Tajiks in Guantanamo

My thanks to an eagle-eyed supporter for pointing out that, on January 11, the Voice of the Cape radio station in South Africa interviewed Elaine Whitfield Sharp, the lawyer for Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, the Pakistani neuroscientist whose 86-year sentence in a New York courtroom last September — for allegedly trying and failing to shoot at […]

This is the fifth part of a nine-part series telling the stories of all the prisoners currently held in Guantánamo (174 at the time of writing). See the introduction here, and Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Six and Part Seven. This fifth article tells the stories of 13 prisoners seized in […]

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 […]

In a recent article, “75 Guantánamo Prisoners Cleared For Release; 31 Could Leave Today,” I examined the implications of an announcement that 75 of the remaining 223 prisoners in Guantánamo have been cleared for release. This came by way of a list posted in the prison, identifying the prisoners by nationality, and a statement by […]

In the first part of this three-part series examining the Guantánamo prisoners’ attempts to secure their release via the US courts, Andy Worthington, author of The Guantánamo Files, looked at how, after the Supreme Court’s ruling, in June 2008, that the prisoners had constitutionally guaranteed habeas corpus rights, the Bush administration lost 23 of the […]

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 […]

I’m delighted to announce that my three-year project to record the stories of all the prisoners held at Guantánamo is nearly complete. I’ve just posted the last of 12 additional online chapters supplementing my book The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, and available from […]

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 […]

As part of my ongoing project to record the stories of all the prisoners held at Guantánamo, I’ve just posted the ninth of 12 additional online chapters supplementing my book The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, and available from Amazon here and here). This […]

Guantánamo, it seems, is about to become a buzzword once more, as it is, in many ways, the most iconic symbol of Barack Obama’s challenge to undo the Bush administration’s zeal for unfettered executive power. Already, however, pundits are stepping forward to point out the difficulties involved in dismantling the system, whining about the dangerous […]