Mohammed El-Gharani

Disturbing news from the legal action charity Reprieve, which reports that Mohammed El-Gharani, who was released from Guantánamo one week ago, “is still detained by the police in Chad — with no prospect of release.” Seized by Pakistani forces in a random raid on a mosque in Karachi and sold to US forces, El-Gharani was [...]

The long ordeal of Mohammed El-Gharani, Guantánamo’s youngest prisoner, has finally come to an end. Reprieve, the legal action charity that represents him, reports today that he has been sent back to Chad. A Saudi resident and Chadian national, El-Gharani was just 14 years old when he was seized by Pakistani forces in a random [...]

The continued imprisonment of at least 61 prisoners at Guantánamo, who have been cleared for release after multiple military review boards (or, in recent months, after rulings in a US court), was an affront to notions of justice when the Bush administration was in power, and is even more so now that Barack Obama, who [...]

Those of us who prefer justice to arbitrary and unaccountable detention without charge or trial were delighted when, last week, Barack Obama fulfilled a long-stated promise and issued a presidential order stating that Guantánamo will be closed “as soon as practicable, and no later than one year from the date of this order,” and establishing [...]

In the Bush administration’s “War on Terror,” the gulf between rhetoric and reality was always pronounced, and never more so than when Vice President Dick Cheney spoke out. Cheney’s lies and distortions were on open display in the last month before his departure from the White House, as he sought to leave his legacy of [...]

Just two weeks ago, in a habeas corpus case in a Washington D.C. court, Judge Richard Leon turned the clock back to January 11, 2002 (the day Guantánamo opened) by ruling that the US government could continue holding two prisoners at Guantánamo — the Yemeni Muaz al-Alawi and the Tunisian Hisham Sliti — because the [...]

According to the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (on the involvement of children in armed conflict), to which the United States has been a signatory since January 23, 2003, juvenile prisoners — those under the age of 18 when their alleged crimes took place — “require special protection.” [...]

On Sunday, the Pentagon admitted that 12 juveniles — those under the age of 18 at the time their alleged crimes took place — have been held at Guantánamo Bay (as opposed to the figure of eight that was submitted to the UN in May). But a RAW STORY count, drawn from the Pentagon’s own [...]

Since last June, when Omar Khadr, a Canadian prisoner at Guantánamo, was first hauled up before a Military Commission — the novel system of “terror trials” conceived in the wake of the 9/11 attacks — he has rarely been out of the news. Just 15 years old at the time of his capture, Khadr’s treatment [...]

Those with the stomach to see Guantánamo not just as a deadly serious affront to justice and human decency, but also as a dark farce, will have been entertained by the recent disclosure that the US military has accused Clive Stafford Smith, the legal director of Reprieve, and his colleague Zachary Katznelson, of smuggling underwear [...]