Egyptians in Guantanamo

This is the second part of a nine-part series telling the stories of all the prisoners currently held in Guantánamo (174 at the time of writing). See the introduction here, and Part One, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six and Part Seven. This second article tells the stories of 32 prisoners seized in Afghanistan, […]

In a rare piece of Guantánamo-related good news, the Slovak Spectator reports today that the three former prisoners released in Slovakia in January have finally been “given permission to permanently reside in the Slovak Republic.” The three men — Adel Fattough Ali El-Gazzar, from Egypt, Poolad Tsiradzho, from Azerbaijan, and Rafiq al-Hami, from Tunisia — […]

A week last Thursday, three former Guantánamo prisoners who were released in Slovakia in January this year, after the US government concluded that it was unsafe for them to be returned to their home countries, which all have poor human rights records, embarked on a hunger strike to protest about the conditions in which they […]

Last week, Amnesty International in Slovakia revealed that three men released from Guantánamo to Slovakia in January had embarked on a hunger strike to protest about the conditions in which they are being held. Pending relocation, the men have been held since their arrival in a detention center in Medved’ov, in the south west of […]

On Thursday, Branislav Tichý, the director of Amnesty International Slovensko, told the press that three former Guantánamo prisoners, who had been released in Slovakia on January 25 this year, had embarked on a hunger strike. According to the Slovak Spectator, Tichý explained that they were “protesting bad conditions and the treatment they are receiving from […]

Note: This article is published as part of “Guantánamo Habeas Week” (introduced here), which also features an interactive list of all 47 rulings to date (with links to my articles, the judges’ unclassified opinions, and more). Despite the Bush administration’s fearsome rhetoric regarding Guantánamo — that it contained “the worst of the worst” terrorists, who, […]

On Wednesday, four prisoners were released from Guantánamo: an Egyptian, a Libyan and a Tunisian arrived in Albania, and a Palestinian arrived in Spain. All four had been cleared by military review boards at Guantánamo under the Bush administration, and had then been cleared by President Obama’s interagency Task Force, but, like dozens of prisoners […]

In a recent article, “75 Guantánamo Prisoners Cleared For Release; 31 Could Leave Today,” I examined the implications of an announcement that 75 of the remaining 223 prisoners in Guantánamo have been cleared for release. This came by way of a list posted in the prison, identifying the prisoners by nationality, and a statement by […]

The continued imprisonment of at least 61 prisoners at Guantánamo, who have been cleared for release after multiple military review boards (or, in recent months, after rulings in a US court), was an affront to notions of justice when the Bush administration was in power, and is even more so now that Barack Obama, who […]

With less than two weeks until the Bush administration leaves office, Andy Worthington, author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison, reports on developments — or the lack of them — during the last month in the Military Commissions, the much-criticized trial system for “terror suspects” that was […]