Return to torture

As rumors swirl, suggesting that a number of the remaining 13 Uighur prisoners in Guantánamo (Muslims from China’s Xinjiang province) may soon be relocating to the tiny Pacific island state of Palau, a court case relating to nine of these men threatens to hurl a number of other prisoners in Guantánamo, who have also been [...]

Imagine if you were imprisoned for seven years without charge or trial, and then a judge ruled that the government’s case against you consisted solely of unreliable allegations made by other prisoners who were tortured, coerced, bribed or suffering from mental health issues, and a “mosaic” of intelligence, purporting to rise to the level of [...]

Two weeks ago, the indefatigable Carol Rosenberg of the Miami Herald, Guantánamo’s most dedicated reporter, outlined the story of Umar Abdulayev, the last Tajik prisoner in Guantánamo, who has been cleared for release from the prison on two occasions — once by a military review board under the Bush administration, and six weeks ago by [...]

Following a visit to Washington D.C. on 1 and 2 June, Thomas Hammarberg, the Council Of Europe’s Human Rights Commissioner, has sent a letter to all 47 Council of Europe member states urging them to follow the example already provided by Albania, France, Sweden and the UK in accepting “cleared” prisoners from Guantánamo who cannot [...]

In recent weeks, there has been an unsavory race to see which Republican can come up with the most scare-mongering drivel about the remaining 240 prisoners in Guantánamo. This competition, which has also drawn in Democrats to such an extent that, on Wednesday, they spinelessly voted to withhold the funds needed to close the prison, [...]

For the Guardian’s Comment is free, “Death in Libya, betrayal in the West” is an article I wrote in response to news of the death, in a Libyan jail, of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi. A prisoner of the “War on Terror,” who was subjected to “extraordinary rendition” and torture for four years before being returned to [...]

In 2007, after four rounds of administrative reviews at Guantánamo, Hedi Hammamy, a Tunisian prisoner, born in 1969, was cleared for release, having satisfied the Pentagon that he no longer represented a threat to the United States or its allies, and no longer possessed any ongoing intelligence value. He was not released, however, because, although [...]

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 [...]

In a previous article, Andy Worthington, author of The Guantánamo Files, examined the reasons why Barack Obama must stick to his election promise to close the “War on Terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay, focusing on the Bush administration’s callous disregard for domestic and international laws, its pursuit of unfettered executive power, the disturbing effects of [...]

Andy Worthington, author of The Guantánamo Files, looks at the US authorities’ recent underhand attempts to return cleared prisoners from Guantánamo to regimes where they face the risk of torture, despite US court orders preventing their enforced repatriation.
For many of the prisoners at Guantánamo, the forthcoming US Presidential election holds little promise of change. Although [...]