Guantanamo op-eds

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 [...]

For the Guardian’s Comment is free, this is my take on the response of European governments to the proposed resettlement of Guantánamo prisoners who cannot be repatriated because of fears that they will be tortured, and, perhaps, to others who have not yet been cleared for release by the Pentagon, but against whom no case [...]

The answer ought to be yes, if the verdict of the Senate Armed Services Committee Inquiry into the Treatment of Detainees in US Custody is to mean anything. The bipartisan report (PDF), based on a two-year investigation and released on December 11 by Senators Carl Levin and John McCain, concludes that the torture and abuse [...]

During the election campaign, one of the sticks with which John McCain’s team attempted to beat Barack Obama was a claim that he was soft on terrorism, or, as Senator McCain’s national security director Randy Scheunemann declared to reporters in June, “Senator Obama is a perfect manifestation of a September 10th mind-set … He does [...]

On Sunday, in his first television interview since winning the Presidential election, Barack Obama repeated his campaign pledge to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay and to ban the use of torture by US forces. Speaking on 60 Minutes, he explained, “I have said repeatedly that I intend to close Guantánamo, and I will follow [...]