About me
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Welcome to my website. I’m a freelance investigative journalist, author and filmmaker, specializing in Guantánamo and the “War on Terror,” but also covering revolutionary movements in the Middle East, the “Occupy” movement, and UK politics. I write regularly for newspapers and websites including the Guardian, Truthout, Cageprisoners, and the Future of Freedom Foundation. I also write occasionally for the Daily Star, Lebanon, the Huffington Post, Antiwar.com, CounterPunch, AlterNet, and ZNet, and my work is regularly cross-posted across the Internet.
My website is one of the top 100 world politics blogs, was archived by the British Library in January 2011, and receives around 300,000 page views every month, and I’m pleased to report that, in the five years I have spent working full-time on Guantánamo and related issues, I have worked for two NGOs (Reprieve and Cageprisoners), and have also been involved with a third NGO, Amnesty International, primarily in promoting, to student audiences, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo,” the film I co-directed with Polly Nash. In addition, I have worked as a consultant for the United Nations, and have also worked as a media partner with WikiLeaks.
Here you can find information about my book The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, and distributed in the US by Macmillan), including reviews by released Guantánamo prisoner Moazzam Begg, lawyers Clive Stafford Smith, Marc Falkoff and Candace Gorman, authors Michelle Shephard, Stephen Grey and Peter Bergen, film-maker Ken Loach, and film producer Marty Fisher. The book is available from Amazon (US and UK), and a wide range of other outlets, and you can also buy it directly from me.
You can also find information about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (directed by myself and Polly Nash), which was launched in October 2009, and was featured on Democracy Now!, ABC News and Truthout. “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” is a Spectacle Production, and copies of the DVD are available here (and here if you’re in the US). For further information, interviews, or to inquire about broadcasting, distributing or showing “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo,” please contact Andy Worthington or Polly Nash.
Having spent several years looking at the undercurrents of post-war British social history — in particular the clash between the state and some of its most outspoken critics (protest movements, travellers and alternative communities) — I turned my attention to the “War on Terror” in 2006. Like many decent-minded citizens of the world, I had been deeply concerned, from the moment Guantánamo opened in January 2002, that the US administration’s response to 9/11 was both cruel and misguided, but although I conducted some research in the years that followed, it was not until March 2006, when I read Enemy Combatant by the released British prisoner Moazzam Begg, that I asked myself the fateful question, “Who’s in Guantánamo?” The quest to answer this question consumed over a year of my life, and led to the creation of The Guantánamo Files.
To coincide with the publication of The Guantánamo Files, I started providing additional information about the prisoners that I was unable to include in the book. See the links in the left-hand column for these 12 online chapters, which I completed in February 2009. Also in the left-hand column is my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, published in four parts, which I first made available in March 2009, after completing the online chapters, and then updated in January 2010, and again in July 2010, as well as my definitive list of the Guantánamo habeas results, and my annotated Bagram prisoner list.
One of the busiest journalists in the world
In May 2007, I also started working full-time as a journalist and blogger, focusing specifically on the latest developments at Guantánamo and in the wider “War on Terror.” See the homepage, or choose from “Categories” or “Archives” in the right-hand column) for these articles (over 1000 by May 2011) — and a particularly useful guide to navigating these articles can be found here. These are mostly original work, and mostly full-length articles, and they make up the most sustained commentary about Guantánamo available anywhere online. Many of these articles were initially published in the media mentioned above.
In February 2008, I co-wrote a front-page news story with Carlotta Gall for the New York Times, and I have also had articles published by the BBC, in The Raw Story, Index on Censorship, Extra!, the monthly magazine produced by FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting), Socialist Review, and Amnesty International’s magazines in the Netherlands and Australia. In the summer of 2008 I wrote the entry Guantanamo Scandal for the Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia, and in 2009 I undertook research and writing on a major report on secret detention for the United Nations (PDF, and also see here, here and here). I have also written for the website Nth Position, and am grateful to the British human rights group Cageprisoners for making so much of my work available, in addition to the articles written exclusively for them. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed.
