at the same time that I set up a new campaigning group, We Stand With Shaker, with my activist friend Joanne MacInnes, to highlight Shaker’s plight in the mainstream media and on social media, using a giant inflatable figure of Shaker with which we persuaded over a hundred celebrities and MPs to have their photos taken.

The campaign somehow resonated with journalists, MPs and the public at large, and as Shaker’s case became more prominent, the Shaker Aamer Parliamentary Group drew in cross-party support, securing a Parliamentary debate in May that led to the government supporting the call for Shaker’s release and his return to the UK, and, in May, with the support of campaigners, sending a cross-party delegation of MPs to Washington D.C. to meet with Senators and Obama administration officials, and after rumors that first surfaced in April regarding Shaker’s release, we have now had confirmation that he will be freed within a month, returning to the UK to be reunited with his family.

I discussed some, if not all of the above, with Scott on his show, and as I noted above, I hope you have time to listen to it, and to share it if you find it useful.

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer, film-maker and singer-songwriter (the lead singer and main songwriter for the London-based band The Four Fathers, whose debut album, ‘Love and War,’ is available for download or on CD via Bandcamp — also see here). He is the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign, the co-director of We Stand With Shaker, calling for the immediate release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, 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’s Band The Four Fathers Launch YouTube Channel, Play ‘Song for Shaker Aamer’ Unplugged

I’ve just launched a YouTube channel for my band The Four Fathers. We’re based in Lewisham, in south east London, and we’re four fathers, as the name suggests — myself on lead vocals and guitar, Richard Clare on guitar and backing vocals, Bren Horstead on drums and percussion and Andrew Fifield on flute and harmonica — plus, last but by no means least, Louis Sills-Clare, Richard’s son, on bass.

The first video I’ve uploaded (see below) features myself and Richard Clare playing an acoustic version of ‘Song for Shaker Aamer’, the song I wrote last year that was used in the campaign video for We Stand With Shaker, the campaign I launched last November with my activist friend Joanne MacInnes, which has just met with considerable success, as it was announced on Friday that Shaker will soon be released, after nearly 14 years in US custody without charge or trial, and over eight years since he was first told that he would be freed.

The version played by the full band is the opening track on The Four Fathers’ debut album, ‘Love and War,’ which we released on CD in July. It’s available here as a download, for 80p ($1.25), although you can pay more if you want, and 25% of the money received will be donated to Shaker’s family. The other songs on the album are also available to download for 60p ($0.93) each, or you can buy the whole eight-track album as a download for £4.50 ($7) or on CD, with two extra tracks, for £7 ($10.85). As with ‘Song for Shaker Aamer’, you can pay more if you wish for any of the songs or for the album, and if you do so that will be very greatly appreciated.

Richard and I played the acoustic version of ‘Song for Shaker Aamer’ at my house last Saturday, especially for my friend Todd Pierce, a retired military defense attorney who represented prisoners at Guantánamo, and it was filmed by Todd, along with two other songs that I’ll be making available over the coming week.

Please subscribe to our YouTube channel if you want to see more, and in the months to come I hope to make some original videos for some of our songs as they appear on ‘Love and War.’

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, the co-director of We Stand With Shaker, calling for the immediate release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, 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.

28 Veterans of US Intelligence Fight Back Against CIA Claims That the Bush Torture Program Was Useful and Necessary

Remember back in December, when the executive summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report about the CIA’s post-9/11 torture program was published, with its devastating revelations that the use of torture “was not an effective means of acquiring intelligence or gaining cooperation from detainees,” that the CIA’s justification for its use of torture techniques “rested on inaccurate claims of their effectiveness,” that its interrogations “were brutal and far worse than the CIA represented to policymakers and others”? (See my articles here and here).

We all do, of course, and to anyone who has not been fooled by the black propaganda of the torture apologists, it is depressing — if not unpredictable — that, in response, a book has just been published, entitled, Rebuttal: The CIA Responds to the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Study of Its Detention and Interrogation Program, published by the US Naval Institute Press, which attempts to claim that the Senate report is biased.

The book contains contributions from, amongst others, former CIA Directors George Tenet, Porter Goss and Michael Hayden, former chief legal officer John Rizzo and Jose Rodriguez, the former Chief of CIA’s Counterterrorism Center — all of whom have good reasons to hope that a conjuring trick like this will prevent them from being regarded as they should be, as war criminals evading justice, along with other senior Bush administration officials, up to and including George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld and others, and a number of senior lawyers and advisers.

