Andy Worthington » The Guantanamo Files – events

“Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” – A Pre-Election Trip to Birmingham

Andy Worthington — Thu, 06 May 2010 22:25:16 +0000

On reflection, two days before the General Election was a weird time to be travelling anywhere to show “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo,” the new documentary film, co-directed by Polly Nash and myself, which former prisoner Omar Deghayes and I have been touring since February.

This week it was as though the impetus to push against the injustices of the “War on Terror” had stalled. On Tuesday morning, six former prisoners — including Omar, and Binyam Mohamed, who is also featured in the film — defeated the government in the Court of Appeal, when three senior judges overturned a ruling made last November by another judge, who approved the use of secret evidence in a civil claim for damages. This was an unprecedented event in British history, and when the Court of Appeal overturned the ruling, those with a keen sense of history and the law rejoiced. “How audacious! The government tries to overturn principles of law dating back to [the] 13th century,” Afua Hirsch wrote in the Guardian.

In the fog of election week, however, the impact was dulled, as no one knew who would be in power to deal with the fallout from this ruling — whether it will be accepted, or appealed; and whether the new government will turn its back on secrecy and injustice, or, indeed, whether more darkness — the same, or worse — is to come.

In this uncertain world, Omar and I travelled to Birmingham for two screenings of the film — at Aston University and at Birmingham Library Theatre, in a screening organized by Birmingham Film Society — which had been booked before the election date was announced. We stayed with Moazzam Begg, who joined us for Q&A sessions following both screenings, had attentive crowds and great organizers, the sun shone and we discussed plans for future activities. Omar and I ate fish masala at a chip shop near Aston University, we ate lamb kebab and chips and drank freshly squeezed orange juice in a friendly Pakistani restaurant further out of town, and drank coffee and watched the world pass in the city centre. On Wednesday evening, we walked along the canals, and I was impressed at how, as in so many places in the UK, public spaces have been developed in the last decade or so. But the election hovered, largely unspoken, over everything. The popular support for proportional representation. The unaddressed fallout from the banking crisis. The savage cuts reportedly to come, which no one wants to discuss.

I could go on, attempting to capture this unease, and the strange feeling of discussing pressing issues of accountability for the British government’s complicity in rendition and torture — and calls for the return of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo (also featured in the film) — without knowing who these calls should be directed at. Instead, however, I’m going to cross-post a short article, entitled, “England,” which I think perfectly captures these issues, and which was posted by a blogger named Jamblichus, who returned to the UK from South Korea just days before the Election, and came to see the film shortly after his arrival. He describes his interests as “[t]o point out and record the abuse of power by corporations, politicos, police and anyone else who has it coming,” and “[t]o give big-ups to academics, poets, musicians, activists and any other souls who have something interesting and unusual to say.”

“England”
By Jamblichus, May 6, 2010

Flying into England the air feels muggy. It reminds me on landing of arriving in Africa a decade ago; the night heavy, the air thick, the dark full of unknown but not unnerving sounds — a strange familiarity.

The English look heavy too: thickset, more tattoos than I remember there being, shoulders hunched and faces, posture, gestures all somewhat inward looking and deliberate, if not unpleasantly so.

It’s good to be home and I’m reminded that we drive like maniacs here. Not in the Korean way — erratic, mannerless, dismissive of red lights but respecting of speed limits — but in a distinctly British way: courteous, horn-free but brutally fast.

A few days after arriving I go to see the film “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” by campaigning journalist Andy Worthington and sit through a Q&A afterwards with former detainees Moazzam Begg and Omar Deghayes.

I won’t rehash their stories here — although I urge a visit to Begg’s site Cageprisoners — but it was their current concerns as much as the travesty that is Guantánamo and their horrific experiences there that shocked me.

Just yesterday the Court of Appeal overturned a ruling that, for the first time in British history, allowed the government to use secret evidence in a civil claim for damages.

The decision was a resounding victory for the six former Guantánamo prisoners — Bisher al-Rawi, Jamil El-Banna, Richard Belmar, Omar Deghayes, Binyam Mohamed and Martin Mubanga — who have brought a case against the British government.

But the government is likely to appeal the ruling. The precedent a win by the state on this issue would represent is astonishing. The right to use evidence in court against you in a civil suit that neither you nor your lawyer can see. It could be anything, entirely made up to smear political opponents.

Disgusting and deeply disturbing. Andy Worthington lists on his blog here the MPs who have signed up to early day motions opposing the use of secret evidence in UK courts and calling for the release of the last British resident in Guantánamo respectively. Of the 149 MPs who have signed the motions, just three are Conservative.

It seems utter madness that they look likely to get a majority.

A few days later, feeling guilty at not having registered to vote in enough time, I set the alarm for 4:00 am and drove into Birmingham Hall Green to canvass for the Liberal Democrats whose candidate could just clinch the seat if enough former Labour voters go that way …

Trudging the streets of Moseley and Kings Norton for three hours to the dawn chorus and the intermittent roar of buses I was struck by the beauty of the city. Old trees line many of the streets, decrepit redbrick buildings with crumpled but still magisterial presence and everywhere difference, unique variations in architecture that Seoul so lacks.

Most locals would no doubt think I’m nuts but it really struck me what a gorgeous place it was. Even if it did give me savage blisters. Note to inexperienced political leafleters: bring the following four essentials:

MP3 player.

Satchel.

Thermos flask with coffee.

Plasters.

About the film

“[T]his is a strong movie examining the imprisonment and subsequent torture of those falsely accused of anti-American conspiracy.”
Joe Burnham, Time Out

“Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” is a new documentary film, directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, telling the story of Guantánamo (and including sections on extraordinary rendition and secret prisons) with a particular focus on how the Bush administration turned its back on domestic and international laws, how prisoners were rounded up in Afghanistan and Pakistan without adequate screening (and often for bounty payments), and why some of these men may have been in Afghanistan or Pakistan for reasons unconnected with militancy or terrorism (as missionaries or humanitarian aid workers, for example).

The film is based around interviews with former prisoners (Moazzam Begg and, in his first major interview, Omar Deghayes, who was released in December 2007), lawyers for the prisoners (Clive Stafford Smith in the UK and Tom Wilner in the US), and journalist and author Andy Worthington, and also includes appearances from Guantánamo’s former Muslim chaplain James Yee, Shakeel Begg, a London-based Imam, and the British human rights lawyer Gareth Peirce.

Focusing on the stories of Shaker Aamer, Binyam Mohamed and Omar Deghayes, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” provides a powerful rebuke to those who believe that Guantánamo holds “the worst of the worst” and that the Bush administration was justified in responding to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 by holding men neither as prisoners of war, protected by the Geneva Conventions, nor as criminal suspects with habeas corpus rights, but as “illegal enemy combatants” with no rights whatsoever.

For further information, interviews, or to inquire about broadcasting, distributing or showing “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo,” please contact Polly Nash or Andy Worthington.

“Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” is a Spectacle Production (74 minutes, 2009), and copies of the DVD are now available. As featured on Democracy Now!, ABC News and Truthout. See here for videos of the Q&A session (with Moazzam Begg, Omar Deghayes, Andy Worthington and Polly Nash) that followed the launch of the film in London on October 21, 2009, and see here for a short trailer.

(‘’)

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK). To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook and Twitter). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in January 2010, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and currently on tour in the UK), and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

Review: “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” at the London International Documentary Festival

Andy Worthington — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 09:14:22 +0000

I’m pleased to report that Monday night’s screening of the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” at the Free Word Centre on Farringdon Road was a great success. The screening took place as part of the London International Documentary Festival, and featured an excellent panel for the post-screening Q&A session — former prisoners Moazzam Begg and Omar Deghayes (who both feature in the film), Tara Murray, a US attorney who joined the legal action charity Reprieve (whose lawyers represent Guantánamo prisoners) in October 2009, and the film’s directors (Polly Nash and myself).

