To mark the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, on January 11, I was involved in two particular projects — firstly, the establishment of a new campaign and website, “Close Guantánamo,” designed to raise awareness of the continuing injustice of Guantánamo, and, in particular, the injustice of continuing to hold 89 of the remaining 171 prisoners, even though they have been cleared for release; and secondly, the establishment of a petition on the White House’s “We the People” website, calling on President Obama to fulfil his promise to close Guantánamo.

The “Close Guantánamo” project has only just begun, and will enter a new phase next week with the publication of the first of the profiles of the 171 prisoners still held, designed to inform people that they are human beings, with feelings, and with families, who, after ten years, are not held legitimately, but are, as Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, explained last week, subjected to arbitrary detention.

In contrast, the second project — the petition on the White House’s “We the People” website — has just three days left until its deadline of one month is reached, so please, if you haven’t yet signed it, sign it now, and please also tell everyone you know. This could be the weekend that we beat the odds and come up with the signatures we need to secure a response from President Obama. The countdown clock, above, by the way, is from the Center for Constitutional Rights’ “Close Guantánamo” page, which also features videos from the protests in Washington D.C. on January 11 (and which I wrote about here).

Please note, crucially, that you do not have to be a US citizen or a US resident to sign the petition. When registering (which you must do first), just leave the box blank that asks you for your zip code.

Also, please note that some people have had problems with the site, which, unfortunately, are beyond the control of those setting up petitions. However, the following advice is from a friend who managed to overcome the obstacles:

A trick for getting the not-very-helpful website to work:

Having created an account, then persuaded it to accept your password (this can take a while), you’ll then find you’re on your profile page, miles away from the petition. In another tab, reclick the link to the petition.

If the “Sign Now” button is greyed out, make sure you’re logged in, then reload the petition page. Eventually you’ll get there, but they don’t make it easy.

They don’t indeed, and the problems with the site, to my mind, reflect badly on the Obama administration, which has also been beset with problems — like failing to keep important promises, such as the promise to close Guantánamo within a year, which the President made in an executive order on January 22, 2009.

My thanks to everyone who has worked to promote this petition, and to try to raise awareness of an ongoing disgrace that far too many people would rather forget. Guantánamo can be closed, and those of us who care — including those who signed up to the “Close Guantánamo” mission statement — will continue working hard to make that day a reality.

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) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in June 2011, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

In December, following six months of pressure from his lawyers — at the London-based legal action charity Reprieve — the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces agreed to hear his case on December 27, in an appeal for a new trial, and on December 30, as AllAfrica.com reported, “The Military Court of Cassation accepted the claim of Adel Fattouh al-Gazzar for the re-trial,” noting that “Hafez Abu Seada, attorney at law, submitted the claim after Adel was sentenced to three years in prison.”

On January 16, Adel was freed, although the English-speaking media did not report the story, and I did not discover it until last week, when Moazzam Begg told me about it while we were in Brussels for a screening at the European Parliament of “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo,” the documentary film that I co-directed with Polly Nash.

In searching for further information, I came across some video interviews conducted in Arabic immediately after Adel’s release, which I’ve cross-posted below, and when I put out a request for an Arabic speaker to translate the first, a two-minute teaser for the longer program, to get a flavour of what Adel was discussing, for those who, like myself, do not speak Arabic, a friend through Facebook, Aboubakr Seddik Ouahabi, offered to help and translated it. My thanks to him for his assistance.

Interviewer: Today, we’re visiting a brother of ours, who’s been released by the grace and the mercy of Almighty Allah. He was also detained previously in Guantánamo, so by the will of Allah, we will get to know him closely.

Adel al-Gazzar: Your brother in Islam, for the sake of Allah, Adel al-Gazzar. I was in Afghanistan, before the events of 9/11. I was working with the Saudi Red-Crescent, providing relief for the Afghans on the Pakistani-Afghan border. The complex, which I was working at with the Saudi Red-Crescent on the Pakistani-Afghan border, was hit, and they started putting us in ambulances on the basis of relocating us to the newer hospitals, or the bigger ones, which have better equipment. To do what? To do the surgical operations, but we were surprised to find ourselves in the airport of Quetta city, and the Pakistani regime handed us over to the American Marines.

[Adel also spoke about the longstanding claims that female interrogators had used their menstrual blood to humiliate prisoners, which some sources have said was not actually blood, but a substitute.]

Adel al-Gazzar: The hardest situation, which we were humiliated at, was when one of the American female interrogators, a criminal, and she was on her menstruation period, she was menstruating, put her hand in the place of the menstruation, then she took out the menstruation blood and she desecrated the Quran with it, the pages of the Holy Quran, and she desecrated with this blood the face of the brother, whom she was interrogating.

I want to say to those who’ve been deceived, deceived by the United States, and those deceived by the countries which are applying the democratic systems and the like, that these people … there might be some rights preserved between themselves, however, if the matter relates to others, especially to Muslims, then there’ll be no rights, and there’ll be no respect for any human values, or religious ones, or even those rights which they signed themselves.

America has deceived the world with a bunch of movies, which they believed due to the excess repetition of them, and America deceived the world with a group of … I mean, by the American Constitution as an example, and the values mentioned in it, but actually such a thing isn’t applicable in the real world, and I have a lot of evidence, arguments and proof, I mean besides my own story, evidence proving that.

*****

This is hopefully enough for non-Arabic speakers to get a flavour of Adel’s commentary. Certainly, he was in high spirits following his release, finally reunited with his family after ten long years. Below is the full, 47-minute interview with him in Arabic, plus another, shorter interview recorded around the same time with another interviewer.

Note: Please visit the website of the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, and sign up to join a growing body of people demanding that President Obama fulfill his unfulfilled promise to close the prison. Please also sign a new White House petition on the “We the People” website calling for the closure of Guantánamo. 25,000 signatures are needed by February 6 to secure a response from the President.

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) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in June 2011, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

Lawyers and NGOs aware of Algeria’s poor human rights record disagreed, as did some of the Algerian prisoners themselves, to the extent that the last two Algerians sent home — Abdul Aziz Naji in July 2010 and Farhi Saeed bin Mohammed in January 2011 — had actively resisted being sent home, and had taken their cases all the way to the US Supreme Court, which had paved the way for their enforced return by refusing to accept their appeals.

In assessing whether or not it was safe for Algerians to be repatriated from Guantánamo, the US government was required to weigh Algeria’s established reputation for using torture against the “diplomatic assurances” agreed between Washington and Algiers, whereby, as an Obama administration official told the Washington Post at the time of Naji’s repatriation, the Algerian government had promised that prisoners returned from Guantánamo “would not be mistreated.” The US official added, “We take some care in evaluating countries for repatriation. In the case of Algeria, there is an established track record and we have given that a lot of weight. The Algerians have handled this pretty well: You don’t have recidivism and you don’t have torture.”

