Archive for February, 2015

Deptford Screening of “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” + Q&A with Andy Worthington, March 6

The poster for a screening of "Outside the Law: Stories from Guantanamo" at the Deptford Cinema on March 6, 2015.It’s been some time since there’s been a screening of “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo,” the documentary film I co-directed, with Polly Nash, which was released in 2009, so I’m delighted that, next Friday, the Deptford Cinema, “a new, not-for-profit, volunteer-run cinema focusing on art film and experimental film,” located at 39 Deptford Broadway, London SE8 4PQ (see the map on the Facebook page here), is showing it, and that I’ll be doing a Q&A session after the screening.

The Facebook page for the event is here. It begins at 7pm, when I will be around to talk to people before the screening begins, and the film itself will be shown at 8pm, with the Q&A beginning at 9.15. Tickets cost £5 (or £3 concessions) and can be bought online here.

This is my description of the film: Read the rest of this entry »

As Last Egyptian Is Cleared for Release from Guantánamo, Another Yemeni Faces Periodic Review Board

Guantanamo prisoner Tariq al-Sawah as a young man, prior to his capture and transfer to Guantanamo, where his weight has ballooned, and, as a result, his health is severely threatened. Photo made available by his family.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.

Here at “Close Guantánamo,” we have been campaigning, since we launched in January 2012, on the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, for all the prisoners held at Guantánamo to be freed, unless they are to be charged and tried, and we are pleased to note that, as part of a new review process, the Periodic Review Boards (PRBs), established in 2013, seven men who had long been regarded as “too dangerous to release” have had those decisions overturned, and have had their release recommended.

Six of these decisions were taken last year, but the latest decision, which was taken on February 12 but was not reported until today, was for Tariq al-Sawah, the last Egyptian in Guantánamo, to be released — which, we hope, will happen soon. I wrote about his PRB, on January 22, here, describing the 57-year old’s serious health problems, as well as the absurdity of continuing to hold someone regarded as having provided a wealth of useful information, and I find it entirely appropriate that the board has recommended his release.

In its Unclassified Summary of Final Determination, the review board stated: Read the rest of this entry »

Radio: Andy Worthington Speaks to Michael Slate and Scott Horton About Guantánamo, David Hicks and Shaker Aamer

Andy Worthington speaks at a meeting in Northampton, Massachusetts on January 14, 2015 (Photo: Debra Sweet for Andy Worthington).I’m pleased to report that, in the last week, I have taken part in two radio shows in the US with two radio hosts that I have known for a long time and who I admire — Michael Slate and Scott Horton.

Michael’s show was entitled, “From the Torture Chambers of Guantánamo to the Deadly Streets of the US: American Thugs on the Rampage,” which is a great title, and I was delighted to be on the same show as Larry Siems, the editor of Guantánamo Diary, the extraordinarily powerful book by Mohamedou Ould Slahi, who is still held at Guantánamo (Larry and I were previously on another show, in Chicago, which you can find here). Also on the show was the activist Carl Dix.

The hour-long show is here, and I’m on for the first 16 minutes, bringing Michael’s listeners up to date on the current situation at Guantánamo, and also speaking about We Stand With Shaker, the campaign to secure the release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, which I launched in November with the activist Joanne MacInnes. Read the rest of this entry »

Photos and Report: Celebrating Magna Carta and Habeas Corpus and Campaigning to Save Legal Aid at the Not the Global Law Summit in London

A puppet of Chris Grayling as King John at the Not the Global Law Summit opposite the Houses of Parliament on February 23, 2015 (Photo: Andy Worthington).

See my photo set on Flickr here!

Yesterday, I was delighted to be a speaker at the Not the Global Law Summit, held in Old Palace Yard, opposite the Houses of Parliament, and also to have an opportunity to take the photos you can see in my photo set here. The event was called as a protest against the Global Law Summit, a three-day event taking place in the nearby Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, where tickets are £1500 (or £1750 on the door), and 2,000 delegates are in attendance from 110 countries, including 90 government ministers (see the speaker list here). As I mentioned in the text accompanying my photos, the Global Law Summit purports to celebrate Magna Carta in the year of its 800th anniversary, but in fact celebrates the law as a facilitator for corporate greed and unaccountable power.

The Not the Global Law Summit was also part of an ongoing campaign by the organisers, the Justice Alliance, to resist savage cuts to legal aid proposed by the Tory-led coalition government, and primarily by its chief butcher of the legal world, Chris Grayling, the first Lord Chancellor who is not from a legal background.

