Welcome to Andy Worthington

My report about a powerful new exhibition of Guantánamo prisoners’ artwork that has just opened at CUNY School of Law in New York, featuring the work of eleven current and former prisoners, including Khalid Qasim, whose work I saw at a earlier version of the exhibition last month, during my annual US trip to call for the closure of the prison on the anniversary of its opening.

With one week to go until the start of the US extradition hearing for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, I urge the mainstream media to get more involved, drawing on a recent Guardian article by journalist and academic Roy Greenslade, in which he called on newspaper editors to speak out against the proposed extradition as an urgent and necessary defence of press freedom.

My report on the good news that three Afghan nationals and former Guantánamo prisoners, who were sent to the UAE in 2016-17, have been repatriated following a peace agreement negotiated between the Afghan government and former warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hesb-e Islami movement in 2016.

My report about the questioning, in pre-trial military commission hearings at Guantánamo, of CIA torture architect James Mitchell, and my hope that those paying attention to the hearings don’t forget that 40 men are still held at Guantánamo, and that all of them are fundamentally deprived of justice, and will be until the prison is closed for good.

Marking 1,000 days since I began posting a photo a day on Facebook, on a page entitled, ‘The State of London’, drawing from what is now a nearly eight-year archive of photos taken on bike rides around London’s 120 postcodes, in which I record the latest upheavals and changes in the life of this great city, particularly involving the depredations of the housing development industry, the city’s shopfronts and neighbourhoods, its nature, via rivers, canals, trees, parks and hills, and its more ephemeral aspects as reflected in the changing weather and the seasons.

Here’s the video of the panel discussion about Guantánamo that I undertook at the New America think-tank in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 13, with the attorney Tom Wilner. I co-founded the “Close Guantánamo” campaign with Tom in 2012, and we’re grateful that New America has been hosting panel discussions about Guantánamo every year for many years. This year there was a real urgency and anger to our call for the prison to be closed, brought about by three years of Donald Trump effectively sealing the prison shut, even though holding people indefinitely without charge or trial is profoundly unacceptable.

A link to – and my report about – my recent interview with Kevin Gosztola and Rania Khalek for their “Unauthorized Disclosure” podcast, in which we discussed Guantánamo and my recent US trip to call for its closure, and the proposed extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

A round-up of the radio interviews I undertook during my recent US visit to call for the closure of the prison at Guantánamo Bay on the 18th anniversary of its opening.

My report about – and link to the video of – my speaking event about Guantánamo at Revolution Books in New York on January 16, where I was honored to be joined by Shelby Sullivan-Bennis, who represents a number of the men still held at Guantánamo, and who delivered harrowing frontline tales of what it is like inside the prison as its existence is cruelly and pointlessly maintained by Donald Trump.

My report about my US tour, five days in, including a link to my photos of the rally calling for the closure of Guantánamo outside the White House on Saturday (January 11), marking the 18th anniversary of the opening of the prison.