Life after Guantanamo

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.  On the 11th anniversary of [...]

Three months ago, Omar Khadr, the Canadian citizen seized as a child and held and abused by the US government in Guantánamo for ten years, was returned to Canada, where he now languishes in a maximum-security prison. Technically, the Canadian government is entitled to imprison him for another five years and ten months, according to [...]

Last Saturday, the New York Times published an article based on an interview with former Guantánamo prisoner Lakhdar Boumediene, an Algerian whose case, Boumediene v. Bush, was regarded at the time as one of the most significant legal victories in the whole of the Bush administration’s “war on terror,” reversing Congressional attempts to strip the [...]

Former Guantánamo prisoner Omar Deghayes (seized in Pakistan in May 2002 and released to the UK in December 2007) is a friend and colleague of mine, who featured in the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo,” which I co-directed with filmmaker Polly Nash, and he traveled around the country with me two years ago, [...]

On Monday, the Center for Policy and Research at Seton Hall University School of Law in New Jersey released a new report, “National Security Deserves Better: ‘Odd’ Recidivism Numbers Undermine the Guantánamo Policy Debate” (PDF), which analyzes the fundamental problems with the claims made by the Pentagon and the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) regarding [...]

In the last week, two Guantánamo stories have emerged from Albania, home to ten former Guantánamo prisoners — all prisoners who could not be safely repatriated after being cleared for release from Guantánamo. Four men are Uighurs (Muslims from China’s Xinjiang province) released in May 2006, three others — an Algerian, an Egyptian and a [...]

Last month, I was invited to visit Kuwait to try and help raise awareness of the need for the Kuwaiti people to push for their government to demand the release from Guantánamo of the last two Kuwaitis — out of 12 in total — to be held in Guantánamo. These two men are Fayiz al-Kandari [...]

Last week, when I cross-posted an article written for the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo by my friend Todd Pierce, I also noted that when I visited the US in January to campaign for the closure of Guantánamo Bay, I was so busy that I did not have time to cross-post other articles [...]

Last week, I wrote about the plight of Abdul Aziz Naji, an Algerian, held in Guantánamo for eight years, who had been cleared for release from Guantánamo by the US authorities, but was repatriated against his will in July 2010. Three weeks ago, Naji, who is also an amputee, and in ill health, was sentenced [...]

The story of Guantánamo’s Uighurs has always been one of monstrous injustice — as well as a monstrous failure of intelligence, and an equally monstrous failure when it comes to the US government taking responsibility for its own mistakes. This is not a unique occurrence in Guantánamo, of course, but it has long been emblematic [...]