According to research I undertook after Abdul Aziz Naji’s enforced repatriation, by speaking to the men’s attorneys, the US government was able to justify its claims because there had been no recorded incidents of torture amongst the ten Algerians previously released from Guantánamo. Although they were held incommunicado for 12 days by the Department of Intelligence and Security (DRS), as permitted under Algerian law, none of them reported being physically abused. In addition, although they all faced dubious trials after their return — generally about 15 months after their repatriation — and although they also suffered prejudice because of the perceived “taint” of Guantánamo, they had not been convicted on trumped-up charges, and had been released after their trials.

I cannot guarantee that I was able to ascertain the exact details of what happened to each of the ten men, but until two weeks ago the most troubling information from Algeria relating to the Guantánamo prisoners appeared to be the 20-year sentence delivered in absentia against Ahmed Belbacha, one of the four Algerians cleared for release but still held, on trumped-up charges of “membership of a terrorist group active overseas.” As far as his lawyers can ascertain, this sentence only came about because Belbacha had been vocal in his opposition to being repatriated, based on his fears about the government, and about the Islamists who had prompted him to flee the country in the first place when they threatened him while he was working for a government-owned oil company.

On January 16, however, any comfort to be gleaned from the Algerian government’s refusal to imprison those returned from Guantánamo for the other Algerians who do not wish to be repatriated — and who, by my reckoning, are Nabil Hadjarab (PDF), Motai Saib and Djamel Ameziane (PDF), who were all cleared for release by military review boards under the Bush administration — dissipated when, as AFP reported, Abdul Aziz Naji received a three-year sentence “for membership of an extremist group active overseas.”

As AFP explained, “The prosecution had sought a 10-year prison sentence and a 5,000-euro ($6,330) fine” for Naji (described as Nadji Abdelaziz). Following the ruling, Naji’s lawyer, Hassiba Boumerdassi, said she would appeal, describing it as “an unprecedented ruling” in Algeria, although AFP pointed out that there was a precedent — the in absentia sentence against Ahmed Belbacha, and those who have studied what happened when Algerians were repatriated from the UK with “assurances” a few years ago are even less convinced. As a friend with close knowledge of the Algerians’ cases explained to me, one of them “was given the same sentence with the same accusation in 2007 when he returned home and another is still serving an 8 year sentence on his return.” She added, “Yet the Home Office claims that Algeria is now a country where it is safe to return the Algerian detainees here despite some of them still bearing the torture marks of Algeria’s torture chambers,” and the echoes with the US government’s view of the “safety” of Algeria are surely not coincidental.

Neverthless, this was the first sentence delivered in person against a former Guantánamo prisoner, and, as the legal action charity Reprieve noted in a follow-up report, Naji, an amputee “who is suffering from serious health complications due to the amputation of his leg,” has had his worst fears confirmed with his conviction. As Reprieve also noted, the charge against him “derived from the unsubstantiated accusations the US administration made against him in 2002.”

In an appeal, the NGO Cageprisoners also noted that, although Naji “returned to his family and tried start a new life,” he “was deprived of any identity documents and suffered from depression, anxiety and other symptoms consistent with post-traumatic stress disorder due to his treatment in American custody.” Cageprisoners also explained that he was under “judicial supervision” and “had to sign a register every week at the local police station,” and also explianed that on the day of his trial he had been arrested without warning and taken to the court.

Reprieve added that, during his trial, “the prosecutor presented no evidence of Mr. Naji’s guilt — rather, the judge simply questioned him and produced a guilty verdict,” and also noted that he “is being held in the notorious El Harache prison in Algiers, where violent abuse of prisoners has been reported by Amnesty International.”

Reprieve also stated:

His family is deeply concerned about his rapidly deteriorating health, and his lawyer reports that his condition has become critical and is worsening by the day. He has not had access to adequate medical treatment while in prison.

Mustafa Bouchachi, the president of the Algerian League for the Defence of Human Rights, visited Mr. Naji in prison on Wednesday and attested to Mr. Naji’s critical health condition. He reports that Mr. Naji is on hunger strike as “the only way that he has to protest his unjust treatment — first by the US authorities in Guantánamo and now in his own country.” Mr Naji further explained that his imprisonment in Algeria is bringing back to him his horrible and unjustified years in Guantánamo.

Katie Taylor, of Reprieve’s “Life After Guantánamo” project, added, “It is outrageous that Mr. Naji is being punished again for the same discredited accusations that the US used to hold him in Guantánamo for eight years without charge or trial — this time in his own country. Algerian authorities must restore his right to a fair trial and overturn his conviction on faulty charges for which the prosecutor did not even bother to introduce evidence.”

As Reprieve also noted, Abdul Aziz Naji is represented in the US by Ellen Lubell and Doris Tennant, who prepared the following profile with the Center for Constitutional Rights:

Mr. Naji was born in Batna, Algeria in 1975. After sixth grade, he began work in his father’s blacksmith shop and later completed his required military service in the Algerian Army. After his service, Mr. Naji, like many young Muslims, travelled to Mecca on pilgrimage and then, during early 2001, worked briefly with a reputable Pakistani charity, providing humanitarian assistance to needy Muslims and Christians in Kashmir. Offering to volunteer his services was important to his religious beliefs. While carrying food and clothing to poor villages one night with a group of other volunteers, Mr. Naji stepped on a landmine (one of many unexploded ordnance that lace the region) and sustained a serious injury, resulting in the loss of his lower right leg. He was taken to a hospital in Lahore, Pakistan where he was treated for several months and fit with a prosthetic leg. He spent many months after that in rehabilitation, living with a few generous families in the city who offered to board him.

An amputee with few resources and in need of the most basic assistance, Mr. Naji was directed by acquaintances to an Algerian in Peshawar to help find a wife. While visiting this man in May 2002, he and his host were arrested during a raid of the man’s house by Pakistani police, one of the many house raids in the area. The reason for the arrests was never explained. In fact, the Pakistanis told Mr. Naji that they would release him. But instead, he was taken by Americans stationed in Peshawar and transferred first to Bagram and then to Guantánamo where he was held for eight years without charge or trial before being forcibly repatriated to Algeria.

Note: In the hope of securing clemency from the Algerian government, Cageprisoners has drafted the following message to the Algerian Minister of Justice:

Monsieur le Ministre,

A la suite d’informations reçues de l’organisation britanique de défense des droits de l’Homme CagePrisoners, je vous exprime ma vive préoccupation concernant l’affaire d’Abdel Aziz Naji arrété le 16 janvier 2012 et condamné le jour même à trois ans de prison, accusé d’appartenir à un groupe terroriste opérant à l’étranger. Il apparaît que cette condamnation n’a pas été prononcée dans des conditions compatibles avec celle d’un procès équitable.

Alors que l’Egypte a mis fin à la détention injuste d’Adel Al-Gazzar, alors que des anciens détenus tunisiens de Guantanmo ont pu regagner leur pays d’origine en toute sécurité et alors que les nouvelles autorités tunisiennes se sont engagées à tout faire pour obtenir la libération de ses cinq citoyens toujours détenus sur l’île cubaine, l’Algérie incarcère un homme qui a déjà passé 8 ans à Guantanamo sans procès, et ce sur la base de vagues accusations et, semble t-il, de manière expéditive.

Je vous demande donc la libération immédiate d’Abdel Aziz Naji.

Je vous prie de recevoir l’expression de mes salutations distinguées.

