Afghanistan

On the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the Washington Post provided a powerful insight into the human cost of Guantánamo, and the problems created in Afghanistan through the intelligence failures that led to innocent people being seized by mistake, and even through the unforeseen knock-on effects of America’s reconstruction efforts. In Kabul, Staff writer [...]

Three weeks ago, my colleague Jeffrey Kaye, a full-time psychologist in California who also manages to find time to pursue a second career as a blogger producing important work on America’s torture program, wrote an article for Truthout about the use of water torture at Guantánamo, which pulled together information that was previously available, but [...]

Back in May, after the assassination of Osama bin Laden should have brought an end to the “War on Terror,” Frank Lindh, the father of John Walker Lindh, the first convicted prisoner in the Bush administration’s phoney war, wrote an op-ed in the New York Times, which I cross-posted here with commentary, calling for his [...]

This is the sixth article in “Bagram Week” here at Andy Worthington (although I freely acknowedge that the original seven-day schedule has slipped), with seven articles in total exploring what is happening at the main US prison in Afghanistan through reports, analyses of review boards, and the voices of the prisoners themselves, and ongoing updates [...]

This is the fourth article in “Bagram Week” here at Andy Worthington, with seven articles in total exploring what is happening at the main US prison in Afghanistan through reports, analyses of review boards, and the voices of the prisoners themselves, and ongoing updates to the definitive annotated Bagram prisoner list. As part of “Bagram [...]

This is the third article in “Bagram Week” here at Andy Worthington, with seven articles in total exploring what is happening at the main US prison in Afghanistan through reports, analyses of review boards, and the voices of the prisoners themselves, and ongoing updates to the definitive annotated Bagram prisoner list. Since the US prison [...]

This is the second article in “Bagram Week” here at Andy Worthington, with seven articles in total exploring what is happening at the main US prison in Afghanistan through reports, analyses of review boards, and the voices of the prisoners themselves, and ongoing updates to the definitive annotated Bagram prisoner list. So what’s happening at [...]

Every now and then, someone in the mainstream media cuts through the general — and shameful — indifference about Guantánamo, publishing a powerful story that should change hearts and minds. This is the case with a feature in the latest issue of GQ by Michael Paterniti about one of the more notorious cases of cruelty [...]

In a recent article, Spanish Court Gives Go-Ahead for Guantánamo Torture Investigation to Continue, I explained the significance of the recent decision by the Spanish National Court (Audiencia Nacional) to proceed with an investigation into torture at Guantánamo. The case is based on the country’s universal jurisdiction laws, and the court’s decision was described by [...]

Following the death at Guantánamo last week of Awal Gul, an Afghan held for nine years without charge or trial, his body was returned to his home country, where 5,000 people attended his funeral on Monday in the Najmul Jihad area of Jalalabad. With typical insensitivity, the US authorities responded to Gul’s death — apparently [...]