TV and radio
Since September 2007, I have also undertaken various TV interviews — with the BBC (most recently on “The Big Questions” on BBC1), Al-Jazeera, Democracy Now!, the Islam Channel, Press TV, Russia Today, The Young Turks TV and others — plus dozens of radio interviews, mainly with progressive stations in the United States, including Jeff Farias, Peter B. Collins and Antiwar Radio, but also on the BBC World Service, on the Asian Network, and, one memorable occasion on BBC Radio 5 Live, as well as with George Galloway on his TalkSPORT show.
Events (2007-09)
I have also undertaken numerous other interviews by phone or email, and a number of speaking engagements, including the Radical Book Fair in Edinburgh (with Arun Kundnani), and various other talks with Moazzam Begg, Zachary Katznelson of Reprieve, and former Guantánamo chaplain James Yee. Appearances in 2008-09 included Q & A sessions following screenings of the Academy Award-winning documentary “Taxi to the Dark Side” at the Frontline Club (with Moazzam Begg) and at the ICA, a talk to a group of sixth-formers in Bromley, a panel discussion in Brighton on the UN’s International Day In Support of Victims of Torture, a seminar at the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, a Fabian Society meeting in Brighton with released Guantánamo prisoner Omar Deghayes, a workshop on Afghanistan at a Media Workers Against War conference (with Moazzam Begg and photographer Guy Smallman), a talk to a remarkably well-attended Amnesty International student group at Bristol University, an Amnesty event in Guildford with Bruce Kent, and an event to mark the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, with speakers including A.C. Grayling. In June 2009, I attended a Q&A session at the BFI following a screening of films by Libyan filmmaker Mohamed Maklouf, and I also attended various protests against Guantánamo, organized by Amnesty International and the London Guantánamo Campaign.
In March 2008 I visited the United States to promote The Guantánamo Files, an inspiring trip that involved numerous TV and radio interviews, and events at Columbia University in New York (with colleagues from the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, Human Rights Watch and the Center for Constitutional Rights) and the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C.
More US visits, UK tours and a tour of Poland (2009-2011)
In November 2009, I returned to the US to promote “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo,” visiting New York, Fairfax, Virginia, Washington D.C., Berkeley and San Francisco (reports can be found here and here), and in 2010 I undertook an extensive UK tour of the film, mainly with released prisoner Omar Deghayes, but also with Polly Nash and Moazzam Begg, which involved screenings at Amnesty International’s Human Rights Action Centre, the National Film Theatre, the Renoir Cinema and Battersea Arts Centre, and a number of universities in London (LSE, SOAS, UCL, South Bank, Birkbeck, Roehampton), and also in Oxford, Bradford, Norwich, Canterbury (where 500 people turned up!), Dundee, Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow, Colchester, Birmingham, Newcastle, Brighton, Malvern, Bangor and Sheffield. The film was also featured in two international film festivals — the Human Rights, Human Wrongs Film Festival in Oslo in February 2010, and the London International Documentary Festival in April.
In October 2010, I visited the US again, to take part in numerous speaking events and radio interviews during a week-long series of events, “Berkeley Says No to Torture” Week, and I returned again in January 2011 to campaign for the closure of Guantánamo in New York and in Washington D.C., a visit which again involved numerous speaking events and TV appearances, including a protest outside The White House on the 9th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo.
At the start of February, I undertook a week-long tour of Poland, showing “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo,” and followed this with the start of another UK tour of the film, primarily involving screenings for Amnesty International student groups, with the backing of Amnesty International UK, which came about after I took part in AIUK’s Student Conference in November 2010. I also took part in other Amnesty events in December 2010 and January 2011, and in a fascinating discussion about the future of the media with Nick Davies in Brighton in October 2010.
As of May 2011, the current tour of “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” has involved screenings in London (LSE, King’s, SOAS and Brunel), Bristol, Durham, Edinburgh, Nottingham, Leicester and Hull, with more lined up, and has also featured in two film festivals: the D.C. Independent Film Festival in Washington D.C. (on March 5) and the Bradford International Film Festival (on March 26 and 27).