The message can be sent by email, or by post to: M. Tayeb Belaiz, Ministère de la Justice, 8 Place Bir Hakem, El-Biar, Alger. The phone number is (213) 021-92-41-83 and the fax number is (213) 021-92-17-01.

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) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in June 2011, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

The prison never conformed to the Geneva Conventions, which were, essentially, discarded when the Bush administration decided to hold prisoners in its “war on terror” as “illegal enemy combatants,” and have never been reinstated. Moreover, the prisoners remained beyond the law even when the Supreme Court granted habeas corpus rights to the Guantánamo prisoners in June 2004, and again in June 2008, after Congress had tried to remove these rights in the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 and the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (PDF).

In March 2009, in Washington D.C., District Judge John D. Bates briefly brought this era of secrecy and unaccountability to an end, granting the habeas corpus petitions of three foreign prisoners — Redha al-Najar, a Tunisian seized in Karachi, Pakistan in May 2002; Amin al-Bakri, a Yemeni gemstone dealer seized in Bangkok, Thailand in late 2002; and Fadi al-Maqaleh, a Yemeni seized in 2004.

Although Judge Bates ruled that the habeas corpus rights granted by the Supreme Court to the Guantánamo prisoners extended to the foreign prisoners in Bagram, because “the detainees themselves as well as the rationale for detention are essentially the same,” the Obama administration appealed, and had its appeal granted by the D.C. Circuit Court in May 2010.

This ruling failed to take into account that Judge Bates had not ruled in favor of a fourth man, Pacha Wazir (aka Haji Wazir), an Afghan, deciding that the fate of Afghan prisoners ought to involve negotiations between the US and Afghan governments. Wazir, it turned out, had been seized in the United Arab Emirates, where he ran a chain of hawala banks, in 2003, and rendered to a CIA black site prior to his arrival at Bagram, on suspicion that he was a banker for Osama bin Laden. In June 2011, former CIA interrogator Glenn Carle wrote a book, The Interrogator: An Education, in which he explained that he had established that Wazir was not bin Laden’s banker, but stated that his findings were ignored, and Wazir was not released from Bagram until February 2010.

For the other prisoners, Judge Bates also found that the review process introduced under President Bush at Bagram was both “inadequate” and “more error-prone” than the review process introduced at Guantánamo, and, also found that it “falls well short of what the Supreme Court found inadequate at Guantánamo.” In response, the Obama administration introduced a review process modeled on the review process at Guantánamo that the Supreme Court found inadequate, and this is the process that has been used ever since to decide what should happen to the 645 prisoners who were held in September 2009 (according to the first unclassified prisoner list, released in January 2010), and the thousands of prisoners held in the last two and a half years.

By January this year, the Washington Post reported that 2,600 prisoners were held in Bagram — or, more specifically, in the replacement facility, renamed the Parwan Detention Center, which opened in December 2009. In addition, as the Post described it on January 5, President Karzai “called for the United States to hand over its biggest military prison in Afghanistan within a month,” stating that “Afghan government investigators had found violations of the Afghan constitution and international human rights conventions at the prison.” He “did not provide details of the alleged violations, but he said in a statement that they constituted a ‘breach of Afghan sovereignty.’”

President Karzai was drawing on a US memorandum publicly issued two years ago, in which officials stated that they expected the Parwan facility to be transferred to Afghan control in early 2012, although US officials have pointed out that any proposed transfer is subject to “demonstrated capacity,” and the Afghan government does not have a good track record to date.

Nevertheless, in sounding out the possibilities of closing the Parwan facility, the Obama administration is finally addressing the problems presented by the foreign prisoners. A year ago, Daphne Eviatar of Human Rights First visited Parwan and discovered that 41 prisoners came from outside Afghanistan, and were still held, even though “more than a dozen” had been recommended for release. One story she heard concerned Hamidullah Khan, a Pakistani who was just 16 years old when he was seized in the summer of 2008. When he was allowed to communicate with his family, in 2010, he explained that his case had been reviewed, and he had been recommended for release, but he was still held.

Eviatar added that the foreign prisoners were “from Pakistan, Tunisia, Kuwait, Yemen and even Germany,” but could not find any explanation for why, even when cleared, they were still held. She noted that “one soldier complained about how frustrating it is to be unable to tell innocent prisoners when they’ll be going home, or what’s causing the holdup,” and that US officials in Afghanistan had only been able to state that the problem was “somewhere in Washington.”

In the Washington Post last week, Peter Finn and Julie Tate reported that Washington was finally dealing with the problem. Noting that the foreign prisoners now “number close to 50″ and “were in some cases picked up on the battlefield in Afghanistan and in others detained in third countries and taken to the prison by the CIA, according to US and foreign officials,” they wrote that, with a handover of the prison now on the cards, “American officials believe that Afghan authorities are unlikely to have any interest in either continuing to hold the foreigners or in putting them on trial.”

The officials added that, by starting the process of repatriating foreign prisoners now, they were hoping not only to successfully “negotiate transfers with the detainees’ home countries,” but also to “arrange for post-transfer monitoring, and secure diplomatic assurances that detainees will not be abused when they return home.”

They added that a “small number” of those currently held “may be deemed to pose a terrorist threat, requiring their continued detention or close supervision by their home country if released,” and also explained that some of the men are Yemeni, “complicating their possible repatriation,” because, in response to the failed airline bomb plot in December 2009 by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian man recruited in Yemen, President Obama issued a moratorium on releasing any Yemenis, “because of concerns about the security situation in Yemen,” which still stands to this day.

As the Post described it, the Parwan prison holds “up to two dozen Arabs of various nationalities, according to administration and foreign officials,” although the rest are Pakistanis, and it was noted that the first to be released may well be one of these men, Yunus Rahmatullah.

Seized in Iraq by British Special Forces in 2004, he was subsequently handed over to US forces and rendered to Bagram by the CIA, where his detention went largely unnoticed until lawyers in the UK — at solicitors Leigh Day & Co. and the legal action charity Reprieve — succeeded in convincing the Court of Appeal to grant him a writ of habeas corpus and to order the British government to take custody of him. As the Post described it, his lawyers “argued in the British courts that the transfer violated a memorandum of understanding between the US and British militaries, and was a grave violation of the Geneva Conventions because it involved the removal of a civilian from the war theater.” The judges added that if foreign secretary William Hague and defense minister Philip Hammond failed to secure his release, the court would “be moved to commit you to prison for your contempt in not obeying the said writ.” A deadline of February 14 was set for Rahmatullah’s release.

The UK government has appealed the ruling, although ministers have asked for the Obama administration to arrange for Rahmatullah to be returned to Pakistan, which, as the Post put it, “would satisfy the court and his lawyers.” The British court also made a point of noting that, back in 2010, a review board at Bagram had cleared Rahmatullah for release.

Cori Crider, Reprieve’s legal director, said, “It would make no sense for the Obama administration to ratify this Bush-era war crime. Under the Geneva Convention, Yunus Rahmatullah is Britain’s responsibility and should never have been sent to Bagram in the first place. The man is cleared, his family are waiting, and Pakistan is apparently happy to have him — it’s high time to send him home.”