On a fine evening, I walked up to the venue from Reprieve’s offices near Blackfriars with Tara, who I hadn’t met before, and Omar, which gave us some time to compare notes on the current state of play at Guantánamo and to discuss my “Guantánamo Habeas Week” project, in which I’m attempting to raise awareness of the under-reported court cases in which 34 out of 47 prisoners have won their habeas petitions (demonstrating the incompetence of the Bush administration’s detention policies), but 13 others have been consigned to ongoing detention, despite, for the most part, being nothing more than insignificant foot soldiers in an inter-Muslim civil war that became a “War on Terror” when the US invaded Afghanistan in October 2001.

At the venue — a great new space founded by eight very sound organizations (Apples and Snakes, Article 19, Booktrust, English PEN, Index on Censorship, The Arvon Foundation, The Literary Consultancy and The Reading Agency), which received Arts Council funding and opened in June 2009 — we were warmly welcomed by Shreela Ghosh, the Centre’s Director, and General Manager Rachel Buchanan. After a coffee in the airy café, Omar, Moazzam and I had the opportunity to catch up on our latest news and plans while the film was showing, and although a technical hitch during the screening meant that our Q&A session was rather short, the film was very well received, as is apparent from a review, cross-posted below, which was written by Laura Jenkinson for the film festival’s website.

A review of “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo”
By Laura Jenkinson, LIDF

The Free Word Centre in Farringdon, just behind the Betsey Trotwood pub, is still under a year old but is establishing itself quickly as a centre for literature, literacy and free expression. Tonight’s film, the first at this venue, fits with the centre’s motto and provides a voice for ex-“detainees” of the most famous apparent non-prison on the planet.

Director-producers Polly Nash and Andy Worthington have put together a very eloquent story from 9/11 to present day; the film is simple, relying on the talking heads of legal and political experts, and Omar Deghayes and Moazzem Begg, who were “detained” at Guantánamo for several years, and still photographs representing the absent parties responsible for the atrocities of “enhanced interrogation techniques” practiced by a White House flouting the Geneva Conventions.

The film relies on not distancing its viewer with documentary techniques of voiceover and re-enactment — in fact it has been criticized by channel programmers for not fitting the style of television today, although Nash and Worthington both regard this as the film’s unfiltered strength.

It was a suitably modern film for this spacious and airy venue, which, despite a few early technical hitches, pleased its audience, who also found it suitably humbling to meet Begg and Deghayes at the panel discussion afterwards. It is hard to imagine these well-spoken, eloquent, charismatic and confident men suffering the abuses discussed and pictured. They looked so comfortable in themselves whilst answering the audience’s questions on the continuing fate of those left at the prison, and spoke factually rather than with emotion about the apparent new extra-judicial killings ordered by the new US government that are more “convenient” than extraordinary renditions. A remarkable evening.

About the film

[T]his is a strong movie examining the imprisonment and subsequent torture of those falsely accused of anti-American conspiracy. It avoids common conventions such as dramatic narration, music or use of archive footage, delivering frank and understated accounts from the victims and forming an intriguing and emotive cross-section of life at Guantánamo Bay.
Joe Burnham, Time Out

“Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” on tour in the UK

The screening at the London International Documentary Festival was part of an ongoing UK tour of the film, in which Omar Deghayes and Andy Worthington are travelling around the country attending post-screening Q&A sessions. On some dates, Omar, who is now the legal director of the Guantánamo Justice Centre, and Andy will be joined by Polly Nash, and, occasionally, other guests including former prisoner Moazzam Begg, the director of Cageprisoners.

Throughout the tour, Omar, Andy and the other speakers will be focusing on the plight of Shaker Aamer, the only one of the film’s main subjects who is still held in Guantánamo, despite being cleared for release in 2007, and despite the British government asking for him to be returned to the UK in August 2007.

Born in Saudi Arabia, Shaker Aamer moved to the UK in 1994, and was a legal British resident at the time of his capture, after he had traveled to Afghanistan with Moazzam Begg (and their families) to establish a girls’ school and some well-digging projects. He has a British wife and four British children (although he has never seen his youngest child).

As the foremost advocate of the prisoners’ rights in Guantánamo, Shaker’s influence upset the US authorities to such an extent that those pressing for his return fear that the US government wants to return him to Saudi Arabia, the country of his birth, where he will not be at liberty to tell his story, and recent revelations indicate that, despite claims that it has been doing all in its power to secure his release, the British government may also share this view.

In December 2009, it emerged in a court case in the UK that British agents witnessed his abuse while he was held in US custody in Afghanistan, and in January 2010, for Harper’s Magazine, law professor Scott Horton reported that he was tortured in Guantánamo on the same night, in June 2006, that three other men appear to have been killed by representatives of an unknown US agency, and that a cover-up then took place, which successfully passed the deaths off as suicides.

At the screenings, the speakers will discuss what steps we can all take to put pressure on the British government to demand the return of Shaker Aamer to the UK, to be reunited with his family. To date, we have been asking audiences to send a letter to foreign secretary David Miliband calling for Shaker’s return. This letter will be updated on May 7, following the General Election, but in the meantime please feel free to adapt it as you see fit, to put pressure on the Foreign and Commonwealth Office from the very first day of the new government.

For further information, interviews, or to inquire about broadcasting, distributing or showing “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo,” please contact Polly Nash or Andy Worthington. For inquiries about screenings, please also feel free to contact Maryam Hassan.

(‘’)

TONIGHT: London International Documentary Festival screens “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” – plus report on Saturday’s Shaker Aamer protest

Andy Worthington — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 13:08:57 +0000

I’ve already posted an article about the screening tonight of “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” as part of the London International Documentary Festival at the Free Word Centre, 60 Farringdon Road, London EC1, so this is primarily a last-minute reminder, although it also gives me an opportunity to report on Saturday’s protest about the ongoing detention of Shaker Aamer (featured in the film), who is the last British resident in Guantánamo.

The screening, of the film described by Time Out as “a strong movie examining the imprisonment and subsequent torture of those falsely accused of anti-American conspiracy,” starts at 8 pm, tickets can be bought here, and the Q&A session, which provides one of the last opportunities to discuss the Labour government’s role in the “War on Terror” before the General Election, features myself, former prisoners Moazzam Begg and Omar Deghayes (both featured in the film), co-director Polly Nash and Tara Murray of Reprieve.

Sadly, it seems unlikely that the government will do anything about the plight of Shaker Aamer before the election, as Guantánamo — and Britain’s counter-terrorism policies in general — have slipped off the radar completely since the election was announced. As the Morning Star explained on Friday, “since the election was set, our telephone calls on stories such as the plight of Ahmed Belbacha [see below] or Shaker Aamer have met with a blank refusal of the main parties to comment, even to the extent of not returning the calls.”

On Saturday, I attended a protest opposite 10 Downing Street, at which members of the Save Shaker Aamer Campaign delivered letters demanding Shaker’s immediate return to Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Foreign and Commonwealth Office Minister Ivan Lewis.

Speakers at the protest included Jean Lambert MEP, Martin Linton MP, Victoria Brittain, Yvonne Ridley, Joy Hurcombe of Brighton Against Guantánamo and myself, but although we attracted a decent amount of attention, our discussions focused largely on how to push the new government to establish a strong relationship with the US from the very beginning by demanding Shaker’s immediate return — or, if Labour returns to power, how to push them to finally do the right thing, and to do what they have failed to do since Shaker was cleared for release back in 2007, which, of course, involves getting him back to his British wife and British children as soon as possible.

