Binyam Mohamed

Like alcoholics queuing up drinks at closing time, the US administration is pressing charges against prisoners at Guantánamo at a frantic rate, anxious to be seen to be validating the chronic lawlessness of the last seven years before November’s Presidential election.
At the end of last week, four more prisoners were put forward for trial by [...]

Today’s Independent runs a front-page story, The Last Briton in Guantánamo faces death penalty, focusing on the plight of British resident Binyam Mohamed. Seized in Pakistan in April 2002, Binyam was subsequently rendered to Morocco, where proxy torturers, working on behalf of the Americans, tortured him for 18 months, in interrogation sessions that included regularly [...]

On Tuesday, Binyam Mohamed, a 29-year old British resident in Guantánamo, sued the British government for refusing to produce evidence which, his lawyers contend, would demonstrate that he was tortured for 27 months by or on behalf of US forces in Morocco and Afghanistan, that any “evidence” against him was only obtained through torture, and [...]

Disturbing news from Clive Stafford Smith, director of the legal charity Reprieve, who reports that his client Binyam Mohamed “may be close to suicide.”
Mr. Mohamed, 29, is one of five British residents whose return to the UK was requested by the British government in August, but although three of these men –- Jamil El-Banna, Omar [...]

Andy Worthington, author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison, explains why news that four British residents are to be released from Guantánamo provides grounds for cautious celebration, but also points out that two British residents will not be coming home.
I was at a mosque in Glasgow on [...]