Hunger strikes in Guantanamo

Please support my work! In the long-running saga of ascertaining who is held at Guantánamo, and what should happen to them, the Bush administration’s refusal to recognize domestically and internationally accepted norms governing the treatment of prisoners continues to cast a long and baleful shadow over proceedings. In the summer of 2004, in a rebuke […]

As the US prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba begins its 15th year of operations, there has been a flurry of mainstream media interest, in part because 2016 is President Obama’s last year in office, and yet, when he was first inaugurated in January 2009, he promised to close Guantánamo within a year, an unfulfilled promise […]

The Mail on Sunday yesterday featured the first interview conducted by Shaker Aamer since his release from Guantánamo six weeks ago, and below, following my first article yesterday, are excerpts dealing with his 13 years and eight months in Guantánamo — over 5,000 days — and his adjustment to life since his release: the changes […]

Today, October 25, was supposed to be the day that Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo, was released and flown back to the UK to be reunited with his family, who he has not seen for over 14 years. Shaker is still held, despite being approved for release eight years ago, under George […]

I wrote the following article for the “Close Guantánamo” website, which I established in January 2012 with US attorney Tom Wilner. Please join us — just an email address is required to be counted amongst those opposed to the ongoing existence of Guantánamo, and to receive updates of our activities by email. One day, when […]

Today, October 20, marks five days to the anticipated release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison. It was announced on September 25 that he would be coming back to his family in the UK — eight long years after he was first told that the US no longer wanted […]

As people around the world continue to undertake 24-hour fasts in solidarity with Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo — as part of the Fast For Shaker campaign I launched last week with the activist Joanne MacInnes, with whom I set up the influential We Stand With Shaker campaign last year — there […]

Many thanks to RT for their excellent coverage of Thursday’s press launch, opposite Parliament, of the Fast For Shaker campaign set up by myself and Joanne MacInnes, the founders of the We Stand With Shaker Campaign that we launched 11 months ago, with a giant inflatable figure of the last British resident in Guantánamo that […]

See my photos on Flickr here. Today was the launch of Fast For Shaker, a new campaign by myself and Joanne MacInnes, who set up the We Stand With Shaker campaign last November, calling for the release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison. Although Shaker was told on September […]

Yesterday was busy. In the morning, there was a meeting of the All-Party Shaker Aamer Parliamentary Group, chaired by David Davis MP, with Andrew Mitchell, Andy Slaughter, Tania Mathias and other MPs attending, and representatives of Reprieve, Amnesty International UK (and Naureen Shah visiting from Amnesty International USA), the Save Shaker Aamer Campaign, the London […]