As ever, I chose on Saturday not only to publicize the unacceptable plight of Shaker Aamer and his family, but also to stress that whoever is in 10 Downing Street on May 7 needs to press the US not only for Shaker’s return, but also to offer new homes in the UK to other cleared prisoners who cannot be repatriated because they face the risk of torture; in particular, Ahmed Belbacha, an Algerian (represented by Reprieve and also cleared for release in 2007), who is terrified of returning to Algeria, and who lived in the UK for nearly three years until he was kidnapped in Pakistan and sent to Guantánamo, but also other cleared prisoners, who have no connection to the UK, but who will not be freed until third countries offer to help out, as has happened with Albania, Belgium, Bermuda, France, Georgia, Hungary, Ireland, Palau, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain and Switzerland.

Whoever is in 10 Downing Street on May 7 needs to understand that trying to take the moral high ground, as David Miliband has done by hectoring other countries to take cleared prisoners, while claiming that the UK has already played its part in helping to close Guantánamo, is both dishonest and disgraceful. Britain has only taken in its own citizens and residents, and should follow the example of the countries mentioned above, if only to show some willingness to atone for the government’s enthusiastic embrace of the Bush administration’s “War on Terror,” which has recently been exposed in the British courts.

Note: See here for further information about “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo,” click here to buy a copy of the film on DVD, and see here for information about the ongoing UK tour of the film. For a letter to David Miliband, demanding the return of Shaker Aamer and requesting the offer of new homes for Ahmed Belbacha and other cleared Guantánamo prisoners, see here. I’ll update this letter as soon as the results of the General Election are announced. For reports and photos from Saturday’s protest, see these articles on Press TV, Indymedia and Demotix. I also believe that it will soon be reported by Paul Cahalan of the Wandsworth Guardian (in Shaker’s home borough), who has done some great work in publicizing Shaker’s plight.

(‘’)

“Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo”: London International Documentary Festival screening on Monday April 26

Andy Worthington — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 07:58:37 +0000

I’m delighted to report that a date has now been finalized for the screening of the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington) as part of the London International Documentary Festival.

The film festival runs from April 23 to May 10 at twelve different venues throughout London, and “Outside the Law” is screening at 8 pm on Monday April 26 at the Free Word Centre, in the former Guardian building at 60 Farringdon Road, London EC1R 3GA. The box office number is 020 7324 2570 (and also see here, where tickets, priced £7.50 plus booking fee, can be ordered).

The screening will be followed by a panel discussion, featuring former Guantánamo prisoners Moazzam Begg, Omar Deghayes, Andy Worthington, Polly Nash and Tara Murray of Reprieve. It is, moreover, part of an ongoing UK tour of the film, which began in February, with Omar and Andy (and, occasionally, Polly and other guests) attending post-screening Q&A sessions to discuss Guantánamo, President Obama’s failure to close the prison, and the plight of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo (who is also featured in the film).

Full details of the tour are available here, on a dedicated page, which will be updated as new dates are added. The film has already been shown in several London venues (Amnesty International’s Human Rights Action Centre, the National Film Theatre, the LSE, SOAS, UCL and South Bank University) and also in Oxford, Bradford, Norwich, Canterbury, Dundee, Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow. Future screenings include Colchester on April 27, Aston on May 4, Birmingham on May 5 and Newcastle on May 11.

About the film

Take action for Shaker Aamer

Throughout the tour, Omar, Andy and Polly (and other speakers) will be focusing on the plight of Shaker Aamer, the only one of the film’s main subjects who is still held in Guantánamo, despite being cleared for release in 2007, and despite the British government asking for him to be returned to the UK in August 2007.

At the screenings, the speakers will discuss what steps we can all take to put pressure on the British government to demand the return of Shaker Aamer to the UK, to be reunited with his family. To get involved now, please visit this Amnesty International action page, to find details of how you can write to David Miliband and Gordon Brown, asking them to demand Shaker’s return. You can also cut and paste a letter to David Miliband here. Please also visit this page for a video of Shaker’s daughter Johina handing in a letter to Gordon Brown at 10 Downing Street on January 11, 2010.

Take action for Ahmed Belbacha — and others in Guantánamo

The letter to David Miliband, mentioned above, also asks the British government to accept Ahmed Belbacha, an Algerian who was also cleared for release from Guantánamo in 2007, but who remains at the prison because he is terrified of returning to Algeria, where he fears persecution. Ahmed lived in the UK for nearly three years, and this country is, therefore, the most obvious country to offer him refuge.

The letter also calls on the UK to join other countries in accepting other cleared prisoners who cannot be repatriated, but who do not already have a connection with this country. Algeria, Belgium, Bermuda, France, Georgia, Hungary, Ireland, Palau, Portugal, Spain, Slovakia and Switzerland have all done so, and the UK — as George Bush’s closest ally in the “War on Terror” — has no excuse for not doing so, if for no other reason than as some kind of compensation for recent revelations about the extent of Britain’s complicity in torture.

Recent feedback

““Outside the Law” is essential viewing for anyone interested in Guantánamo and other prisons. The film explores what happens when a nation with a reputation for morality and justice acts out of impulse and fear. To my mind, Andy Worthington is a quintessential force for all things related to the journalism of GTMO and its inhabitants. As a military lawyer for Fayiz al-Kandari, I am constantly reminded that GTMO is ongoing and that people still have an opportunity to make history today by becoming involved. “Outside the Law” is a fantastic entry point into the arena that is GTMO.”
Lt. Col. Barry Wingard, attorney for Guantánamo prisoner Fayiz al-Kandari

“I thought the film was absolutely brilliant and the most powerful, moving and hard-hitting piece I have seen at the cinema. I admire and congratulate you for your vital work, pioneering the truth and demanding that people sit up and take notice of the outrageous human rights injustices perpetrated against detainees at Guantánamo and other prisons.”
Harriet Wong, Medical Foundation for Care of Victims of Torture

“[T]hought-provoking, harrowing, emotional to watch, touching and politically powerful.”
Harpymarx, blogger

“The film was great — not because I was in it, but because it told the legal and human story of Guantánamo more clearly than anything I have seen.”
Tom Wilner, US attorney who represented the Guantánamo prisoners before the US Supreme Court

“The film was fantastic! It has the unique ability of humanizing those who were detained at Guantánamo like no other I have seen.”
Sari Gelzer, Truthout

“Engaging and moving, and personal. The first [film] to really take you through the lives of the men from their own eyes.”
Debra Sweet, The World Can’t Wait

“I am part of a community of folks from the US who attempted to visit the Guantánamo prison in December 2005, and ended up fasting for a number of days outside the gates. We went then, and we continue our work now, because we heard the cries for justice from within the prison walls. As we gathered tonight as a community, we watched “Outside the Law,” and by the end, we all sat silent, many with tears in our eyes and on our faces. I have so much I’d like to say, but for now I wanted to write a quick note to say how grateful we are that you are out, and that you are speaking out with such profound humanity. I am only sorry what we can do is so little, and that so many remain in the prison.”
Matt Daloisio, Witness Against Torture

For further information, interviews, or to inquire about broadcasting, distributing or showing “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo,” please contact Polly Nash or Andy Worthington.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK). To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook and Twitter). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in January 2010, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

A warm Scottish welcome for “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo”

Andy Worthington — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 13:58:01 +0000

Former Guantánamo prisoner Omar Deghayes and I have just returned from an excellent week-long trip to Scotland, where we were promoting the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (directed by Polly Nash and myself) as part of an ongoing UK tour of the film. We also encouraged audiences to write to foreign secretary David Miliband asking him to press for the return to the UK of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident held at the prison, so that he can be reunited with his British wife and children after more than eight years. A template of that letter can be found here, and please also see this Amnesty International campaign page.