The Post noted that another Pakistani, Amanatullah Ali, who was also picked up by British forces in Iraq, is seeking his release through the US courts, and that seven Pakistanis in total, including Yunus Rahmatullah and Hamidullah Khan, are suing the Pakistani government “either for its alleged role in their capture or for failing to secure their release.”

US officials, stating that they were prepared to release Rahmatullah, nevertheless played down the role of the British court, and also “said that any transfer home has been complicated by the deterioration in relations between the United States and Pakistan.” One official said, “We will do this on our timetable.”

However, it appears that this is not entirely true, and that the days of holding prisoners at Bagram whether or not they have been cleared for release — as at Guantánamo, where 89 of the remaining 171 prisoners have been cleared, but are still held — are coming to an end. For the foreign prisoners held at Bagram without rights for up to ten years, the potential end of this long-running saga of injustice is to be welcomed.

POSTSCRIPT: At the time of publication, an Internet search revealed to me that I had missed an Associated Press story from last April in which it was reported that Amin al-Bakri, Redha al-Najar and Fadi al-Maqaleh had all been cleared for release from the Parwan prison.

The AP noted that al-Bakri, who was 42 years old, had a review board hearing in August 2010, and, in October, “was handed a paper saying he was going to be released to his home country,” but in April 2011 he was still seeking his release via the US courts. Ramzi Kassem, a law professor at the City University of New York who filed the appeal, said, ”Amin has been there for almost a decade of his life,” adding that he “should never have been there in the first place. He has never been a threat to the United States.”

The AP also reported that Redha al-Najar, who was 45 years old, had been cleared for release to Tunisia. His lawyer, Tina Foster of the International Justice Network, “said she learned through al-Najar’s family that the military planned to release him and send him to Tunisia, his country of birth, instead of Pakistan where he was picked up,” but added that he did not want to go to Tunisia. Foster also explained that Fadi al-Maqaleh had also been cleared for release but was still being held.

In addition, the AP report noted: “Also waiting to walk free is Jan Sher Khan, who has been detained for six years. He was 15 when he disappeared from his village near Kohat, Pakistan, in the spring of 2005. He never came home from classes at his high school and ended up at Bagram. According to court papers filed seeking his release, his family believes he was seized by someone seeking thousands of dollars in reward money advertised for the capture of suspected members of al-Qaida or the Taliban. On Jan. 10 [2011], the US government confirmed that Khan had been cleared for release.”

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) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in June 2011, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

As published exclusively on the website of the Future of Freedom Foundation.

Please support my work!

Since March 2006, I have been researching and writing about Guantánamo and the 779 men (and boys) held there, first through my book The Guantánamo Files, and, since May 2007, as a full-time independent investigative journalist. For three years, I focused on the crimes of the Bush administration and, since January 2009, I have analyzed the failures of the Obama administration to thoroughly repudiate those crimes and to hold anyone accountable for them, and, increasingly, on President Obama’s failure to charge or release prisoners, and to show any sign that Guantánamo will eventually be closed.

As recent events marking the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo have shown, this remains an intolerable situation, as Guantánamo is as much of an aberration, and a stain on America’s belief in itself as a nation ruled by laws, as it was when it was opened by George W. Bush on January 11, 2002. Closing the prison remains as important now as it did when I began this work nearly six years ago.

Throughout my work, my intention has been to puncture the Bush administration’s propaganda about Guantánamo holding “the worst of the worst” by telling the prisoners’ stories and bringing them to life as human beings, rather than allowing them to remain as dehumanized scapegoats or bogeymen.

This has involved demonstrating that the majority of the prisoners were either innocent men, seized by the US military’s allies at a time when bounty payments were widespread, or recruits for the Taliban, who had been encouraged by supporters in their homelands to help the Taliban in a long-running inter-Muslim civil war (with the Northern Alliance), which began long before the 9/11 attacks and, for the most part, had nothing to do with al-Qaeda or international terrorism.

As I explained in the introduction to my four-part Definitive Prisoner List (updated in June last year), I remain convinced, through detailed research, through comments from insiders with knowledge of Guantánamo, and, most recently, through an analysis of classified military documents released by WikiLeaks, that “at least 93 percent of the 779 men and boys imprisoned in total” had no involvement with terrorism.

However, as this is a blog, rather than a specifically designed website, I recognize that it is increasingly difficult to navigate, as I approach 1500 posts. In an attempt to remedy this shortcoming, and to provide easy access to the most important articles on the site, I have, in the last two years, put together ten chronological lists of all my articles, covering the periods May to December 2007, January to June 2008, July to December 2008, January to June 2009, July to December 2009, January to June 2010, July to December 2010, January to March 2011, April to June 2011 and July to October 2011, in the hope that they will provide a useful tool for navigation, and will provide researchers — and anyone else interested in this particularly bleak period of modern history — with a practical archive.

This list is the second of two covering my articles in the second half of 2011, and, throughout the three-month period covered by these articles, the main focus of my work was my ongoing analysis of the classified military documents released by WikiLeaks, which involved nine parts of my 70-part, million-word series, entitled, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” in which I have been telling the prisoners’ stories, as revealed in the files, adding that to what was already known about the prisoners.

In particular, this project has involved me subjecting the US military’s allegations to a forensic analysis, in which I have established above all the alarming extent to which the supposed evidence actually consists of unreliable statements made by a handful of prisoners who are either well-known liars (because they were bribed with more favorable conditions, or they were coerced, or they had mental health problems) or were torture victims, held in secret CIA prisons, whose statements are therefore unreliable.

From November onwards, I wound down my involvement in “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” as it is, to be honest, an exhausting project, and I wanted to spend some time writing about other topics, and also to take time off to think about a source of funding to complete the project in a manner that will give it maximum impact.

As a result, I had the opportunity to focus on the extremely important Occupy movement, specifically in the US and in London, on the age of austerity cynically imposed for ideological reasons by the Tory-led coalition government in the UK (especially with relation to the NHS), on the economic crisis on Europe, and specifically in Greece, which has been made the primary scapegoat of the West’s orgy of greed and debt in the last 15 years, and on hunger strikes by prisoners held in solitary confinement in US prisons. I also wrote about the ongoing case of Bradley Manning, the alleged WikiLeaks whistleblower, and found time to briefly revisit the revolutionary movements in the Middle East — and specifically the situation in Egypt, Syria and British complicity in the torture of opponents of Col. Gaddafi in Libya, although I wish I had had more time to devote to all of these stories.