Colleagues
From March to October 2008 I was the Communications Manager for Reprieve, the legal action charity that uses the law to enforce the human rights of prisoners, from death row to Guantánamo Bay, in 2009 (as mentioned above) I undertook research and writing on a major report on secret detention for the United Nations, and in June 2010 I began working for Cageprisoners, on a part-time basis, as a Senior Researcher.
In April and May 2011, I also worked as a media partner of WikiLeaks during the release of the classified military documents relating to the prisoners at Guantánamo, known as Detainee Assessment Briefs, which, to discerning eyes, helped to undermine still further the US authorities’ claims that Guantánamo is anything other than a house of cards based on torture, coercion, bribery and false confessions.
I am also a policy advisor to the Future of Freedom Foundation, a member of the No More Guantánamos Advisory Board, a member of the Robert Jackson Steering Committee, and a member of the War Criminals Watch Advisory Board.
Please contact me if you would like to interview me, or if you would like to engage me as a speaker or a writer. Alternatively, you can contact my publicists at Pluto Press on +44 (0)20 8348 2724 or email Jon Wheatley.
You can also find information on this site about my previous books, Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion (one of 50 books chosen as part of the London Libraries’ promotion, A Book with a View, which ran from May to September 2007), and The Battle of the Beanfield, which can be ordered through this site.
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My first book, Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion, a social history of Stonehenge described by SchNEWS as “by far the best bit of modern British social history I’ve seen,” was published by Alternative Albion, an imprint of Heart of Albion Press, in June 2004. I also compiled and edited The Battle of the Beanfield, published by Enabler Publications in June 2005.
As a journalist, my pre-Guantánamo work was published in newspapers and magazines including the Guardian, Fortean Times, the Idler, Festival Eye, SchNEWS, British Archaeology, 3rd Stone and on the Nth Position website.
In June 2006, I compered a Battle of the Beanfield 21st anniversary reunion at the Assembly Rooms in Glastonbury (see Beanfield reunion photos), and I also appeared at the Big Green Gathering in August, where I gave an overview of festivals, alternative communities and protest movements from the 1960s to the present day.
In 2004 and 2005 I toured around the country with an exhibition of photos of the Stonehenge festivals and the Battle of the Beanfield (including photos by Alan Lodge, Adrian Arbib and Tim Malyon). This was shown at the Glastonbury Festival, the Kingston Green Fair, the Strawberry Fair in Cambridge and the Stroud Arts Festival (Space 05), and also at pioneering cooperative social centres in Brighton (the Cowley Club), Bristol (Kebele), London (the Vertigo Club) and Nottingham (the Sumac Centre).
I also gave talks about Stonehenge at the Big Green Gathering and the Shambala Festival, Rainbow 2000 camps in Wales and the Forest of Dean, and at various venues in Cambridge (Libra Aries Books), London (Housmans Bookshop, The Urban 75 Offline Club, The Moot with No Name, SELFS, London Earth Mysteries, the South London Radical History Group and the Brockley Max arts festival), Manchester (New Aeon Books), Oxford (Oxford Pagan Circle), Penzance (Cornish Earth Mysteries Group) and Slough (the Fenner Brockway Memorial Lecture — with human rights lawyer Louise Christian and Labour activist Walter Wolfgang — at the FennerFest arts festival). Some of these events involved screenings of the excellent — if harrowing — 1991 Beanfield documentary Operation Solstice, directed by Neil Goodwin and Gareth Morris.
I’ve also occasionally been invited to conferences — ‘Megalithomania!’ in 2002, organised by 3rd Stone and Strange Attractor, the Pagan Federation International Conventions in 2003 and 2004, and ‘Exploring the Maltese Prehistoric Temple Culture’, an international conference in Malta in 2003. In 2006 I gave a talk at the first Pagan Network Convention, held in London in March, and was also part of an inter-disciplinary conference in Bristol, ‘The Cultural Reception of Prehistoric Monuments 1600-2000’, organized by the historians Ronald Hutton and Joanne Parker, which took place in April. And in May I spoke about the pagan reinvention of Stonehenge and Avebury at the first Megalithomania conference in Glastonbury, an exciting weekend that also featured the likes of Robin Heath and John Michell.
When not tackling global injustice, I live quietly in south London with my wife and son.