Shaker’s story is the focus of the film (along with the stories of Binyam Mohamed and Omar), and Omar and I have been pointing out how despicable it is that he is still held, despite being cleared for release from Guantánamo in 2007. As his US lawyer, Brent Mickum, recently explained, “His detention is purely political. It has nothing to do with justice and what he has done. It is more to do with what has been done to him.” What Shaker did, as the film explains, was to campaign relentlessly inside Guantánamo for the rights of all the prisoners to be treated humanely, and to be charged or released, and what has been done to him includes torture and prolonged solitary confinement.

The Scottish tour of “Outside the Law” began last Monday. Omar had come to London from Brighton on Sunday evening, and had stayed at my home, so that we would have no problems getting across town to King’s Cross for the 10.30 train to Dundee. In the end, this neat plan was almost derailed when I left the house without a copy of the film, but we made it to King’s Cross with minutes to spare, and chatted away the hours to Dundee, discussing, in particular, the work of the Guantánamo Justice Centre, for whom Omar is the legal director. The GJC seeks funds to provide for the welfare of former prisoners, none of whom receive any compensation or financial support on their release, and also to bring legal cases against those involved in the prisoners’ capture, detention, interrogation and torture, along the lines of cases already initiated in the UK and Spain.

On arrival in Dundee, we were met by Craig Kelly, the organizer of Monday’s screening (and the Vice President of Campaigns for the Student Association), who took us to a restaurant on campus, where we grabbed a bite to eat before the screening. We were also introduced to Andrew Smith, the President of the Student Association, and we also met up with Ann Alexander, our host for the night. Ann is a friend of many of the men held on control orders or deportation bail in the UK (men held without charge or trial, and on the basis of secret evidence), and is a tireless campaigner for their rights. Although it is my pleasure to have known Ann for several years, both through email correspondence and phone calls, we had never actually met in person, and it was a true delight to finally do so.

The screening, in a lecture theatre in a smart new building, was very successful, with over 70 people turning up, and a lively Q&A session afterwards with Omar and myself, followed by discussions with the most engaged members of the audience. We were then picked up by Ann’s husband and driven to their lovely home outside Dundee, where we were given a wonderful meal — fresh Arbroath smokies, potatoes and salad — and then stayed up talking for half the night.

The particular focus of our discussions were the men held under control orders or deportation bail in the UK, but although I have written extensively about the plight of these men, Ann knows more about their stories than almost anyone, and it was inspiring to hear how she had become involved in befriending them — when an Italian she was writing to, who was being held pending deportation, asked her to write to a Muslim prisoner, Rachid Ramda, and she stumbled on a largely unreported world of Muslim prisoners held without charge or trial in the UK.

Ann also told some harrowing tales of how the men on control orders are treated — obliged to relocate to other parts of the country, often housed in horribly squalid flats, and subjected to such intolerable stresses (if they are married with children) or isolation (if they are not), as a result, for example, of the regular raids by Home Office security personnel at all times of the day or night, that some have descended into what the lawyer Gareth Peirce described as “florid psychosis,” and have spent time in secure psychiatric hospitals.

Omar, Ann and I also discussed how worrying it is that this demonstrably cruel system, designed, cynically, to encourage foreign terror suspects to return voluntarily to their home countries, even when they face the risk of torture, is now being applied to British citizens, who, of course, have no other country to return to. Omar and I began discussing plans to establish an event, or a series of events to publicize the plight of these men, with the help of a number of other men who were formerly held on control orders, but who had those orders revoked or quashed in the last nine months, since a significant Law Lords ruling last June.

From Dundee, Omar and I caught the train to Aberdeen, which was only a 90-minute journey, although it surprised us both that Aberdeen was noticeably colder than Dundee – and surprised us rather less that it was drizzling as we emerged from the station. Nevertheless, while admiring the solid grey granite architecture, we located the guest house provided by the Student Association for the night, and then set off on foot for the university, a half-hour walk that enabled us to get a feel for the city, which looked beautiful at dusk, as the lights flickered on in some of the more picturesque streets.

Arriving at the university, on an ancient site on a hill to the north of modern Aberdeen, we were met with enthusiasm by Annika Wipprecht of the Amnesty International student group, and two of her colleagues, who were charming company, and who had done a great job of publicizing the event. As with Dundee, over 70 people crowded into a lecture theatre, and Omar and I were honoured that the Q&A session was chaired by Robin Parker, the President of the Student Association, and that afterwards a number of audience members stayed behind to discuss some of the topics raised during the evening in greater detail – and, as elsewhere on the tour, to buy copies of my book The Guantánamo Files.

Finally, two very engaged Stop the War activists drove Omar and I back to the centre of Aberdeen, where we stopped at an Indian restaurant for a biryani, and then made our way back to the guest house, where, instead of getting an early night, we stayed up chatting for hours, discussing plans for regular meetings between us to work out how to publicize the stories of the men still held in Guantánamo, and how to further the campaign against control orders, and the work of the GJC.

In the morning, I hauled myself out of bed for breakfast, after too little sleep, while Omar took some much-needed extra rest, and then we trudged the streets in the rain, looking for a coffee shop that we eventually located in the shopping centre next to the station. At 12, we bid farewell to Aberdeen, heading south to Edinburgh, very well known to me, and also known to Omar after a visit on the Cageprisoners’ tour, “Two Sides One Story,” last year. At the station, we were met by Richard Haley, indefatigable human rights and anti-war campaigner, who was hosting our visit to Edinburgh and Glasgow through the organization for whom he is the secretary, Scotland Against Criminalising Communities (SACC).

Richard drove us back to the flat he shares with his fellow campaigner, Julia Davidson, where a BBC reporter was waiting to interview Omar for a religious affairs programme that was broadcast on Sunday, and we then made our way back to central Edinburgh, grabbing a quick — and delicious — curry at the mosque, which has an understandably busy kitchen, serving students and workers in the daytime, and providing a useful bridge between the Muslim and non-Muslim communities, before relocating to the venue for the screening, Augustine’s, a church on George IV Bridge. The venue is opposite the Elephant House, which is where I took Omar for a coffee during the screening, giving us an opportunity to discuss politics and literature, while gazing out of the window at Edinburgh Castle, as J.K. Rowling had done when she was writing the first Harry Potter book. It was, from this angle, easy to see the castle as the inspiration for Hogwarts.

After the screening, again attended by over 70 people, Omar and I were joined by Aamer Anwar, Scotland’s most tenacious human rights lawyer, for another rewarding Q&A session, and after some late night chat at Richard and Julia’s, a good night’s sleep and a slow morning in which, while Omar was taken sightseeing, I caught up with the news and was interviewed over the phone by a Georgian journalist regarding the release of three Guantánamo prisoners, we set off in the rain for the final Scottish screening (for now) in Glasgow.

After some Moroccan/Indian food in a lovely little place on Sauchiehall Street, we made our way to the venue, Adelaides, a former church on Bath Street, where over a hundred people turned up to watch the film, while Omar, Anwar and I stepped out for a coffee and a discussion about some of the many outrageous events in Scotland’s own “War on Terror.” We then returned for a very lively Q&A session, recorded by We Are Change Glasgow, which showed that Glasgow activism is alive and well. Afterwards, we were all engaged in further discussions with many members of the audience, and we then relaxed over tea, coffee and desserts in a local restaurant before heading back to Edinburgh.

It was a wonderful trip, fascinating for both Omar and I in terms of travelling around and meeting such engaging and passionate people, and it also confirmed that the film has a powerful message to tell, that it provides new information even to those who have been following the story of Guantánamo over the years, and that presenting it in person, and being available for Q&A sessions afterwards, adds another dimension to the story, spurring people to greater engagement with the issues, and, hopefully, leading to a few of the students we met finding good reasons to put their energies into the field of human rights.

About the film

Take action for Shaker Aamer

At future screenings, the speakers will continue to discuss what steps we can all take to put pressure on the British government to demand the return of Shaker Aamer to the UK, to be reunited with his family, as Omar and Andy did during the Scottish tour. For further information, please also visit this page for a video of Shaker’s daughter Johina handing in a letter to Gordon Brown at 10 Downing Street on January 11, 2010.

