My Exchange with Guantánamo Spokesperson Who Called Me An “Activist” and Not A “Real Journalist”

Pentagon Denies Reports That Two Guan... Don’t Forget the Hunger Strike at Gua...

My Exchange with Guantánamo Spokesperson Who Called Me An “Activist” and Not A “Real Journalist”

In the early morning on Saturday June 1, drawing on reports published in in the Arabic- and French-speaking media in Mauritania, I published a story based on those reports, which, in turn, drew on comments made by a human rights representative in Mauritania, who stated that the last two Mauritanian prisoners in Guantánamo had been released, along with a man held in Bagram in Afghanistan.

It turned out that the Mauritanian source was mistaken, and later that day, after Agence France-Presse (AFP) and the Associated Press had also reported the story, the Pentagon stated, “All 166 detainees who have been at the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay remain at the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay. There have been no transfers out of Guantánamo since Omar Khadr was transferred to Canada in October.”

While I was monitoring the various reports and denials relating to the story, I responded, at 7.12 pm GMT yesterday, to a comment from a reader on my website about how the US government and the US military don’t always tell the truth by writing, “It now seems clear that only the prisoner from Bagram was returned to Mauritania, but I have no time for Pentagon spokespeople smugly explaining how there are still 166 men in Guantánamo, and no one has been released since last October. There’s no reason for anyone to be even vaguely proud of that fact.”

My comment led Ron Flanders of Southcom to send me a comment at 1.54 am GMT on June 3, which I’m cross-posting below, along with my reply, as Mr. Flanders singled me out for criticism for not consulting with the authorities prior to publishing my story, and made some allegations about my status as a journalist — and some statements about the truthfulness of Pentagon spokespeople when it comes to Guantánamo that are, I believe, worth publicizing.

Mr. Flanders wrote:

There was nothing smug in the Pentagon spokesperson’s quote about the 166 detainees. He was asked a question by a reporter about the story online about two Mauritanians being released. He answered the question. It’s not his fault someone irresponsibly reported that two detainees had been released from Guantánamo without bothering to call and make a basic fact-check.

I understand there’s a difference between an activist and a real journalist, but it’s not helpful to anyone when errors such as this are made. Please feel free to call us and double-check the next time you hear rumors about a Guantánamo detainee. You will get an honest answer, as Mr. Leopold and Ms. Rosenberg did this time.

Here’s my reply, which I’m publishing here, directly, rather than sending to Mr. Flanders at Southcom, as I think his comments deserve as wide an audience as possible:

No offense, Ron, but the US military at Guantánamo doesn’t have a great reputation for telling the truth over the last eleven years and nearly five months that the prison has been open. Next you’ll be telling me that you run a “humane” and “transparent” facility where the prisoners — sorry, “detainees’ — are so well looked after that it’s inexplicable that they’ve been on a hunger strike for nearly four months. The truth is that Guantánamo is a legal, moral and ethical abomination, and its continued existence corrodes any notion America might have of itself as a beacon of hope, justice or fairness.

As for Pentagon spokespeople telling the truth, I was lied to when I called, many years ago, and asked why there were missing ISN numbers on the prisoner lists released in 2006. I was told that those numbers hadn’t been used. It wasn’t until WikiLeaks released the Guantánamo files in 2011 that I was able to establish that I had been lied to. ISN 212, for example, one of the missing numbers, was repeatedly referred to and named — he was Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, who died in Libya in 2009 after being returned there following years in “black sites” run by the CIA or by proxy torturers, and who may have been held at Guantánamo at some point in the secret facility that the CIA had between September 2003 and March 2004, code-named “Strawberry Fields.”

Another area in which Pentagon spokespeople do not have a great reputation for truth-telling is in the comments made about prisoners who have died at Guantánamo, who were never given Article 5 Geneva Convention hearings or trials to establish whether the supposed evidence against them was at all reliable. Nine prisoners, you may recall, have died at the facility — seven of whom allegedly committed suicide — and yet, on several occasions, statements have been made, following prisoners’ deaths, describing them as threats to the US with connections to al-Qaeda and/or the Taliban. These are statements not based on objectively tested evidence, and, moreover, they reek of cowardice and cruelty, aimed at those who can no longer answer back because they have died in Guantánamo waiting, in vain, for justice.

I thought the response was smug, because my definition of smugness, from a spokesperson from Guantánamo, is saying how many people are held, and when the last time was that anyone was released, without adding that it is disgraceful to have to report this, considering that 56 of the 166 men still held — the majority of whom are on a hunger strike to protest about their indefinite detention — were told over three years ago that an inter-agency task force, established by the President, had found that there was no reason for them to be tried or indefinitely detained, and that they would not be spending the rest of their lives in Guantánamo.

I understand that you are feeling smug about snidely referring to me as an “activist” rather than a “real journalist,” and I’m sure that people worldwide will be glad to know that others who are not “real journalists,” and who “irresponsibly reported” the story are Agence France-Presse (AFP), who also published a story based on the statement from Mauritania from the human rights representative, which, it turned out, was mistaken, the Associated Press, who did the same, and the numerous other news outlets who ran the stories by AFP and the AP.

We made a mistake. Don’t target me for it without also acknowledging that the entire history of the Guantánamo prison’s PR machine has been devoted to telling the world lies about the prison, and the men held there, for eleven years.

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer and film-maker. He is the co-founder of the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — 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).