In response to the publication of the book, 28 veterans of US intelligence responded with a memo to President Obama, which was published by Consortium News, and which I’m cross-posting below for anyone who missed it the first time around. I’m delighted to note that I count some of those signing the memo as friends, or as people I have enjoyed meeting with or interviewing over the years — namely, Todd Pierce, Michael Kearns, Ray McGovern, Coleen Rowley, Ann Wright and Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s former Chief of Staff, who I interviewed in 2009 (see here and here).

MEMORANDUM FOR: The President

FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

SUBJECT: Veteran Intelligence Professionals Challenge CIA’s “Rebuttal” on Torture

Former CIA leaders responsible for allowing torture to become part of the 21st Century legacy of the CIA are trying to rehabilitate their tarnished reputations with the release of a new book, Rebuttal: The CIA Responds to the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Study of Its Detention and Interrogation Program. They are pushing the lie that the only allegations against them are from a partisan report issued by Democrats from the Senate Intelligence Committee.

We recall the answer of General John Kimmons, the former Deputy Director of Operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who was asked if good intelligence could be obtained from abusive practices. He replied: “I am absolutely convinced the answer to your first question is no. No good intelligence is going to come from abusive practices. I think history tells us that. I think the empirical evidence of the last five years, hard years, tell us that.”

But the allegation that the CIA leaders were negligent and guilty was not the work of an isolated group of partisan Democrat Senators. The Senate Intelligence report on torture enjoyed bipartisan support. Senator John McCain, for example, whose own encounter with torture in North Vietnamese prisons scarred him physically and emotionally, embraced and endorsed the work of Senator Feinstein. It was only a small group of intransigent Republicans, led by Saxby Chambliss, who obstructed the work of the Senate Intel Committee.

Indeed, some of us witnessed firsthand during the administration of President George W. Bush that the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence were virtually paralyzed from conducting any meaningful oversight of the CIA and the U.S. Intelligence Community by the Republican members of these committees. Instead, they pursued the clear objective of protecting the Bush administration from any criticism for engaging in torture during the “War on Terror.”

It is curious that our former colleagues stridently denounce the work of the Senate Intelligence Committee but are mute with respect to an equally damning report from the CIA’s own inspector general, John Helgerson, in 2004.

Helgerson’s report, “Counterterrorism Detention and Interrogation Activities (September 2001-October 2003),” was published on May 7, 2004, and classified Top Secret. That report alone is damning of the CIA leadership and it is important to remind all about the specifics of those conclusions. According to the CIA’s own Inspector General:

The Agency’s detention and interrogation of terrorists has provided intelligence that has enabled the identification and apprehension of other terrorists and warned of terrorist plots planned in the United States and around the world … The effectiveness of particular interrogation techniques in eliciting information that might not otherwise have been obtained cannot be so easily measured however.
In addition, some Agency officials are aware of interrogation activities that were outside or beyond the scope of the written DOJ opinion. Officers are concerned that future public revelation of the CTC Program is inevitable and will seriously damage Agency officers’ personal reputations, as well as the reputation and effectiveness of the Agency itself.
By distinction the Agency — especially in the early months of the Program — failed to provide adequate staffing, guidance, and support to those involved with the detention and interrogation of detainees …
The Agency failed to issue in a timely manner comprehensive written guidelines for detention and interrogation activities … Such written guidance as does exist … is inadequate.
During the interrogation of two detainees, the waterboard was used in a manner inconsistent with the written DOJ legal opinion of 1 August 2002.
Agency officers report that reliance on analytical assessments that were unsupported by credible intelligence may have resulted in the application of EITs [“enhanced interrogation techniques”] without justification.

The CIA’s Inspector General makes it very clear that there was a failure by the CIA leaders, who include Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet, Deputy Director of Central Intelligence John McLaughlin, Counter Terrorism Center Chief Cofer Black, Counter Terrorism Center Chief Jose Rodriguez and the Director Directorate of Operations James L. Pavitt. Lack of proper guidance and oversight created fertile soil for subsequent abuses and these men were guilty of failing to properly do their jobs.

We do not have to rely solely on the report of the CIA’s Inspector General. In addition, the Report by the Senate Armed Services Committee on Detainee Treatment reached the same conclusions about the origins, evils, harm to U.S. policy and intelligence collection of “enhanced interrogation,” a euphemism for “torture” first used by Nazi Germany during World War II.

