Guantanamo

Analyzing a 2010 DoD report into the use of medical records in interrogations at Guantánamo, as secured by “FOIA terrorist” Jason Leopold, seven years after he first requested it. Plus a history of what preceded this report, and some accounts by prisoners themselves, as compiled by former prisoner Omar Deghayes after his release in 2007.

Publicizing a powerful new report, ‘Deprivation and Despair: The Crisis of Medical Care at Guantánamo,’ by the Center for Victims of Torture (CVT) and Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), thoroughly refuting claims by the US authorities that Guantánamo prisoners receive care equivalent to that of US service members.

Here’s the 25th chronological list of all my articles, covering the six-month period from July to December 2018, when news about Guantánamo was slow, and I became involved in the political occupation of a community garden in Deptford, in south east London, to prevent its destruction as part of a housing ‘regeneration’ project.

I report on an important case, argued by Tom Wilner, with whom I co-founded the ‘Close Guantánamo’ campaign in 2012, in which appeals court judges “reversed an eight-year rule that has prevented Guantánamo detainees from seeing and rebutting the evidence purportedly justifying their detention.” As Tom says, “This decision tears down the major barrier that has prevented the Guantánamo detainees from receiving a fair hearing.”

This year, on the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, which I’ve been writing about most years since 2007, generally in relation to Guantánamo and the CIA torture program, I examine the latest horror story to emerge from the US, via Donald Trump’s migrant detention program, recently described by a visiting doctor as comparable “to torture facilities.”

As the Supreme Court turns down a request for a review of his case by Moath al-Alwi, a Yemeni held at Guantánamo without charge or trial for over 17 years, I examine the significance of a statement made by Justice Stephen Breyer, questioning whether the court’s decisions over the last 15 years – and particularly in relation to Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, in June 2004 – have led to an endorsement of “perpetual detention.” The answer is yes, but it remains to be seen if the court is willing or able to tackle such a profound and lingering injustice.

Here’s a link to, and discussion of my recent radio interview with Andy Bungay of Wandsworth’s Riverside Radio, in which we discussed Guantánamo, and the housing crisis in London, and Andy played songs by my band The Four Fathers, about Shaker Aamer and Grenfell.

It’s my quarterly fundraiser, in which I ask you, if you can, to support my work as a reader-funded journalist, working to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay, but also working on social justice issues in the UK, particularly involving housing and the environment, as well as chronicling the changing face of London in my ongoing photo-journalism project ‘The State of London.’

On the 13th anniversary of three deaths at Guantánamo, contentiously described by the US authorities as suicides, I revisit that terrible night, remembering the men, and recalling the robust challenges that have been made over the years to the official narrative – that the men died by committing suicide.

My response to the outrageous and alarming decision by the US Justice Department, under Donald Trump, to charge Julian Assange of WikiLeaks under the Espionage Act, and how fundamentally it threatens press freedom, plus my call for the British government to refuse to extradite Assange to the US, and also to move him from Belmarsh, where his mental health is deteriorating.