The Not the Global Law Summit also took place after a three-day Relay for Rights, featuring a giant puppet of Chris Grayling as King John, in the stocks. The Relay involved a 42-mile walk from Runnymede, where Magna Carta was signed in 1215, whose most lasting outcome was the creation of habeas corpus — the right not to be arbitrarily imprisoned, and to have a fair trial — which has been exported around the world and is our greatest defence against executive overreach. Read the rest of this entry »

Defending 800 Years of Habeas Corpus: We Stand With Shaker Attends Not the Global Law Summit in London on Monday

The Justice Alliance prepares to set off from Runnymede for the Houses of Parliament on a three-day Relay for Rights on February 21, 2015 (Photo: Fiona Hanson for the Independent).The following is a version of a press release I wrote and sent out on behalf of the We Stand With Shaker campaign that I launched in November with the activist Joanne MacInnes. The photo to the left, of campaigners about to set off from Runnymede to Parliament yesterday on a three-day Relay for Rights, shows, at the back, Chris Grayling, the Lord Chancellor, as King John. The first non-legal appointee to the job, he is to be publicly criticised at the Global Law Summit by Tony Cross, chairman of the Criminal Bar Association, who told the Independent, “I’m going to talk about how successive governments have treated public law with contempt, certainly over the last 20 years.”

Giant inflatable figure of Shaker Aamer to visit Queen Elizabeth Conference Centre to protest about hypocrisy of corporate Magna Carta celebration while Shaker is still denied habeas corpus at Guantánamo.

At 1pm on Monday 23 February, Andy Worthington and Joanne MacInnes, the directors of We Stand With Shaker, the campaign calling for the release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, will be joining lawyers at Old Palace Yard, opposite the Houses of Parliament, for Not the Global Law Summit, an event put together by the Justice Alliance.

The Justice Alliance is a lawyers’ organisation campaigning to defend legal aid from savage cuts imposed by the government, and Not the Global Law Summit is the culmination of Relay for Rights, a three-day march from Runnymede to protest about the hypocrisy of the Global Law Summit, taking place from 23-25 February at the Queen Elizabeth Conference Centre. While purporting to mark the 800th anniversary of the signing of Magna Carta, the summit, at which tickets cost £1500 a head, is actually an international corporate sham, described by the journalist Peter Oborne as “sordid, disgusting and debased.” Read the rest of this entry »

Photos: 13 Years in Guantánamo – Protest for Shaker Aamer Outside 10 Downing Street, February 14, 2015

Campaigners call for the release from Guantanamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, opposite 10 Downing Street on February 14, 2015, the 13th anniversary of his arrival at the prison (Photo: Andy Worthington).See my photo set on Flickr here!

February 14, 2015 was the 13th anniversary of the arrival at Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, who, disgracefully, is still held, despite being approved for release by the US authorities twice, in 2007 and 2009.

To mark the occasion, the Save Shaker Aamer Campaign, with support from other groups including We Stand With Shaker (the group co-founded in November by Andy Worthington and Joanne MacInnes), the London Guantánamo Campaign, Reprieve and various Amnesty International groups held a lively protest opposite 10 Downing Street, with a number of speakers including Joy Hurcombe, the chair of SSAC, Katie Taylor of Reprieve, the journalists Yvonne Ridley and Victoria Brittain, the peace activist Bruce Kent, Andy Worthington and Shaykh Suliman Ghani, a teacher and broadcaster, and a friend of Shaker’s family. The speakers were ably coordinated by the campaigner David Harrold.

It was a great turnout, as I hope the photos show, and the particular focus of the event — just across the road — was David Cameron, the British Prime Minister. The British government claims that it is doing all it can to secure Shaker’s release, but that ultimately his fate is the in the hands of his US captors, but that is simply untrue. David Cameron could secure his return if he made it enough of a priority, which he should be doing, as Shaker is a legal British resident, with permanent leave to remain, and if any other legal resident found themselves imprisoned without charge or trial for years, and tortured, it is a safe bet to say that they would already have been released. Read the rest of this entry »

Please Read My New Al-Jazeera Article About the Significance of the Dismissal of David Hicks’ Military Commission Conviction at Guantánamo

A screenshot of my article for Al-Jazeera about the dismissal of David Hicks' conviction at Guantanamo.Dear friends and supporters,

I hope you have time to read my new article for Al-Jazeera English, “The collapse of Guantánamo’s military commissions,” which, at the time of writing, has over 350 Facebook likes and shares, and has been tweeted over 125 times.

It’s my response to the news, on Wednesday February 18, that the US Court of Military Commission Review dismissed the conviction against David Hicks, an Australian, and the first prisoner to be convicted in the much-criticized military commission trial system, in March 2007.