Indeed, all independent analyses of the enhanced interrogation program have concluded it constituted torture, was ineffective, and contrary to all American laws, ideals, and intelligence practices. We also have the testimony and record of Ali Soufan, an Arabic-speaking FBI Agent, who was involved with several interrogations before torture was used and who achieved substantive results without violating international law.

The sworn testimony of FBI Agent Ali Soufan, who is the only U.S. Government employee to testify under oath on these matters, completely contradicts the authors of Rebuttal:

In the middle of my interrogation of the high-ranking terrorist Abu Zubaydah at a black-site prison 12 years ago, my intelligence work wasn’t just cut short for so-called enhanced interrogation techniques to begin. After I left the black site, those who took over left, too — for 47 days. For personal time and to “confer with headquarters.”

For nearly the entire summer of 2002, Abu Zubaydah was kept in isolation. That was valuable lost time, and that doesn’t square with claims about the “ticking bomb scenarios” that were the basis for America’s enhanced interrogation program, or with the commitment to getting life-saving, actionable intelligence from valuable detainees. The techniques were justified by those who said Zubaydah “stopped all cooperation” around the time my fellow FBI agent and I left. If Zubaydah was in isolation the whole time, that’s not really a surprise.

One of the hardest things we struggled to make sense of, back then, was why U.S. officials were authorizing harsh techniques when our interrogations were working and their harsh techniques weren’t. The answer, as the long-awaited Senate Intelligence Committee Report now makes clear, is that the architects of the program were taking credit for our success, from the unmasking of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as the mastermind of 9/11 to the uncovering of the “dirty bomber” Jose Padilla. The claims made by government officials for years about the efficacy of “enhanced interrogation,” in secret memos and in public, are false. “Enhanced interrogation” doesn’t work.

The former CIA officers who have collaborated on this latest attempt to whitewash the historical record that they embraced and facilitated torture by Americans, are counting on the laziness of the press and the American public. As long as no one takes time to actually read the extensively footnoted and documented report by the Senate Intelligence Committee, then it is easy to buy into the fantasy that the CIA officers are simply victims of a political vendetta.

These officers are also counting on a segment of the American people — repeatedly identified in polling results — that continues to believe torture works. Such people have no proof that it works (because there is none that it works consistently and effectively), they simply believe it instinctively or because of people such as this book’s authors’ arguments to that effect.

That is why it is so important that the truth be told and this book and its arguments be debunked. Americans must learn the realities of torture — that it rarely if ever works, that it dehumanizes the torturer as well as the tortured, that it increases the numbers and hostility of our opponents while providing no benefit, and that it seriously diminishes America’s reputation in the world and thus its power.  Torture is wrong and the men who wrote this book are wrong.

The book, Rebuttal, is a new incarnation of the lie extolling the efficacy of torture. In the immediate aftermath of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, a time of perceived crisis and palpable fear, the leaders of the CIA decided to ignore international and domestic law. They chose to discard the moral foundations of our Republic and, using the same justifications that authoritarian regimes have employed for attacking enemies, and embarked willingly on a course of action that embraced practices that in earlier times the United States had condemned and punished as a violation of U.S. laws and fundamental human rights.

As former intelligence officers, we are compelled by conscience to denounce the actions and words of our former colleagues. In their minds they have found a way to rationalize and justify torture. We say there is no excuse; there is no justification. The heart of good intelligence work — whether collection or analysis — is based in the pursuit of truth, not the fabrication of a lie.

It is to this end that we reiterate that no threat, no matter how grave, should serve to justify inhuman behavior and immoral conduct or torture conducted by Americans.

For the Steering Group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS):

Fulton Armstrong, National Intelligence Officer for Latin America (ret.)

William Binney, former Technical Director, World Geopolitical & Military Analysis, NSA; co-founder, SIGINT Automation Research Center (ret.)

Tony Camerino, former Air Force and Air Force Reserves, a senior interrogator in Iraq and author of How to Break a Terrorist under pseudonym Matthew Alexander

Glenn L. Carle, Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Transnational Threats, CIA (ret.)

Thomas Drake, former Senior Executive, NSA

Daniel Ellsberg, former State Department and Defense Department Official (VIPS Associate)

Philip Giraldi, CIA, Operations Officer (ret.)

Matthew Hoh, former Capt., USMC, Iraq & Foreign Service Officer, Afghanistan (VIPS Associate )

Larry C Johnson, CIA & State Department (ret.)