An archive of Guantánamo articles: Part Eleven, October to December 2011

October 2011

1. Military Commissions: Guantánamo: Military Commissions and the Illusion of Justice
2. WikiLeaks: The Complete Guantánamo Files: WikiLeaks and the Prisoners Released in 2006 (Part Four of Ten)
3. Jose Padilla: It Could Be You: The Sad Story of Jose Padilla, Tortured and Denied Justice
4. Anwar al-Awlaki: Death from Afar: The Unaccountable Killing of Anwar Al-Awlaki
5. WikiLeaks: The Complete Guantánamo Files: WikiLeaks and the Prisoners Released in 2006 (Part Five of Ten)
6. Shaker Aamer: “Ten Hours for Ten Years”: Demonstration for Shaker Aamer, the Last British Prisoner in Guantánamo, as Part of Protest Against the Afghan War in London on Saturday
7. Occupy Wall Street: Protestors in Washington D.C. Call for an End to the Afghan War on its 10th Anniversary, and the Transformation of American Politics
8. UK politics: NHS Privatisation: Protest on Sunday, as 400 Doctors Accuse Government of Planning “Irreparable Harm,” and Lords Prepare Opposition
9. Abu Zubaydah: Abu Zubaydah and the Silencing of Guantánamo’s “High-Value Detainees,” as the CIA Censors His Drawings
10. WikiLeaks: The Complete Guantánamo Files: WikiLeaks and the Prisoners Released in 2006 (Part Six of Ten)
11. US prisons: Pelican Bay and American Torture: Prisoners in Long-Term Isolation Continue Hunger Strike Despite Authorities’ Brutal Response
12. US prisons: As Pelican Bay Hunger Strikers Risk Death, Psychologist Testifies that Solitary Confinement is Torture
13. UK politics: Save the NHS: The Battle is Not Over, Despite the Lords’ Capitulation on the Privatisation Bill’s Second Reading
14. “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo”: Andy Worthington Attends New Screening of “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” in Aberdeen University, October 21, 2011
15. Closing Guantánamo, Afghanistan war: A Call to Close Guantánamo on the 10th Anniversary of the War in Afghanistan
16. Occupy Wall Street, Occupy London: Occupy Wall Street, Occupy London, Occupy the World: Get Out on the Streets Today, and Don’t Go Home
17. Occupy London: Occupy London: Are We Free to Protest, or Is This a Police State?
18. WikiLeaks: The Complete Guantánamo Files: WikiLeaks and the Prisoners Released in 2006 (Part Seven of Ten)
19. Occupy London: Occupy London: As the Canon of St. Paul’s Welcomes the Protestors, They Issue a Statement of Intent
20. UK politics: Save the NHS: Please Sign the 38 Degrees Petition to Scrap the Tory-Led Government’s Privatisation Bill
21. Radio interviews, Omar Khadr: On Antiwar Radio, Andy Worthington Discusses the Omar Khadr Film, “You Don’t Like the Truth: 4 Days Inside Guantánamo”
22. UK travellers: The Dale Farm Eviction: Using Planning Laws to Justify Racism Towards Gypsies and Travellers
23. George W. Bush, torture: Rights Groups Call for the Arrest of George W. Bush for Torture as He Arrives in Canada
24. WikiLeaks: The Complete Guantánamo Files: WikiLeaks and the Prisoners Released in 2006 (Part Eight of Ten)
25. Guantánamo and Congress: Obama vs. Congress: The Struggle to Close Guantánamo, and to Prevent the Military Detention of Terror Suspects
26. Bradley Manning: UN Torture Expert Calls for an End to Solitary Confinement, Discusses Bradley Manning
27. WikiLeaks: The Complete Guantánamo Files: WikiLeaks and the Prisoners Released in 2006 (Part Nine of Ten)
28. Interviews: An Interview with Andy Worthington, Investigative Journalist and Author of “The Guantánamo Files,” for The Sunday Indian
29. Babar Ahmad: Sign the Petition to the British Government: Prevent Babar Ahmad’s Extradition to the US, Put Him on Trial in the UK
30. Occupy London: Occupy London: As Possible Eviction Looms, the Canon and Chaplain of St. Paul’s Resign, and Protestors Challenge the City’s Unaccountability
31. WikiLeaks: The Complete Guantánamo Files: WikiLeaks and the Prisoners Released in 2006 (Part Ten of Ten)

November 2011

32. Kuwaitis in Guantánamo: Life After Guantánamo: Kuwaitis Discuss Their Tortured Confessions
33. Occupy London: Occupy London Protestors Seize Moral High Ground, As Church Declares An End to Hostilities
34. Omar Khadr: No End to the Shameful Treatment of Omar Khadr
35. Babar Ahmad: Petition for Babar Ahmad to be Tried in the UK and Not Extradited to the US Reaches Target of 100,000 Signatures
36. Occupy Wall Street: How Iraq Veteran Scott Olsen, Beaten by Oakland Police, Became a Symbol of the Occupy Movement
37. UK politics: National Student-Led Demo Against University Fees, Austerity Cuts and the Planned Privatisation of Higher Education, November 9, 2011
38. Occupy Wall Street: It’s Bank Transfer Day, As Campaigners Ask US Banks to Repay $108 Billion and Call on Citizens to Open Credit Union Accounts
39. Greek crisis: Crisis in Greece: Experts Call for Return of the Drachma, As Prime Minister Cancels Bailout Referendum
40. Occupy Wall Street: Occupy USA: A Campaigning Message from Kevin Zeese in Washington D.C.
41. Greek crisis: We Are All Greece: Expert Explains How the Greek Crisis is Being Manipulated by Banks and Governments to Enslave Us All
42. Murdoch media: As Hackgate Resurfaces, John Pilger Criticizes Mainstream Media, Salutes Independent Investigative Journalists
43. UK politics: “The Banks Got Bailed Out, We Got Sold Out”: Students March in London
44. Revolution in the Middle East: A Call from Egypt for Solidarity and Support for the Unfinished Revolution
45. UK politics: As Tories Approve Private Takeover of Hospital, Lords Challenge Plans to Let NHS Be Run By An Unaccountable Quango
46. Military Commissions: Trial at Guantánamo: What Shall We Do With The Torture Victim?
47. Radio interviews: Andy Worthington Discusses the Guantánamo Torture Trial with Scott Horton on Antiwar Radio
48. UK politics: Tories Ordered to Stop Hiding Their Damaging Risk Assessment for NHS Reform; Ask Your MP to Help
49. Greek crisis: New Perspectives on the Euro Crisis, and the Need for Greece to Default
50. Occupy Wall Street: Expressing Solidarity with Occupy Wall Street, as Court Prevents Violently Evicted Protestors from Re-Establishing Camp
51. Occupy Wall Street: Where now for Occupy Wall Street and the Occupy Movement?
52. Closing Guantánamo: Don’t Forget the Guantánamo Prisoners Cleared for Release But Still Held
53. Occupy Wall Street: Celebrating Occupy Wall Street, and the November 17 Day of Action
54. Closing Guantánamo: It Costs $72 Million A Year to Hold Cleared Prisoners at Guantánamo
55. Occupy Wall Street: As Deficit Super Committee Fails, “Occupy” Activists in Washington, DC Provide Inspiring Plan for US Economy
56. WikiLeaks: The Complete Guantánamo Files: WikiLeaks and the Prisoners Released in 2007 (Part One of Ten)
57. Revolution in the Middle East: The Unfinished Revolution in Egypt: The People vs. The Military Junta
58. Shaker Aamer: After Ten Years in US Custody, British Resident Shaker Aamer “Is Gradually Dying in Guantánamo,” Says Clive Stafford Smith
59. Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo”: Two New Screenings of “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” — in New York and London
60. Bradley Manning: Hearing Date Set for Bradley Manning, the Alleged Whistleblower Who Exposed the Horrors of America’s Wars and of Guantánamo
61. UK politics: N30 Strike: 2 Million UK Workers to Protest Against Tory-Led Government Cuts
62. Greek crisis: Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay: Greeks Rise Up Against Austerity
63. Guantánamo and habeas corpus: As Judges Kill Off Habeas Corpus for the Guantánamo Prisoners, Will the Supreme Court Act?
64. UK politics: Misery for Nothing: 2 Million on Strike in the UK, As Tories’ Economic Plans Fail

