British residents in Guantanamo

On Friday, it emerged in a UK court that the Metropolitan Police is investigating allegations that MI5 was complicit in the torture, in US custody in Afghanistan, of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident still held at Guantánamo. In the High Court, Richard Hermer QC, counsel for Aamer, told Mr. Justice Sullivan that Met officers [...]

In December, lawyers for Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo, won an important court case in which judges ordered the British government to release information in its possession regarding claims that MI5 agents were present in the US prison in Kandahar, Afghanistan, when Shaker Aamer was subjected to torture, prior to his transfer [...]

In the Wandsworth Guardian, Paul Cahalan has regularly covered the story of local resident Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo. In December, he wrote a detailed article about Shaker’s court case, in which his lawyers were seeking access to evidence in the possession of the British government, regarding his torture in US custody [...]

Omar Deghayes, the former Guantánamo prisoner whose story is at the very heart of the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington), was interviewed for the main feature in the Guardian’s G2 supplement on January 21, 2010 (available online here). I reproduce the interview below to [...]

On Monday January 11, as part of activities in London to highlight the eighth anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, and to demand justice for the 198 men still held, Johina Aamer, daughter of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident held at the prison, delivered a letter to Gordon Brown at 10 Downing Street, asking [...]

On January 11, 2010, the 8th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, the following events will be taking place in London:
12.30 to 2 pm: The London Guantánamo Campaign will hold a demonstration outside the US embassy in Grosvenor Square, Mayfair, London, W1
The demonstration will call on the US administration to close down the Guantánamo Bay [...]

Last week, as I explained in a recent article, Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo, who was seized in Afghanistan in 2001 after traveling to Afghanistan with his friend Moazzam Begg (and their families) to establish a girls’ school in Kabul, won a significant victory in the British High Court. Lord Justice Jeremy [...]

Reprieve, the legal action charity whose lawyers represent dozens of prisoners still held at Guantánamo, won a court victory last Tuesday, in the case of the British resident Shaker Aamer, which appears to draw on the organization’s success in securing a judicial review in the case of another of their clients, Binyam Mohamed. Initiated in [...]

The British human rights group Cageprisoners has just published a fascinating interview with Binyam Mohamed, the British resident, subjected to “extraordinary rendition” and torture, who was freed from Guantánamo on February 23. I have covered Binyam’s story in great depth over the last few years (see the list of articles at the end of this [...]

So a closely guarded secret — that a tortured man was offered a plea bargain in exchange for his silence, in a kangaroo court dreamt up by powerful men with utter contempt for the law — is finally out of the bag.
The tortured man is, of course, Binyam Mohamed, the British resident whose 18-month ordeal [...]