Michael S. Kearns, Captain, USAF Intelligence Agency (Retired), ex Master SERE Instructor

John Kiriakou, Former CIA Counterterrorism Officer

Karen Kwiatkowski, Lt. Col., US Air Force (ret.)

Edward Loomis, NSA, Cryptologic Computer Scientist (ret.)

David MacMichael, National Intelligence Council (ret.)

James Marcinkowski, Attorney, former CIA Operations Officer

Ray McGovern, former US Army infantry/intelligence officer & CIA analyst (ret.)

Elizabeth Murray, Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Middle East,CIA (ret.)

Todd Pierce, Maj., US Army Judge Advocate (ret.)

Scott Ritter, former Maj., USMC, former UN Weapon Inspector, Iraq

Diane Roark, former professional staff, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence

Coleen Rowley, Division Counsel & Special Agent, FBI (ret.)

Ali Soufan, former FBI Special Agent

Robert David Steele, former CIA Operations Officer

Greg Thielmann, U.S. Foreign Service Officer (ret.) and former Senate Intelligence Committee

Peter Van Buren, U.S. Department of State, Foreign Service Officer (ret.) (VIPS Associate )

Lawrence Wilkerson, Colonel (USA, ret.), Distinguished Visiting Professor, College of William and Mary

Valerie Plame Wilson, CIA Operations Officer (ret.)

Ann Wright, U.S. Army Reserve Colonel (ret) and former U.S. Diplomat

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, the co-director of We Stand With Shaker, calling for the immediate release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, 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.

Wonderful News! Shaker Aamer to be Released from Guantánamo – Finally!

I’m delighted to receive the news that Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the US prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba is to be released, although I must admit I’m slightly numb too. I’ve been hoping for this day — and working towards making it happen — for so long that it’s difficult to believe that it’s true.

But it is true. This afternoon, a British government spokesperson announced that the US government has notified them of the intention to release Mr. Aamer back to his family in the UK, and stated that the US government “has notified Congress of this decision and once that notice period has been concluded, Mr. Aamer will be returned to the UK.”

Under US law, the defence secretary, Ashton Carter, must sign off on any prisoner releases, certifying that all steps have been taken to ensure that it is safe to do so, and Congress then receives 30 days’ notice. As a result, Shaker may not be home until late October, but the announcement of his impending release is a clear cause for celebration.

Responding to the news, I said in a press release, as the co-director of We Stand With Shaker, established ten months ago to call for Shaker’s release via a campaign to get celebrities and MPs to stand with a giant inflatable figure of Shaker that was very well-received:

We are delighted to hear of Shaker Aamer’s imminent release, and would like to thank everyone who has worked so hard over the years to secure his release — his lawyers, the many MPs who took up his cause, the journalists who refused to look the other way, the many celebrities who have supported the We Stand With Shaker campaign over the last year and the many members of the public who have campaigned tirelessly to make sure he was not forgotten.

I also said:

We are delighted to have played our part in securing Shaker’s release. Thanks to all the MPs and celebrities who have stood with our giant inflatable figure of Shaker, and to all the members of the public, in the UK, the US and around the world, who have shown solidarity with Shaker’s plight.

My colleague Joanne MacInnes, the co-director of We Stand With Shaker said:

This is fantastic news. Year after year Shaker’s family have awaited his return, and been disappointed time and again. After so long, I’m delighted that his torture and long ordeal is nearly over, and he’ll be in the arms of his family very soon.

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer, film-maker and singer-songwriter (the lead singer and main songwriter for the London-based band The Four Fathers, whose debut album, ‘Love and War,’ is available for download or on CD via Bandcamp — also see here). He is the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign, the co-director of We Stand With Shaker, calling for the immediate release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, 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.

Abdul Rahman Shalabi, Long-Term Hunger Striker, Repatriated from Guantánamo to Saudi Arabia

Yesterday (September 22), the US authorities reduced the population of the prison at Guantánamo Bay to 114 by releasing Abdul Rahman Shalabi, the prison’s most enduring hunger striker, who had been on a hunger strike for over ten years.

As I explained in an article in October 2010, he “weighed 124 pounds when he arrived at Guantánamo in January 2002,” but “rarely weighed more than 110 pounds [after] he began his hunger strike in August 2005, as part of the largest hunger strike in the prison’s history. At one point, in November 2005, he weighed just 100 pounds (PDF) … In September 2009, after four years of being force-fed daily, Shalabi weighed just 108 pounds, and wrote a distressing letter to his lawyers, in which he stated, ‘I am a human who is being treated like an animal.’ In November 2009, when his letter was included in a court submission, one of his lawyers, Julia Tarver Mason, stated, ‘He’s two pounds away from organ failure and death.'”