December 2011

65. Shaker Aamer: British MPs Write to Congress to Complain About Guantánamo and to Demand the Release of Shaker Aamer
66. Guantánamo and Congress: Deranged Senate Votes for Military Detention of All Terror Suspects and a Permanent Guantánamo
67. WikiLeaks: The Complete Guantánamo Files: WikiLeaks and the Prisoners Released in 2007 (Part Two of Ten)
68. Guantánamo media: Please Vote for My Guantánamo Article to Win the 3 Quarks Daily Prize for Best Blog Article
69. Shaker Aamer: London Vigil for Shaker Aamer, the Last British Resident in Guantánamo, on Human Rights Day, December 10, 2011
70. Guantánamo media: Write to the Forgotten Prisoners in Guantánamo – for the 10th Anniversary of the Prison’s Opening on January 11, 2012
71. Guantánamo and Congress: Terrorists as Warriors: The Fatal Confusion at the Heart of the “War on Terror”
72. Guantánamo and habeas corpus: Lawyer Laments the Death of Habeas Corpus for the Guantánamo Prisoners
73. Life after Guantánamo, Revolution in the Middle East: Will Egypt’s Military Government Free Former Guantánamo Prisoner Imprisoned Since June?
74. US prisons: Beyond Guantánamo, New York Times Examines How Federal Prisons Deal with Terrorists
75. Bagram, UK complicity in torture: British Court Orders Release of Bagram Prisoner Rendered by UK from Iraq, Held for Seven Years
76. Mohammed El-Gharani: An Extraordinary Interview with Former Guantánamo Child Prisoner Mohammed El-Gharani
77. Conditions in Guantánamo: Conditions at Guantánamo Under Scrutiny
78. Revolution in the Middle East: With 5000 Dead in Syria, Channel 4 Exposes President Al-Assad’s Horrendous Torture Program
79. Guantánamo 10th anniversary, US tour: Close Guantánamo: Andy Worthington Visits US, Attends National Day of Action in Washington D.C., January 11, 2012
80. Revolution in the Middle East, UK complicity in torture: Libyan Rebel Leader, Rendered by UK to Torture by US in Thailand and Gaddafi in Libya, Sues British Government
81. Omar Khadr: Christmas Thoughts for Omar Khadr, Still Held at Guantánamo
82. Guantánamo 10th anniversary, US tour: Ten Years of Guantánamo: Andy Worthington Visits the US to Campaign for the Closure of the Prison, January 5-15, 2012

Note: Please visit the website of the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, and sign up to join a growing body of people demanding that President Obama fulfill his unfulfilled promise to close the prison. Please also sign a new White House petition on the “We the People” website calling for the closure of Guantánamo. 25,000 signatures are needed by February 6 to secure a response from the President.

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) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in June 2011, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

In her exact words, Navi Pillay said:

It is ten years since the US Government opened the prison at Guantánamo, and now three years since 22 January 2009, when the President ordered its closure within twelve months. Yet the facility continues to exist and individuals remain arbitrarily detained — indefinitely — in clear breach of international law.

I was encouraged by the mention of arbitrary detention, as I have been attempting, for over a year, to ascertain when it would be appropriate to describe the prisoners as being subjected to arbitrary detention, given that they remain held, whether or not they have been cleared for release. 89 of the remaining 171 prisoners were cleared for release at least two years ago by an interagency Task Force established by President Obama, but they remain held, because of hysteria regarding the security situation in Yemen, and because of Congressional obstruction. Now, perhaps, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention will be able to exert pressure on the administration, by requesting a visit to the prison.

Navi Pillay also discussed the recently passed National Defense Authorization Act, with its disgraceful requirement for the mandatory military custody, without charge or trial, of anyone who can be described as having a connection to al-Qaeda. As she explained:

To make matters worse, the new National Defense Authorization Act, signed into law in December 2011, now effectively codifies such indefinite military detention without charge or trial. This piece of legislation contravenes some of the most fundamental tenets of justice and human rights, namely the right to a fair trial and the right not to be arbitrarily detained. Nobody should ever be held for years on end without being tried and convicted, or released.

The High Commissioner took note of President Obama’s commitment to interpret relevant sections of the National Defense Authorization Act “in a manner that ensures that any detention it authorizes complies with the Constitution, the laws of war, and all other applicable law,” which he noted when he signed the NDAA into law, but added:

While fully recognizing the right and duty of states to protect their people and territory from terrorist acts, I remind all branches of the US Government of their obligation under international human rights law to ensure that individuals deprived of their liberty can have the lawfulness of their detention reviewed before a court. Where credible evidence exists against Guantánamo detainees, they should be charged and prosecuted. Otherwise, they must be released.

Turning to accountability for torture, Navi Pillay explained that international law requires “thorough and systematic investigation of all allegations of serious human rights violations, including torture, that allegedly took place at Guantánamo Bay,” adding, “Every effort must be made to hold to account those responsible for the development, approval or implementation of coercive interrogation methods analogous to torture under international law. Individuals found to have perpetrated, ordered, tolerated or condoned torture and ill-treatment should be brought to justice.”

The High Commissioner also urged the Obama administration “to ensure that conditions of detention comply fully with human rights standards under international law,” explaining that “she was disturbed by the Government’s failure to allow independent human rights monitoring of the detention conditions at Guantánamo.” This is a long-standing complaint, and it highlights how Guantánamo remains a facility that, even under President Obama, is regarded, with complete justification, as an exception to the normal rules of detention.

In conclusion, she stated:

I urge the US Congress to take steps to enable the US Administration to close the Guantánamo Bay detention centre — as it stated it wished to do — in compliance with the Government’s obligations under international human rights law, and in so doing, to fully respect the principle of non-refoulement, under which no one should be sent back to a country where they may face torture.”

Ten years after Guantánamo opened, and three years after President Obama took office, it is depressing that the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has to remind the US of its obligations, and to point out that the current situation is one in which the prisoners are held in arbitrary detention. I wish I could say that Congress and the Obama administration will be shamed into doing something about, but unfortunately it is unclear that anyone regards it as a pressing enough shame to take steps to bring the prison’s existence to an end once and for all.

Note: Please visit the website of the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, and sign up to join a growing body of people demanding that President Obama fulfill his unfulfilled promise to close the prison. Please also sign a new White House petition on the “We the People” website calling for the closure of Guantánamo. 25,000 signatures are needed by February 6 to secure a response from the President.

