Life after Guantanamo

On Tuesday evening — the day before Colonel Muammar Gaddafi marked the 41st anniversary of the coup that brought him to power — 37 political prisoners were released from the notorious Abu Salim prison in Tripoli, site of a brutal massacre of prisoners in 1996, when up to 1,200 men were murdered.
Although the release of [...]

The following article was published by the London Guantánamo Campaign on their new website, and I’m cross-posting it here in the hope of reaching new readers who may not have come across it, as its message is particularly strong during Ramadan. Readers may also want to consider writing to prisoners still held in Guantánamo, whose [...]

In the first detailed interview with a prisoner released from Guantánamo to Algeria, Abdul Aziz Naji, forcibly repatriated last week, has spoken to the Algerian newspaper El Khabar, describing his experiences during his eight years in US custody. While this is a welcome demonstration of transparency on the part of the Algerian authorities, it is [...]

Last week, the release from Guantánamo of Abdul Aziz Naji, who was transferred to Algerian custody against his wishes, overshadowed other news from the prison, and with good reason. As I explained in an article at the time, the Obama administration, the Supreme Court and the D.C. Circuit Court, which all played prominent roles in [...]

In a rare piece of Guantánamo-related good news, the Slovak Spectator reports today that the three former prisoners released in Slovakia in January have finally been “given permission to permanently reside in the Slovak Republic.”
The three men — Adel Fattough Ali El-Gazzar, from Egypt, Poolad Tsiradzho, from Azerbaijan, and Rafiq al-Hami, from Tunisia — embarked [...]

Back in August 2007, I reported the story of Muqit Vohidov and Rukhniddin Sharopov, Tajik prisoners in Guantánamo, released in March 2007, who had just been sentenced to 17 years in “high-security penal colonies” (aka labor camps) for “serving as mercenaries in Afghanistan.” The two men were convicted of aiding the Taliban by fighting for [...]

A week last Thursday, three former Guantánamo prisoners who were released in Slovakia in January this year, after the US government concluded that it was unsafe for them to be returned to their home countries, which all have poor human rights records, embarked on a hunger strike to protest about the conditions in which they [...]

Last week, Amnesty International in Slovakia revealed that three men released from Guantánamo to Slovakia in January had embarked on a hunger strike to protest about the conditions in which they are being held. Pending relocation, the men have been held since their arrival in a detention center in Medved’ov, in the south west of [...]

On Thursday, Branislav Tichý, the director of Amnesty International Slovensko, told the press that three former Guantánamo prisoners, who had been released in Slovakia on January 25 this year, had embarked on a hunger strike. According to the Slovak Spectator, Tichý explained that they were “protesting bad conditions and the treatment they are receiving from [...]

In a fascinating interview with Mohammed Furat, the Iraqi editor of the Institute for War & Peace Reporting (IWPR), an Iraqi and former Guantánamo prisoner (one of the three Iraqis released from Guantánamo in January 2009), told his story.
His account is fascinating on his own terms, as it provides an insight into how vulnerable refugees [...]