Recent feedback

“[T]hought-provoking, harrowing, emotional to watch, touching and politically powerful.”
Harpymarx, blogger

“The film was fantastic! It has the unique ability of humanizing those who were detained at Guantánamo like no other I have seen.”
Sari Gelzer, Truthout

“Engaging and moving, and personal. The first [film] to really take you through the lives of the men from their own eyes.”
Debra Sweet, The World Can’t Wait

For further information, interviews, or to inquire about broadcasting, distributing or showing “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo,” please contact Polly Nash or Andy Worthington.

(‘’)

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK). To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook and Twitter). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in January 2010, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

“Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo”: 500 turn up for Kent screening, plus report on SOAS and UCL events

Andy Worthington — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 13:39:44 +0000

If you’re looking for confirmation that discussions of torture and imprisonment without charge or trial can galvanize the public, then a crowd of 500 students in Kent watching a film about Guantánamo on Thursday evening ought to provide conclusive proof. The film in question is the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo,” directed by filmmaker Polly Nash and myself, which tells the story of Guantánamo through interviews with released prisoners and with lawyers.

It was, I must admit, a revelation to myself and to Omar Deghayes, the former Guantánamo prisoner who is at the heart of the film — and is my main companion on an ongoing UK tour of the film — that so many people could be enticed to take time off from less arduous activities, to learn about the cruelty and incompetence of the “War on terror,” and to hear Omar speak in person. It was, moreover, a vindication for our belief (shared by Polly and the production team at Spectacle) that the story still needs to be told, and that, up and down the country, enough people are interested to make screenings worthwhile.

The tour, which sees Omar and I in Scotland all next week, and in London and Nottingham the week after, is essentially an experiment in DIY distribution and grass-roots participation — put together partly through contacts made at the film’s launch in October, partly through Polly’s contacts, partly through connections I have made throughout the last four years of relentless reportage and analysis regarding Guantánamo, and partly through contacts established by Maryam Hassan, the former Executive Director of Cageprisoners. Maryam has achieved this through long years of activism and networking, and, in particular, through organizing the “Two Sides, One Story” tour last year, in which a former Guantánamo guard, Chris Arendt, and former prisoners including Moazzam Begg, Omar Deghayes and Jarallah al-Marri (from Qatar) filled venues across the country, to discuss Guantánamo from “two sides”: that of the prisoners, and that of a National Guard recruit who grew to despise his job, and the lies and deception on which it was based.

When the tour of “Outside the Law” began, at Amnesty International’s Human Rights Action Centre in London on February 16, neither myself, Polly or Omar had any idea how easy or difficult it would be to attract audiences for the film. With no mainstream media coverage, and a focus on an ongoing scandal that, to many, is no longer particularly relevant (despite President Obama’s failure to close the prison by his self-imposed one-year deadline of January 22), we were, therefore, delighted when a capacity crowd filled the Human Rights Action Centre, and a subsequent screening at the National Film Theatre on February 27 sold out. Since then, audiences of between 50 and 120 have seen the film at the LSE, at Oxford Brookes University (see here), at Bradford Playhouse and The Forum in Norwich (see here), and, this week, at SOAS and UCL.

The events at SOAS and UCL were rewarding. Laleh Khalili, Senior Lecturer in Politics of the Middle East, chaired the Q&A that followed the SOAS screening, when we had a glimpse of the power of Omar’s testimony. Having picked Omar up from Russell Square tube, Polly arrived with him just as the film ended, and as he entered he received a loud round of spontaneous applause.

In the Q&A session that followed, Omar’s call for law students to help his organization, the Guantánamo Justice Centre, to put together lawsuits against those who authorized and facilitated the abuses of the “War on Terror” created a buzz, and we were treated to a spirited call to action by Noel Hamel of the Save Shaker Aamer Campaign, an offshoot of the Stop the War coalition in Shaker’s home borough of Wandsworth, which was accompanied by the distribution of letters calling on foreign secretary David Miliband to do more to help secure the return to the UK of Shaker Aamer (also featured in the film).

Shaker Aamer is Britain’s last resident in Guantánamo, and is still held, despite being cleared for release in 2007. If you would like to add your voices to those calling for his release — and I urge you to do so — Amnesty International has a campaign page here, and you can also cut and paste a letter to David Miliband here, which also calls on the government to take other cleared prisoners from Guantánamo, who cannot be repatriated because they face the risk of torture or other ill-treatment.

If those at SOAS were mostly students, at UCL on Wednesday a diverse crowd of students, lawyers, journalists and activists — some drawn by guest speaker Philippe Sands — provided Omar and I with a set of lively questions, after Philippe, who had to leave early, had delivered a short statement about torture and accountability. Afterwards, a group of human rights students, including the organizer, Ben Rutledge, took Polly and I to a nearby pub, where it was heartening to discover the extent to which they were engaged in the issues.

However, nothing prepared us for Thursday’s screening at the University of Kent, on a hill overlooking Canterbury, where the 480-seat Keynes College Lecture Theatre 1 was packed out, and late arrivals perched on the stairs. Omar and I had skipped the screening, to discuss the work of the Guantánamo Justice Centre and the stories of some of the prisoners still held, and when we walked back in, as the credits rolled, and were introduced to the audience, the welcome Omar received at SOAS was amplified many times over, and he was cheered loudly.

This served only to confirm what has been apparent throughout the tour — that Omar’s testimony, and the combination of inner strength and vulnerability that infuses his account, brings home the human cost of Guantánamo and the “War on Terror” in the most extraordinarily effective manner.

I’d like to thank William Rowlandson, Lecturer in Hispanic Studies, and Ruth Blakeley, Lecturer in International Relations, for organizing the screening and doing such a great job publicizing it and mobilizing the students, with the help of the university’s press department, the Centre for American Studies, the Amnesty International student group, Kent Debating Society, People & Planet and the Current Affairs Society. I’d also like to thank BBC Radio Kent for taking an interest, and for turning up to interview Omar and myself.

Afterwards, William and Ruth took Omar and I out for a wonderful Moroccan meal, and when we finally realized what time it was, and Omar drove me to Ashford station, where I was fortunate that the last train to London had not yet departed, the thought of a protracted journey home was not enough to dampen my excitement at how well the film had been received — not just in Canterbury, but everywhere else that it has been shown, and to look forward to next week’s screenings in Scotland.

About the film

Take action for Shaker Aamer

At the screenings, the speakers will continue to discuss what steps we can all take to put pressure on the British government to demand the return of Shaker Aamer to the UK, to be reunited with his family. Please visit this page for a video of Shaker’s daughter Johina handing in a letter to Gordon Brown at 10 Downing Street on January 11, 2010.

Recent feedback

“[T]hought-provoking, harrowing, emotional to watch, touching and politically powerful.”
Harpymarx, blogger

“The film was fantastic! It has the unique ability of humanizing those who were detained at Guantánamo like no other I have seen.”
Sari Gelzer, Truthout

“Engaging and moving, and personal. The first [film] to really take you through the lives of the men from their own eyes.”
Debra Sweet, The World Can’t Wait

For further information, interviews, or to inquire about broadcasting, distributing or showing “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo,” please contact Polly Nash or Andy Worthington.

(‘’)

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK). To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook and Twitter). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in January 2010, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

Six New UK Screenings of “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo,” including the London International Documentary Festival

Andy Worthington — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 14:07:55 +0000

Throughout this year, I’m touring the UK with former Guantánamo prisoner Omar Deghayes, showing the new documentary, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (which I co-directed with filmmaker Polly Nash). In the last few weeks, Omar and I (often accompanied by Polly) have screened the film in London, Oxford, Bradford and Norwich, and this week we’re showing it at SOAS and UCL in London (on Tuesday and Wednesday), and the University of Kent (on Thursday), with a short Scottish tour following the week after.