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) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in June 2011, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

In the long struggle to close Guantánamo, protests took place in Washington D.C. and across America on the 10th anniversary of the opening of the prison on January 11, and the newly established “Close Guantánamo” campaign (of which I am a member of the steering committee) launched a petition on the White House’s “We the People” website, calling on President Obama to fulfill his promise to close the prison, which he made when he took office three years ago, and pointing out how fundamentally unjust it is that 89 of the remaining 171 prisoners have been cleared for release, and yet are still held.

That petition needs to secure 25,000 signatures by February 6, to oblige the President to respond, and at the time of writing, over 4,300 people had signed it. Many groups have been asking their supporters to sign it, and yesterday the Center for Constitutional Rights publicly added their voice to the campaign, sending out an email alert to all their supporters, asking them to sign the petition, and also asking visitors to the “Close Guantánamo” page on their website to sign it.

The embedded clock above was also created by CCR, and, in further publicity, three videos featuring speeches made outside the Supreme Court on January 11 — by Andy Worthington, by conscientious objector Daniel Lakemacher, who worked as a guard at Guantánamo, and by CCR’s executive director Vince Warren — have also been made available on CCR’s “Close Guantánamo” page, and are posted below.

I’d like to thank CCR for their support, and, in conclusion, if you haven’t yet signed the petition, please do so, and please also forward it to ten of your friends and family members. Time is running out, and we need 2,000 signatures a day for the next ten days to show that we care about the closure of Guantánamo, and that we are not prepared to put up with any more excuses from the administration or from members of Congress.

Andy Worthington Demanding Justice at Guantánamo and Around the World from Center for Constitutional Rights on Vimeo.

Daniel Jared Lakemacher Demanding Justice at Guantánamo and Around the World from Center for Constitutional Rights on Vimeo.

Vince Warren Demanding Justice at Guantánamo and Around the World from Center for Constitutional Rights on Vimeo.

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) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in June 2011, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

I discussed these provisions in a number of articles — most recently in an article entitled, “A Tired Obsession with Military Detention Plagues American Politics” — in which I wrote about the shameful provisions requiring the mandatory military custody, without charge or trial, of anyone allegedly associated with al-Qaeda, and also wrote about the provisions preventing the release of prisoners from Guantánamo, which have stopped anyone being released in the last year.

In addressing concerns about the NDAA, I made a point of stressing that, although it is important that criticism should continue to be directed at lawmakers for subverting the entire basis of America’s foundation as a country based on the rule of law with their military detention provisions (for which they should all be hounded out of office), and although it is also of significance that the restrictions on releasing Guantánamo prisoners are based on fearmongering for nakedly political reasons, two other details should not be overlooked.

The first is that, in all of the discussions about the mandatory military detention provisions in the NDAA, in which there was great anxiety that the provisions would apply to US citizens, there was little mention of the fact that, without Guantánamo, there would have been no basis for lawmakers to indulge their dangerously unconstitutional desires, and that those opposed to the provisions should therefore also direct their energies to the closure of Guantánamo.

The second reason, and one that the attorney Tom Wilner — Counsel of Record for the Guantánamo prisoners in their cases before the Supreme Court in 2004 and 2008 — was particularly concerned to explain while I was with him in Washington D.C. two weeks ago, is that another provision, inserted as a result of negotiations between the administration and Congress, explicitly allows the administration to release prisoners without Congressional approval. Below, I cross-post Tom’s important commentary about this, which was first published yesterday on the website of the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, for which we are both members of the steering committee.

It is, I believe, extremely important for this to be noted by those who wish to see Guantánamo closed, because it provides a possibility that has been otherwise overlooked, and a means whereby campaigners can legitimately push for prisoners to be released. After all, as the “Close Guantánamo” campaign notes in its mission statement (signed by retired military personnel, a retired judge, lawyers and journalists), over half of the prisoners — 89 of the 171 men still held — have been cleared for release for more than two years, since the President’s own Guantánamo Review Task Force issued its recommendations about the disposition of the remaining prisoners, and some were first cleared for release under President Bush as long as as 2004. The campaign is also stressing that over half the prisoners have been cleared for release in a petition on the White House’s “We the People” website calling for President Obama to honor his promise to close the prison, for which 25,000 signatures are needed by February 6, to secure a response.

Please read Tom’s analysis below, and then let’s start mobilizing for the release of these 89 men who have effectively spent the last two years as political prisoners.

Legal Analysis — Section 1028, National Defense Authorization Act of 2012
By Tom Wilner, Close Guantánamo, January 25, 2012

The recently enacted National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 (the “NDAA”) does a number things that seriously threaten civil liberties. In one area, however, the NDAA significantly eases current restrictions. It gives the Obama Administration both the legal authority and the practical ability to transfer detainees from Guantánamo back to their home countries.

Prior law put significant hurdles in the way of transferring detainees from Guantánamo. It effectively blocked the transfer of any detainee who was not ordered released by a court or released pursuant to a prior plea agreement in a military commission case. Other than in those circumstances, the law prevented a detainee from being transferred (i) to any country if any detainee had previously been transferred to that country and had subsequently engaged in any terrorist activity (a “recidivist country”) or (ii) to any other country unless the Secretary of Defense issued a certification personally “ensur[ing] that the individual [transferred] cannot engage or reengage in any terrorist activity.” The general counsel of the Department of Defense had ruled that it was simply not possible for anyone to provide such a personal blanket assurance. As a result of these restrictions, no detainee has been transferred from Guantánamo since these laws were enacted except pursuant to a court order or a plea agreement.

Section 1028 of the NDAA changed the law and eased the transfer requirements. Although that section of the new law retains essentially the same certification requirements mentioned above, it now explicitly allows the Secretary of Defense in consultation with the Secretary of State to waive those requirements by finding:

[if] it is not possible to certify that the risks … have been completely eliminated, [that] the actions to be taken … will substantially mitigate such risks with regard to the individual to be transferred; [and, in the case of the recidivism provision,] the Secretary has considered any confirmed case in which an individual who was transferred to the country subsequently engaged in terrorist activity, and the actions to be taken … will substantially mitigate the risk of recidivism with regard to the individual to be transferred and [that] … the transfer is in the national security interests of the United States.

Those waiver provisions clearly give the Administration both the legal authority and the practical ability to transfer detainees from Guantánamo to their home countries. The question is no longer whether the Administration has the authority to transfer detainees home but whether it has the political courage to do so.

Note: For another take on this important waiver provision, see this letter from 15 retired admirals and generals to President Obama, urging him “to transfer Guantanamo detainees who have been cleared for release to their home or to third countries, an option that is available to him under new guidelines contained in the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act,” as Human Rights First explained in a press release to accompany the release of the letter.

In the letter, the retired admirals and generals state:

In the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, Congress authorized new guidelines for transferring detainees out of Guantanamo. Under these guidelines, your administration can transfer detainees cleared for release to their home or to third countries if the Secretary of Defense issues a waiver in the interest of our national security demonstrating that measures will be taken to substantially mitigate the risk of transfer. We ask that you direct your administration to exercise this authority immediately and fully to demonstrate your good faith commitment to closing Guantanamo. Doing so is the first step among many needed to finally close this dark chapter in our history.