This was an expected result, following previous dismissals of convictions, beginning in October 2012, but it does not make it any less significant. Hicks first announced an appeal in October 2013, and then lodged a second appeal last August, both with the Court of Military Commission Review that was established in August 2007 because, until then, no review process existed for the commissions, and two of the judges involved had raised issues that only the court could resolve. Read the rest of this entry »

A Tale of Two Guantánamos: Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s World of Torture vs. the Senate’s Terrorist Fantasies

The cover of "Guantanamo Diary" by Mohamedou Ould Slahi, published in January 2015.

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.

When it comes to Guantánamo, there are, sadly, two worlds of opinion, and the 122 men still held are, for the most part, caught in the struggle between the two.

In the first world, it is recognized that Guantánamo is a legal, moral and ethical abomination, a place where the prisoners held — 779 in total — were subjected to a series of ghastly experiments involving imprisonment without charge or trial, torture, and various forms of medical and psychological experimentation.

One man who endured particularly brutal torture at Guantánamo is Mohamedou Ould Slahi, the author of Guantánamo Diary, published last month and serialized in the Guardian, which has become a New York Times bestseller, even though Slahi is still held at Guantánamo. He wrote it in the prison as a hand-written manuscript in 2005, but it took until 2012 for it to be approved for release by the US authorities — albeit with over 2,500 redactions. Read the rest of this entry »

Photos: “There is No Love in Guantánamo” – We Stand With Shaker Protest at the US Embassy in London, February 13, 2015

Music legend Roger Waters (ex-Pink Floyd) supports We Stand With Shaker at the US Embassy on February 13, 2015 (Photo: Andy Worthington).

See my photo set on Flickr here!

The last week has been hugely busy for campaigners working to try to secure the closure of Guantánamo; and, specifically, the release of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison. February 14 was the 13th anniversary of Shaker’s arrival at Guantánamo, even though he was first told nearly eight years ago that the US no longer wanted to hold him, and, in 2009, was approved for release a second time by the high-level, inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force that President Obama established shortly after first taking office in January 2009.

His continued imprisonment is an absolute disgrace — for both the British and American governments — and no more excuses are acceptable, although they continue to be furnished by both sides. Last month, Shaker’s case was raised by David Cameron when he met President Obama in the US, but that only led to the president promising to “prioritize” his case, which has led nowhere to date. In fact, the outcome of this meeting was pure evasion: if Shaker’s case was genuinely prioritized, he would be home in London with his family a month from now — after the required 30-day notice to Congress — whereas the outgoing defense secretary Chuck Hagel, who must make the certifications to Congress that it is safe to release prisoners, recently explained that he hadn’t even been given Shaker’s file.

On the eve of the 13th anniversary of Shaker’s arrival at Guantánamo, the We Stand With Shaker campaign, which I established with Joanne MacInnes in November, planned to hand in a giant Valentine’s Day card for Shaker to the Ambassador, Matthew W. Barzun, with the following message: “We urge you to ask President Obama to secure the immediate release from Guantánamo of British resident Shaker Aamer. Please tell the president we want Shaker returned to his loved ones in London now.” Supporters were also encouraged to send smaller versions of the card directly to the Ambassador. Read the rest of this entry »

“There’s a Part of Our Heart That’s Missing”: Shaker Aamer’s Sons Speak to Sky News on 13th Anniversary of His Arrival at Guantánamo

A screenshot of Ian Woods of Sky News interviewing two of Shaker Aamer's sons, Mikhail and Faris, in the presence of Saeed Siddique, Shaker's father-in-law, and Shaykh Suliman Ghani, the family's former imam.Yesterday (February 13) began with Sky News broadcasting an interview with two of the three sons of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo, who is still held despite being approved for release from the prison by the US authorities in 2007 and 2009. The two boys who were interviewed are Mikhail (or Micheal), 15 and Faris, who is 13 on Saturday, and whose birth, extraordinarily, took place on the day that his father arrived at Guantánamo. Shaker’s other son is Saif, and he also has a daughter, Johaina.

In their first TV interview, Shaker’s sons spoke about their father, and below is a transcript I’ve put together.

Ian Woods: Boys, I’d like to begin by showing you an interview that we arranged to have done yesterday at Guantánamo with a US officer explaining why your father is still detained. Read the rest of this entry »

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Andy Worthington

Investigative journalist, author, campaigner, commentator and public speaker. Recognized as an authority on Guantánamo and the “war on terror.” Co-founder, Close Guantánamo and We Stand With Shaker. Also, photo-journalist (The State of London), and singer and songwriter (The Four Fathers).
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