Full details of the UK tour can be found here, and I’m delighted to report that, in the last week, we have received confirmation of six more screenings, in London, Cardiff, Aston, Birmingham and Newcastle, including our second film festival, the London International Documentary Festival (the first was a wonderful festival in Norway in February). NOTE added April 15: The Cardiff event has now been postponed.

The London International Documentary Festival (LIDF), now in its fourth year, takes place from April 23 to May 9, and “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” will be shown at the Free Word Centre on Farringdon Road (the old Guardian building) on Monday April 26. Further details here, including booking information.

Please see the updated tour list for details of the other newly confirmed screenings — at London South Bank University on Monday March 29, Cardiff University (Tuesday April 20 — postponed), Aston University (Tuesday May 4), Birmingham Central Library (Wednesday May 5), and Newcastle University (Tuesday May 11) — as well as those already confirmed (in Dundee, Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Nottingham and Colchester).

For further information, interviews, or to inquire about broadcasting, distributing or showing “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo,” please contact Polly Nash or Andy Worthington.

About the film

Take action for Shaker Aamer

At the screenings, the speakers will discuss what steps we can all take to put pressure on the British government to demand the return of Shaker Aamer to the UK, to be reunited with his family. To get involved now, please visit this Amnesty International action page, to find details of how you can write to David Miliband and Gordon Brown, asking them to demand Shaker’s return. You can also cut and paste a letter to David Miliband here. Please also visit this page for a video of Shaker’s daughter Johina handing in a letter to Gordon Brown at 10 Downing Street on January 11, 2010.

Recent feedback

“[T]hought-provoking, harrowing, emotional to watch, touching and politically powerful.”
Harpymarx, blogger

“The film was fantastic! It has the unique ability of humanizing those who were detained at Guantánamo like no other I have seen.”
Sari Gelzer, Truthout

“Engaging and moving, and personal. The first [film] to really take you through the lives of the men from their own eyes.”
Debra Sweet, The World Can’t Wait

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK). To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook and Twitter). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in January 2010, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

“Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo”: Report on screenings in Bradford and Norwich

Andy Worthington — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 11:33:40 +0000

Former Guantánamo prisoner Omar Deghayes and I have just returned from a successful two-day trip showing the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (directed by Polly Nash and myself) in Bradford and Norwich, as part of an ongoing UK tour.

As with recent screenings — at Amnesty International’s London HQ, at the NFT and the LSE in London, and at Oxford Brookes University — Omar and I were gratified to discover that, although Guantánamo and the abuses of the “War on Terror” are rarely front-page news, there is a thirst for knowledge about the prison, the 188 men still held, the torture regime implemented by the Bush administration, British complicity in torture, the reasons for President Obama’s failure to close Guantánamo, and what people can do to help, which we are able to address personally.

As with all the dates on the UK tour of the film, Omar and I are focusing in particular on the campaign to urge the British government to do all in its power to demand the return from Guantánamo of the British resident Shaker Aamer, whose story is featured in the film. Shaker has a British wife and four children, and was cleared for release from Guantánamo in 2007, but he continues to be held, as the Wandsworth Guardian (in Shaker’s home constituency) explained just yesterday, because of politics rather than any notion of justice. After an inconclusive meeting between the government and Shaker’s wife and lawyers, his US lawyer, Brent Mickum explained, “His detention is purely political. It has nothing to do with justice and what he has done. It is more to do with what has been done to him.”

Omar and I are also asking audiences to tell the government to do more to help close Guantánamo by asking for the return to the UK of Ahmed Belbacha, an Algerian who lived here for several years. Ahmed was also cleared for release from Guantánamo in 2007, but is terrified of returning to Algeria, and the UK — as a country in which he sought refuge, and found gainful employment from 1999 to 2001 — is best placed to rescue him from Guantánamo.

Moreover, we are also asking audiences to request that the government take other cleared prisoners, who have no connection to the UK, but who, like Ahmed, cannot be repatriated because they face torture or other ill-treatment if returned to their home countries. We are urging this on a humanitarian basis, and are asking our government to join countries including Belgium, France, Hungary, Ireland, Slovakia and Switzerland, who have all done this, and have not, instead, stood back and hectored others to do what we ourselves are unwilling to do.

We have been pointing out that Britain has done no more than the minimum to date — accepting its own nationals, and securing the release of all but one of its residents — and adding that, as America’s closest ally in the “War on Terror,” we should do this, at least in part, to make amends for our complicity in the crimes of the Bush administration, which has recently been revealed in court cases involving both Shaker Aamer and Binyam Mohamed (who is also featured in the film).

While Omar and I were visiting Bradford and Norwich, this slowly unfolding story emerged once more, as the government sought to defend its intention to use secret evidence in a civil claim for damages brought by six former prisoners (including Omar and Binyam). This unprecedented move on the government’s part — extending the already unacceptable use of secret evidence into civil cases — is being fought by the ex-prisoners’ lawyers, who, in the Court of Appeal this week, accused the government of crossing an unacceptable line. As Dinah Rose QC argued, the secrecy the government seeks “has never been allowed in the history of the common law,” and “The process is fundamentally incompatible with the very notion of what a civil trial is.” Speaking to the Guardian, solicitor Louise Christian added, “As the Binyam Mohamed case illustrated, this is really about the government avoiding embarrassment for the reality of their collaboration with the US and all that happened, rather than any real national security issues.”

Furthermore, on Wednesday, when Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, the former head of MI5, stepped forward to claim that Britain had been kept in the dark by the US regarding the use of torture, she was widely criticized for presenting an implausible case. In the Guardian, for example, Vikram Dodd asked if she had found herself unable to read a newspaper from 2003 onwards, when the first serious allegations of torture emerged, and the Guardian also presented a compelling timeline of what was known when, and the changing advice that was given to MI5 operatives.

For those who want to be involved in putting pressure on the government to secure the return of Shaker Aamer, and to ask for other prisoners — including Ahmed Belbacha — to be given new homes in the UK, Amnesty International has an action page here, and you can also cut and paste a letter to David Miliband on my website here.

As Omar and I undertake more dates on our ongoing tour, I’m also encouraged by the fact that, on each screening, the film not only galvanizes people to action, but also results in us receiving confirmation — even from people who have been following the news about Guantánamo and campaigning for its closure — that it contains a wealth of information that viewers were unaware of, and that it also explains the history of Guantánamo, and the legal challenges to the lawlessness of the Bush administration’s detention policies, in a manner that is both clear and concise. From my own point of view, I also find it profoundly encouraging that, on each screening, viewers are bowled over by Omar’s humanity, his vulnerability, his fortitude, his faith and his inability to bear malice towards those who tortured and abused him for over five and a half years.

This does not mean that he forgives those who authorized these policies, as he explains when asked about the work of the Guantánamo Justice Centre. The GJC is a coalition of former prisoners, and, as legal director, Omar is overseeing the organization’s involvement in legal cases against the senior Bush administration officials and lawyers responsible for initiating and endorsing the crimes against humanity undertaken at Guantánamo and elsewhere in the “War on Terror.” The GJC’s mission also involves seeking funding to provide welfare for released prisoners, in many countries, who bear the taint of Guantánamo, have received no compensation from the US government, and are unable to find work.

In both Bradford and Norwich, Omar and I received the warmest of welcomes — from Noa Kleinman of Amnesty International, Eleanor Barrett, the director of the Bradford Playhouse, and a host of other activists in Bradford, and from Frank Stone of Norwich Stop the War Coalition, David Ford of Norwich Amnesty, and a host of other activists in Norwich, who truly went the extra mile in looking after us.

