Guantanamo op-eds

One year ago, as George W. Bush prepared to leave office, there were high hopes that Barack Obama would move swiftly to undo his ruinous legacy of torture, “extraordinary rendition” and indefinite detention without charge or trial. The most potent icon of the Bush administration’s overreaction to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 was [...]

For the Guardian’s Comment is free, “Remember 9/11, remember Guantánamo” is an article I wrote to provide a reminder that, as we remember the nearly 3,000 people from over 40 nations who died in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, “much work still needs to be done to address the fallout from the Bush [...]

If you’re looking for an introduction to the extra-legal horrors of Guantánamo, and the casual, almost mundane manner in which randomly-seized prisoners, who were not even screened according to the Geneva Conventions, found themselves the victims of a torture policy designed to make them reveal their mostly non-existent secrets, then you may like this article, [...]

In a guest column for the “Accountability for Torture” initiative organized by the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), Andy Worthington, author of The Guantánamo Files, follows up on an article about the UN International Day in Support of Victims of Torture (and a cross-post of an interview with the wife of rendition victim Abou Elkassim [...]

For the Guardian’s Comment is free, “Images that exposed the truth on abuse” is an article I wrote marking the 5th anniversary of the broadcast, on CBS News’ 60 Minutes II, of the first photos revealing the abuse of detainees — or, indeed, what the International Committee of the Red Cross described as treatment “that [...]

For the Guardian’s Comment is free, “Torture taints all our lives” is an article I wrote following up on last Friday’s news that Britain’s Attorney General has instructed the Director of Public Prosecutions to investigate the claims by released Guantánamo prisoner Binyam Mohamed that MI5 agents had knowledge of his torture and provided information to [...]

For the Guardian’s Comment is free, “Who are ‘the worst of the worst?’” is an article I wrote in response to the news (as yet unsubstantiated by an independent source) that Abdullah Ghulam Rasoul, an Afghan prisoner released from Guantánamo in December 2007, has resurfaced as Mullah Abdullah Zakir, a Taliban leader responsible for roadside [...]

Seven years ago, on January 11, 2002, when photos of the first orange-clad detainees to arrive at a hastily-erected prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba were made available to the world’s press, defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld reacted to the widespread uproar that greeted the images of the kneeling, shackled men, wearing masks and blacked-out goggles and [...]

For the Guardian’s Comment is free, “Will Guantánamo Bay ever close?” is one of several articles that I’ve written marking the seventh anniversary of the opening of the Bush administration’s “War on Terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where the remaining 248 prisoners — out of 779 prisoners in total — are still held neither [...]

On Sunday 11 January, just nine days before the administration of George W. Bush hands over the reins of power to Barack Obama, the “War on Terror” prison at Guantánamo — perhaps the most bleakly iconic symbol of the outgoing administration’s hubris — marks its seventh anniversary.
A lawless experiment
The facts about the prison make for [...]