Shalabi, who is 39 years old, spent a third of his life at Guantánamo, and was one of 48 prisoners designated for ongoing imprisonment without charge or trial in January 2010, by the high-level, inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force that President Obama established shortly after taking office in January 2009, whose remit was to recommend prisoners for release or for trial. In the end, they decided that 48 men were too dangerous to release, but that insufficient evidence existed to put them on trial. This was deeply problematical, because it meant that  the evidence was no such thing — and was, for example, a collection of unreliable statements made by the prisoners themselves, or their fellow prisoners, as a result of torture or other forms of abuse, bribery (the promise of “comfort items” and better living conditions) or exhaustion as the result of never-ending interrogations.

President Obama issued an executive order in March 2011 approving the ongoing imprisonment without charge or trial of these 48 men, sweetening the pill, however, by promising them periodic reviews. These finally began in November 2013, and Shalabi’s PRB (Periodic Review Board) took place in April, when I noted that he was “described as one of the ‘Dirty Thirty,’ captured crossing from Afghanistan to Pakistan in December 2001, who were all initially described as bin Laden bodyguards, but that has never seemed likely, as the men in question were generally young, and had not been in Afghanistan for long prior to their capture.”

I added, “Shalabi had been there slightly longer, having apparently arrived in Afghanistan in the late 1990s, but there is no independent verification of his supposed status. The authorities noted that he has ‘denied any involvement with al-Qa’ida,’ but claimed that ‘several other detainees — including senior al-Qa’ida figures and other former bodyguards — have separately identified him as a Bin Ladin [sic] bodyguard,’ claims that, again, are problematical, because there is no guarantee that those witnesses gave reliable information freely, and were not tortured or otherwise abused.”

Shalabi was approved for release on July 15, and, as I mentioned at the time:

[T]he board members explained that they acknowledged Shalabi’s “past terrorist-related activities and connections,” but added that they “found that in light of the factors and conditions of transfer identified below, the risk the detainee presents can be adequately mitigated.” Shalabi, they added, “does not appear to be in contact with any extremists and his family has no known ties to extremism.”

The board members added, “In making this determination, the Board was confident about the efficacy of the Saudi rehabilitation program and Saudi Arabia’s ability to monitor the detainee after completion of the program and noted the detainee’s credible desire to participate in the Saudi rehabilitation program and reintegrate into society. The Board also considered the detainee’s well-established family, their willingness and ability to support him upon his return, and their prior success in assisting with the rehabilitation and reintegration of a former Guantánamo detainee [his nephew Sultan al-Uwaydha (ISN 059), who was repatriated to Saudi Arabia in 2007].”

Shalabi arrived at Guantánamo on the day it opened, January 11, 2002, with 19 other men, and the Miami Herald noted that his release “leaves seven of those 20 first-day detainees” still at the prison. The newspaper also noted that, as with previous releases to Saudi Arabia, the Saudi authorities “sent a jet to pick him up.”

Shalabi is fortunate that such good relations exist between the US and Saudi Arabia, and also, perhaps that he is from a “well-established family,” as the PRB noted, or his release would not have been so swift.

Of the 114 men still held, 43 were approved for release nearly six years ago — in January 2010 — by the Guantánamo Review Task Force, and nine others have been approved for release since January 2014 by PRBs, making 52 prisoners in total who have been approved for release. The majority, however, are Yemenis — 43 of these 52 — and with the entire US establishment agreeing that it is unacceptable to repatriate any Yemenis because of the security situation in their home country, and with Congress having imposed a ban on bringing any prisoners approved for release to be resettled in the US, they are waiting for third countries to be found that will take them in.

The other nine men include Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, who was first told that the US no longer wanted to hold him in 2007, and whose return to his family in the UK ought to be straightforward. Campaigners (including my own campaign, We Stand With Shaker), MPs and even the Prime Minister David Cameron have been repeatedly calling for his release, and yet, inexplicably, he is still held.