Travelling together was also an important part of the whole experience. After a certain amount of panic at my end, regarding a planned rendezvous in East Croydon, Omar and I managed to meet up without any problems, and I then allowed myself to be won over by Omar’s patience — something that few of us who have not endured years of wrongful imprisonment can comprehend — as his TomTom (or Lady TomTom as I dubbed her) took us the wrong way, leading to an unplanned journey through central London, and up the M1, as the rain fell and the motorway appeared to stretch on forever, which resulted in us rolling up at Bradford Playhouse just ten minutes before the screening was supposed to begin.

Along the way, Omar and I hatched plans to tell his story, and to publicize the almost completely unknown stories of many of the 188 men who are still held, and we also began discussing aspects of the prison’s history — who was held where and when, and the history of certain isolation blocks and punishment blocks — to enable us to work together to continue publicizing the eight-year scandal of Guantánamo Bay.

Despite the lateness of our arrival, our hosts were unflappable, and after a much-appreciated platter of samosas and sandwiches, we made our way to the cinema, an original 1930s classic, saved from the developer’s axe on numerous occasions, and now run as a community hub by a team led by Eleanor Barrett, for the screening, which drew an audience of about 70 people. Afterwards — and after Omar and I had ducked out to check out the neighbourhood, admiring the architectural legacy of Bradford’s 19th century wealth — Noa led an interesting Q&A session, in which we were able to encourage people to take part in the campaign to put pressure on the British government to demand the return of Shaker Aamer, and to act for Ahmed Belbacha and others, and were also able to elucidate other aspects of the prison’s long and brutal history.

We then retired to the basement bar, decorated with love and care by Eleanor and her team, and, after Omar took off for a hotel where rooms had very generously been provided for us, I stayed and chatted for a while with Noa, Eleanor and other local activists. Noa and friends then dropped me off at the hotel, where I slept like a baby, but only after some surreal shenanigans in the hotel foyer, where I poured cash into a slot to access the hotel computer to update my site and Facebook. I also snuck outside for the odd cigarette, where I marveled at the fact that, although I could see Bradford’s football ground and the outlines of numerous stolid remnants of the city’s Victorian past, I was on the edge of a retail park that made me feel as though I was in America, in a motel-like construction with French staff, populated, improbably, by hordes of young locals.

In the morning, Omar and I took a short stroll around Bradford, stopping near the Victorian Town Hall with its almost implausibly tall and ornate tower, for coffee and discussions about the work of the Guantánamo Justice Centre (primarily focused on how to secure funding, and to attract pro bono support from lawyers and law students), before heading off to Norwich. This was less of a long haul — and a considerably more pleasant drive across the flatlands of Norfolk on ‘A’ roads than chasing a deadline up a rain-soaked M1 — and we rolled up at 5.30 at the house of a local activist, Shan, who provided us with a lovely meal before driving us to The Forum, in the heart of Norwich, for the screening.

A giant glass hangar, opened by the Queen in 2002, The Forum houses Norwich’s library, the BBC and a handful of restaurants, and it also seems to provide shelter to half the city’s youth, knocking about in the library or enraging security by skateboarding on the space in front of the venue, which, in true modern British style, is no longer a public space, but privately owned. I was distressed to discover later that the library now rents its space from the trust that owns the Forum, but was impressed by the cinema space downstairs, where the film was screened, even though, as I also learned, the trust has failed to understand the trying economic climate we are currently enduring, and has recently raised its room hire rates.

Despite all this, the welcome we received from Norwich’s dedicated human rights activists (who campaigned relentlessly for Binyam Mohamed’s release) more than offset the bitter wind scything in from the North Sea. In addition, the film once more delivered its powerful message, and Omar and I were involved in another engrossing Q&A session with a very attentive audience. Afterwards, as Omar made his way back to Shan’s house and a room for the night, I walked across town with my host, Peter, a Green councillor and passionate anti-war activist, who enlightened me about local politics and also told me about his recent trip to Gaza, to liaise with and provide art materials to a trauma centre providing art therapy to the young people of Gaza, which he has recently made into a film, “Gaza Freedom March.” This will be shown for the first time in Norwich in the near future, and will then, hopefully, be made available to other interested parties around the country.

My thanks again to all who welcomed Omar and I, to the organizers and the audiences — and to Maryam Hassan for her invaluable help in organizing the tour. I’ll be announcing some new dates soon, but in the meantime a list of tour dates can be found here, and, next week, Omar and I (with Polly) will be at SOAS on Tuesday March 16, at UCL on Wednesday March 17, and at the University of Kent on Thursday March 18.

About the film

“Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” tells the story of Guantánamo (and includes sections on extraordinary rendition and secret prisons) with a particular focus on how the Bush administration turned its back on domestic and international laws, how prisoners were rounded up in Afghanistan and Pakistan without adequate screening (and often for bounty payments), and why some of these men may have been in Afghanistan or Pakistan for reasons unconnected with militancy or terrorism (as missionaries or humanitarian aid workers, for example).

Throughout the tour, Omar, Andy and Polly (and other speakers) will continue to focus on the plight of Shaker Aamer. To provide more background information, readers may want to know that in December 2009, it emerged in a court case in the UK that British agents witnessed his abuse while he was held in US custody in Afghanistan, and in January 2010, for Harper’s Magazine, law professor Scott Horton reported that he was tortured in Guantánamo on the same night, in June 2006, that three other men appear to have been killed by representatives of an unknown US agency, and that a cover-up then took place, which successfully passed the deaths off as suicides.

Recent feedback

“[T]hought-provoking, harrowing, emotional to watch, touching and politically powerful.”
Harpymarx, blogger

“Last Saturday I went to see Polly Nash and Andy Worthington’s harrowing documentary, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” at London’s BFI. The film knits together narratives so heart-wrenching I half wish I had not heard them. Yet the camaraderie between the detainees and occasional humorous anecdotes … provide a glimpse into the wit, courage and normalcy of the men we are encouraged to perceive as monsters. Nash and Worthington’s film also explores the legal and pragmatic implications of our transatlantic freefall into ethical bankruptcy. It asks how we might navigate our way out of a situation that doesn’t legally exist. The answer is: with great difficulty. With lawyers like Clive Stafford Smith working tirelessly to defend people who have not been accused of a crime and have no evidence against them to refute, the courtroom has become the domain in which we watch the dream of European multiculturalism imploding. Here we see UK Muslims struggle to exert Enlightenment-based Common Law against a so-called civilized, liberal government who would apparently prefer the Magna Carta had never been written.”
Sarah Gillespie, singer/songwriter

For three recent reviews of the film, see the full-length articles by Sarah Gillespie (which was widely cross-posted) and Harpy Marx, and also a review by Michael Bentley.

(‘’)

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK). To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook and Twitter). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in January 2010, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

“Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo”: A Day Out in Oxford

Andy Worthington — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 12:42:58 +0000

On Friday, there was another successful screening of “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo,” the new documentary film, co-directed by Polly Nash and myself, which was chosen as the closing film in Oxford Brookes University’s 8th Human Rights Film Festival (also see here). The screening was part of an ongoing UK tour of the film, in which former prisoner Omar Deghayes and myself (who are both in the film) are attending post-screening Q&A sessions, in venues from Canterbury to Aberdeen — sometimes (as on Friday) with Polly Nash, and sometimes with other guests as well.

Over a hundred people crammed into the Music Room of Headington Hill Hall (a splendid 19th century mansion, which was once the home of Robert Maxwell) for the screening on Friday evening, and in a Q&A session following the film — after Polly and I had guided Omar Deghayes, travelling by car, to the correct location by mobile phone — we fielded a range of perceptive questions and comments from the audience.

This allowed me to encourage audience members to take action for Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo (whose story is featured in the film), by sending a letter to foreign secretary David Miliband that is reproduced here (so you can cut and paste your own copy), and encouraging others to do so. You can also email David Miliband and send a letter to Prime Minster Gordon Brown via Amnesty International’s campaign page here.

