Guantanamo tribunals

A cross-post, with my own introduction, of a powerful op-ed in the Washington Post by two attorneys who represent “forever prisoner” Mohammed bin Lep, explaining how the military commission system is broken, and asking how the US government supposedly justifies holding some prisoners indefinitely without charge or trial because of “flimsy” and untested allegations that purport to prove that they pose a threat to the US.

Responding to the good news that Said Nashir (aka Hani Abdullah), a Yemeni prisoner at Guantánamo, has been approved for release by a Periodic Review Board, the first such decision to take place under Donald Trump. Unfortunately, two other men had their ongoing imprisonment approved by PRBs, nearly three and four years after their last hearings took place. These are unacceptable delays, and it is to be hoped that Joe Biden will not only release Nashir (and five other men long cleared for release), but will also urgently overhaul the review process.

Following up on a recent Associated Press article, in which Ben Fox spoke to attorneys for some of the 40 men still held at Guantánamo, with their messages for Joe Biden about why he must close the prison, finishing the job that Barack Obama started but failed to complete, a policy that was shamefully discarded over the last four years by Donald Trump.

A cross-post, with my own introduction, of a detailed proposal for how Joe Biden can close the prison at Guantánamo Bay, written for Just Security by Benjamin Farley, currently a 9/11 trial attorney, and, from 2013-17, Senior Adviser to the Special Envoy for Guantánamo Closure at the State Department.

Reprieve has just launched a website counting, in real time, how long their client Ahmed Rabbani has been on a hunger strike — 2,846 days, as of Nov. 17, 2020. This is a shocking amount of time, as is Ahmed’s skeletal state — he weighs just 39 kilos, or 6 stone 2 pounds. I argue that it is time for Ahmed, like other “forever prisoners,” who genuinely don’t pose a threat to the US, to be released.

Here’s a cross-post, with my own introduction, of a poignant and powerful letter from Guantánamo, published by Esquire Middle East. The letter was written by Abdul Latif Nasser, a Moroccan prisoner, approved for release in 2016, but still held, who describes the difficulty of coming to terms with the terrible truth that, under Donald Trump, there is no chance that he will be freed.

A cross-post, with my own introduction, of an article about Black Lives Matter and Guantánamo, published in Newsweek and written by the Afghan prisoner Asadullah Haroon Gul, one of the last prisoners to arrive at Guantánamo, in 2007. Gul has never been charged with a crime, and seems to be a case of mistaken identity.

My report on the good news that three Afghan nationals and former Guantánamo prisoners, who were sent to the UAE in 2016-17, have been repatriated following a peace agreement negotiated between the Afghan government and former warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hesb-e Islami movement in 2016.

Following up on an article in the Independent, I look at the cases of five men abandoned in Guantánamo by Donald Trump — men who were approved for release by high-level review processes under President Obama, but who weren’t freed before he left office, and who, to my mind, can now legitimately be considered the personal prisoners of Donald Trump.

Here’s my report about – and link to – an interview about Guantánamo that I undertook this week with Linda Olson-Osterlund on KBOO FM, a community radio station in Portland, Oregon. Linda and I have, it’s sobering to note, been discussing Guantánamo for eleven years.