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) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in June 2011, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

At the time, seven Tunisians had left Guantánamo, to face a variety of fates. Two had been repatriated in 2007, although both had then been imprisoned following show trials, two others were in Italy, where they had been delivered from Guantánamo to face trials in November 2009, and three others had been resettled in early 2010 in three other countries — namely, Slovakia, Albania and Georgia.

Soon after the fall of Ben Ali, the interim Tunisian government announced an amnesty for all political prisoners, paving the way for the return of exiled members of the Islamist party Ennahdha, and also the release of 55-year old Abdallah Hajji (also identified as Abdullah bin Amor), the former Guantánamo prisoner who was still imprisoned after a show trial. It also transpired that the other returned and imprisoned ex-Guantánamo prisoner, Lotfi Lagha, had actually been freed under President Ben Ali in June 2010.

Around the same time, one of the Tunisians sent to Italy, Mohammed Tahir Riyadh Nasseri, was convicted of criminal association with the aim of terrorism and sentenced to six years in prison, which seems harsh, especially as, just days later, on February 7, another judge delivered a completely different ruling in the case of Adel Ben Mabrouk (also identified as Adel Ben Mabrouk Bin Hamida Boughanmi), the other Tunisian sent to Italy from Guantánamo in November 2009. Although he too was convicted of criminal association with the aim of terrorism, the judge gave him a two-year suspended sentence and ordered his immediate release from jail, after taking into account “the eight years Mabrouk spent in Guantánamo in ‘inhumane conditions,’ plus a year and a half in Italian prison,” as his lawyer described it, even though he did not, at that point, have a passport or any kind of travel or identity papers.

On April 20, he returned to Tunisia, and after his return an Italian journalist traveled to Tunis to interview him, as I reported here.

On the third anniversary of President Obama’s failed promise to close Guantánamo, and the first anniversary of the fall of President Ben Ali, another Tunisian who returned home — Rafiq al-Hami, also identified as Rafik Hammi and Rafik al-Hammi — who had been released in Slovakia in January 2010, and had returned to his home country last March, appeared in a report on Guantánamo’s Tunisians on Al-Jazeera, and also in a longer video on the Guardian‘s website, both of which are posted below.

Al-Hami had spoken at a press conference in October last year, called by the interim government to campaign for the release of the remaining Guantánamo prisoners, when he said, “The years I spent in detention were unimaginable. I never knew if I would be able to return to my family and my homeland, and I was never informed of why I was being held, or given a chance to defend myself at trial. Since my return to Tunisia, I have finally been reunited with my family and have been able to experience normal life again. I have very high hopes for my future here.”

However, I had never seen what he looked like until these films were released. A quiet, bookish man with an almost secret smile that his long years of torture could not erase, he was clearly never a threat to anyone, and it is salutary to recall that he was actually brutalized not only in Guantánamo, but also in three “black sites” run by the CIA, where, as he explained in a lawsuit 2009, “his presence and his existence were unknown to everyone except his United States detainers,” and, at various times, he was “stripped naked, threatened with dogs, shackled in painful stress positions for hours, punched, kicked and exposed to extremes of heat and cold.”

Many years before, he had told his tribunal in Guantánamo that he was tortured for three months in the “Dark Prison” in Afghanistan, where, he said, “I was threatened. I was left out all night in the cold … I spent two months with no water, no shoes, in darkness and in the cold. There was darkness and loud music for two months. I was not allowed to pray … These things are documented. You have them.”

In the two and a half minute feature on Al-Jazeera, al-Hami spoke briefly about his experiences, and the report also noted the story of Adel Hakeemy, still held in Guantánamo, who was “accused of training al-Qaeda members, but all charges against him were dropped last year,” as Al-Jazeera explained. His brother Imad also spoke, as did Polly Rossdale of Reprieve, the legal action charity whose lawyers represent most of the Tunisians at Guantánamo.

In the seven minute video for the Guardian, in which Rafiq al-Hami spoke about his abuse, Adel Hakeemy’s brother appeared again, as did his mother. Most poignantly, his brother showed a photo of the daughter he has never met. Also included were the sister and mother of Hisham Sliti, also still held, and Cortney Busch of Reprieve was on hand to provide a good explanation of the circumstances surrounding the men’s ongoing detention, and the need for pressure to secure their release.

Ten years after Guantánamo opened, it is sad to see these stories of men still held, even though they were cleared for release by military review boards under President Bush, and even though the reason they fled Tunisia in the first place — because of their opposition to, and persecution by President Ben Ali — has come to an end, and they could be safely repatriated without any problems.

POSTSCRIPT: Below, via Tunisia Live, which reported on a press conference in Tunis on January 11 to call for the return of the prisoners, is another interview with Rafiq al-Hami, in which he described the forms of torture used by the US authorities, and also explained that he spent five years in solitary confinement:

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) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in June 2011, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

Remind President Obama of his promise. Sign the petition on the White House’s “We the People” website urging him to honor his promise. 25,000 signatures are needed by February 6 to secure a response, so please sign up, and please spread the word.

What happened to President Obama’s bold promise?

Three years ago, on January 22, 2009, President Obama issued an executive order promising to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay within a year, but he did not move swiftly to implement his promise, and Congress then stepped in with onerous restrictions on the release of prisoners or their transfer to the US mainland for any reason, even to be tried or imprisoned.

Instead of being closed, Guantánamo still holds 171 men, even though 89 of these men were cleared for release more than two years ago by the interagency Guantánamo Review Task Force (PDF), which was established by the President after taking office.

Some of these cleared men, like the Uighurs (Muslims from China’s Xinjiang province), remain in Guantánamo because they cannot be safely repatriated, even though the Bush administration conceded they had been seized by mistake, and even though a District Court judge granted their habeas corpus petitions in October 2008.

Others — 28 in total — are Yemenis, whose release was approved by the Task Force but prevented by the President after a Nigerian man, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who had been recruited in Yemen, tried and failed to blow up a plane bound for Detroit on Christmas Day 2009. Although these men had nothing to do with Mr. Abdulmutallab, their release is prevented solely on the basis of their nationality. We believe that this is wrong, and that continuing to hold these men makes a mockery of claims that the United States believes in fairness and justice.

30 other Yemenis are held in what the Task Force described as “conditional detention,” a category of prisoner invented by the Task Force, and designed to prevent their release until, by some unknown mechanism, it is decided that the security situation in Yemen has improved sufficiently for them to be released.

We call on the President to release these 89 prisoners, and to bring to an end the unacceptable situation in which those cleared for release are indistinguishable from those recommended for trials or for ongoing detention, because of the unfair obstructions imposed to prevent them being freed.

Again, please sign the petition, and then tell others about it. Let’s make 2012 the year that we close Guantánamo.

Also, please note that the petition can be signed by anyone, not just US citizens. When registering from outside the US, just leave the “zip code” section blank. Good luck, and thanks for the support!

Note: This article is adapted from an article on the website of the newly established “Close Guantánamo” campaign. Please also see the mission statement, signed by significant retired military personnel, NGOs, lawyers and journalists, and sign up here to receive updates and action alerts.

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) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in June 2011, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.