I also discussed the latest revelations of British complicity in torture, in the cases of Binyam Mohamed (also featured in the film) and Shaker Aamer, and Omar, as always, provided some fresh insights into life in Guantánamo, where he was held for over five years, and the role of the British intelligence services in his interrogations in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Guantánamo. The Q&A session was filmed by BrookesTV, and will be available on the website soon.

Polly and I had decided to make a day of it in Oxford, arriving at 3 pm on a warm, sunny afternoon, and wandering down to Art Jericho (on King Street in Jericho) for “Homeland,” an exhibition of photographs by my old friend Adrian Arbib. The centerpiece of the exhibition, which runs until March 13, is a collection of Adrian’s powerful and poignant photos of the Solsbury Hill road protest in 1994.

As the publicity states, this constitutes “a unique record of an important moment in British political history when a political movement changed government transport policy,” but there are also many other protest photos from the last 15 years, including GM crop protests, Jeremy Clarkson being pied, and a series of photos from the occupation of the Castle Mill Boatyard, a little-reported story of British Waterways’ greed and stupidity, which led to the closure of the Castle Mill Boatyard in Jericho in 2005, and its subsequent occupation by canal boat residents and other members of the local community, while British Waterways tried to press ahead with a cynical property development, which ultimately failed.

I first met Adrian in 2003, when I was looking for photos for my book Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion, a history of the British counter-culture which included a section on the road protest movement of the 1990s. Adrian kindly allowed me to reproduce a number of his photos in my book, and I’m delighted to report that he has now produced a book of his Solsbury Hill protest photos, Solsbury Hill: Chronicle of a Road Protest, which is discussed in more detail in a separate article.

After the exhibition, Polly and I wandered through central Oxford, visiting New College, where I studied more years ago than I care to remember, and stopping for coffee at another old haunt, the Queen’s Lane Coffee House (which claims to be the oldest in Europe), before catching a bus up the hill to Headington and the screening. As with all the screenings since the launch of the film in October, the attendance demonstrated, yet again, that there is a real appetite for information about Guantánamo and the crimes and failures of the “War on Terror” that is not being adequately met by the mainstream media.

My thanks to the postgraduate students on Oxford Brookes University’s MA course in Development and Emergency Practice, who organize the festival each year, and who did such a great job of welcoming us, and attracting such a great crowd.

About the film

Recent feedback

“[T]hought-provoking, harrowing, emotional to watch, touching and politically powerful.”
Harpymarx, blogger

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK). To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook and Twitter). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in January 2010, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

A full house at the NFT for “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo”

Andy Worthington — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 13:26:53 +0000

On Saturday afternoon, a packed house at the National Film Theatre watched the new Guantánamo documentary, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (directed by filmmaker Polly Nash and myself), in a screening organized by the BFI (British Film Institute). Afterwards, in a Q&A session filmed by the production company Spectacle (which will be online soon), and admirably chaired by the journalist and broadcaster Victoria Brittain, the UK’s most celebrated human rights lawyer, Gareth Peirce, delivered a passionate call to action, asking the audience to overcome the UK’s prevailing political apathy, and to campaign on behalf of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo — and the focus of the film, along with released prisoners Binyam Mohamed and Omar Deghayes.

An innocent man with a British wife and four British children, Shaker was cleared for release from Guantánamo in 2007 (when the British government first asked for his return to the UK), but continues to be held not because of any involvement with terrorism, but because of what he knows about the dark workings of Guantánamo, as the most articulate and committed defender of the prisoners’ rights. Disturbingly, it suits both the British and the American government to return Shaker to Saudi Arabia, the country of his birth, where he will be deprived of the opportunity to speak out, and will also be prevented from acting as a witness in court cases against both governments.

“10 x 10 x 10 for Shaker Aamer”: An instant campaign

In a rousing attempt to encourage the kind of concerted activity that is required to effect political change, Gareth not only encouraged the audience to send letters to foreign secretary David Miliband, demanding the immediate return of Shaker to the UK — through a campaign organized by Amnesty International — but also initiated a new campaign, “10 x 10 x 10 for Shaker Aamer” (which I think Gareth came up with on the day), whereby everyone concerned about this gross miscarriage of justice urges ten people they know to send a letter to David Miliband, and each of these ten people is urged to tell another ten people, and so on. Please try it, and also please encourage your MP to sign an Early Day Motion, introduced by Shaker’s MP, Martin Linton, calling for his immediate return to the UK. You can contact your MP here.

In the rest of the Q&A session, I addressed questions raised about the future of Guantánamo, and accountability for those who approved the use of torture. This has a particular resonance in the UK right now, as the government struggles to cope with recent revelations about its complicity in the torture of Binyam Mohamed, and also, for different reasons, in the US, where, scandalously, a senior lawyer in the Justice Department recently overruled the findings of a four-year investigation into the behaviour of John Yoo and Jay S. Bybee, the lawyers responsible for attempting to redefine torture, and to approve its use by the CIA. The report recommended that they should be punished for “professional misconduct,” but in the watered-down version they were merely criticized for exercising “poor judgment.”

After the Q&A, the majority of the audience convened in a conference room upstairs, where HHUGS (Helping Households Under Great Stress), the Institute of Race Relations, the Save Shaker Aamer Campaign (based in Shaker’s home borough of Wandsworth), Spectacle and I all had stalls, and there was a further opportunity to discuss strategies for the future, including the campaign to bring an end to Britain’s own version of Guantánamo, the system of control orders and deportation bail that was introduced in 2005, when the previous regime — imprisonment without charge or trial — was ruled illegal by the Law Lords.

This was a genuinely inspiring afternoon, and I’d like to thank David Somerset of the BFI for organizing it, and Victoria and Gareth for taking part.

Screening at the LSE, Monday March 1

On Monday evening, a good-sized crowd watched “Outside the Law” as the centerpiece of LSE Amnesty International Society’s Human Rights Week 2010. I’m delighted to report that Omar Deghayes was present for the post-screening Q&A, along with myself and Polly, and that we also had a special guest, Michel Paradis, a civilian defense lawyer in the US Defense Department, who is assigned to the Military Commissions, and is currently appealing the life sentence received by Ali Hamza al-Bahlul after a one-sided show trial in October 2008.

Again, we had a lively discussion after the film, even though, to be honest, none of us could see any easy way for Guantánamo to close in the imminent future, as President Obama lost the momentum he had when he came into office, and now seems to be floundering. However, we were, at least, able to push the message about Shaker Aamer, and I’m delighted to report that a stack of letters to David Miliband were taken away by those present, as were letters to Canadian PM Stephen Harper, asking the Canadian government to bring to an end its unprincipled refusal to call for the return from Guantánamo of Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen who was just 15 years old when he was seized, and who, to Obama’s eternal shame, has been put forward for a trial by Military Commission.

Feedback from the NFT screening

“[T]hought-provoking, harrowing, emotional to watch, touching and politically powerful.”
Harpymarx, blogger

About the film and the UK tour

“Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” is currently on a UK tour, with Omar Degahyes and Andy Worthington appearing in person, to attend post-screening Q&A sessions. On some dates, Omar, who is now the legal director of the Guantánamo Justice Centre, and Andy will be joined by Polly Nash and, occasionally, other guests.

Please also visit this page for a video of Shaker’s daughter Johina handing in a letter to Gordon Brown at 10 Downing Street on January 11, 2010.

Other recent feedback

“The film was fantastic! It has the unique ability of humanizing those who were detained at Guantánamo like no other I have seen.”
Sari Gelzer, Truthout

“Engaging and moving, and personal. The first [film] to really take you through the lives of the men from their own eyes.”
Debra Sweet, The World Can’t Wait

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Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK). To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook and Twitter). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in January 2010, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.