Defense secretary Ashton Carter has to sign off on any proposed releases, and to notify Congress 30 days in advance, and on September 14 the Associated Press noted that Carter has received the files of four prisoners which “are ready to go to Capitol Hill, likely later this month.” I await the news of these men’s release — and their identities — with great interest, and note that, in the Washington Post yesterday, Adam Goldman stated, “With Shalabi’s transfer, there are nine Saudis remaining at the prison, but only Shaker Aamer, a British resident, has been cleared for release. Carter is expected to approve his transfer in the coming weeks, along with one for Ahmed Ould Abdel al-Aziz, a Mauritanian.”

I very much hope that this true. However, I cannot emphasize enough how urgent it is that all the men approved for release are freed as soon as possible, as it is unacceptable that anyone should continue to be held nearly six years after they were first told that the US no longer wanted to hold 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, the co-director of We Stand With Shaker, calling for the immediate release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, 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 122 prisoners released from February 2009 to mid-September 2015 (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.

Video: On RT, Andy Worthington Discusses Release of ‘Song for Shaker Aamer’ and the Failure to Free Him from Guantánamo

Yesterday, after I had released ‘Song for Shaker Aamer’ by my band The Four Fathers on Bandcamp, I sent out a press release that was picked up on by RT, who invited me to discuss the release of the song, and Shaker’s ongoing imprisonment without charge or trial in Guantánamo, on the evening news.

I was delighted to cycle down to Millbank Tower for the interview, which was not shown last night, but, I hear, was shown in rotation on the news earlier today, although I didn’t see it until I was sent a link to the video that RT made available on YouTube, which I’m posting below.

My thanks to RT for making the interview available, and for their coverage of the story — the We Stand With Shaker banner projected on a huge screen in the studio, the clips from the song, and my interview, in which I was able to express my profound frustration with the fact that he is still held, despite being approved for release under George W. Bush in 2007 and Barack Obama in 2009, despite the UK government calling for his return since 2007, despite the UK government backing a Parliamentary motion calling for his return in March, despite David Cameron raising his case with President Obama this year, and despite the president promising to “prioritize” his case.

I hope ‘Song for Shaker Aamer’, which was featured in the campaign video for We Stand With Shaker, is of interest. It’s available as a download for just 80p ($1.25) — although you can pay more if you want — and 25% of the money raised will be donated to Shaker’s family in London.

Note: ‘Song for Shaker Aamer’ is the opening track on The Four Fathers’ debut album ‘Love and War.’ The eight-track album is available in its entirety on Bandcamp for £4.50 ($7), or you can buy individual tracks for 60p ($0.93) each, and a CD is also available for £7 ($10.85), which contains two bonus tracks. You can also buy the CD via my website.

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, the co-director of We Stand With Shaker, calling for the immediate release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, 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.

Andy Worthington’s Band The Four Fathers Release ‘Song for Shaker Aamer’ as Download: 25% of Takings to Go to Shaker’s Family

Buy ‘Song for Shaker Aamer’ here!

Today, on Bandcamp, I launched ‘Song for Shaker Aamer’, about the last British resident in Guantánamo, as a download, available for just 80p ($1.25) — although you can pay as much as you want for it — with 25% of the money received going to Shaker Aamer’s family.

I wrote ‘Song for Shaker Aamer’ last year, and it was used as the song in the campaign video for We Stand With Shaker, the campaign to free Shaker from Guantánamo, which I launched last November with the activist Joanne MacInnes, and which has secured substantial support, with nearly 100 celebrities and MPs standing with the giant inflatable figure that is at the heart of the campaign.

I recorded ‘Song for Shaker Aamer’ with my band The Four Fathers, and it is the opening song on our debut album ‘Love and War.” The eight-track album is available in its entirety on Bandcamp for £4.50 (£7), or you can buy individual tracks for 60p ($0.93) each, and a CD is also available for £7 ($10.85), which contains two bonus tracks. You can also buy the CD via my website.

As I stated in a press release I sent out today promoting the release of the song as a download:

It is disgraceful that Shaker Aamer is still held, despite being approved for release from Guantánamo by a military review board under George W. Bush in 2007 and by a high-level task force established by President Obama 2009. The British government has also been calling for his release since 2007, and this year David Cameron raised Shaker’s case with President Obama, and the government supported a Parliamentary motion in March calling for his release. His continued imprisonment ought to be source of shame for the Obama administration, and of embarrassment for David Cameron.

See below for the video — and, if you like the song, and/or its message, please buy it!

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer, film-maker and singer-songwriter (the lead singer and main songwriter for the London-based band The Four Fathers, whose debut album, ‘Love and War,’ was released in July 2015). He is the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign, the co-director of We Stand With Shaker, calling for the immediate release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, 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.