Guantanamo

A cross-post, with my own introduction, of a compelling and very detailed New Yorker article by Ben Taub about former Guantánamo prisoner, torture victim and best-selling author Mohamedou Ould Salahi and his guard Steve Wood.

My analysis of the significance of Julian Assange’s arrest in London last week, and why – regardless of what anyone may think about Assange personally – it’s hugely important that there is concerted resistance to any effort by the US to clamp down on media freedom by pretending that Assange and WikiLeaks were not engaged in journalism, but in some sort of espionage.

A cross-post, with my own detailed introduction, of an article for the Atlantic by Richard Bernstein about the Uighurs, an oppressed minority in China, and how the Bush administration sided with the Chinese government to falsely assess 22 Uighurs who ended up at Guantánamo as terrorists.

A cross-post of an article in The Intercept drawing on letters sent by “forever prisoner” Ghassan al-Sharbi to his lawyers, criticising the Saudi royal family. The article also features my own detailed introduction, telling al-Sharbi’s story, his role as a respected prisoner amongst his fellow prisoners, the military commission charges against him (which were dropped), and his Obama-era reviews.

My call for support for whistleblower Chelsea Manning, who has been imprisoned for refusing to testify in a Grand Jury case against WikiLeaks. I have a particular interest in the information Chelsea made available, as it included classified military files from Guantánamo, which helped to establish how much of the so-called evidence from the prison was based on lies.

Some rare good news regarding Guantánamo, as a senior Canadian judge has ruled that former child prisoner Omar Khadr’s Guantánamo-related sentence is finally over, five months after it was supposed to have come to an end. Unfortunately, as I also note, former prisoners who never went through any sort of legal process still remain fundamentally without any rights whatsoever.

Linking to – and discussing – my detailed half-hour interview about Guantánamo with Chris Hedges on his show ‘On Contact’ on RT America. Shamefully, although the continued existence of Guantánamo ought to be a source of shame for all decent people, over 17 years since the prison first opened, it has almost disappeared from the mainstream media.

A cross-post, with my introduction, of a detailed and important article by investigative journalist Jeffrey Kaye about the death at Guantánamo, in 2011, of Haji Naseem, a mentally troubled Afghan national, who was one of the last prisoners to arrive at Guantánamo, in 2007.

As Mohamedou Ould Slahi, former Guantánamo prisoner, torture victim and best-selling author, is denied a passport by his home government in Mauritania, I look at how all former prisoners — “enemy combatants” — are fundamentally deprived of rights as “un-people” by the US, and call for this situation to change.

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