Welcome to Andy Worthington

My article marking the 15th anniversary of the death at Guantánamo of three prisoners — all long-term hunger strikers and fiercely resistant to the brutal lawlessness of the prison — who, according to the US authorities, died in a “suicide pact,” although that explanation has been robustly challenged on several occasions in the intervening years.

My quarterly fundraiser, in which I ask you, if you can, to make a donation to support my ongoing work writing about Guantánamo, and campaigning to get the prison closed, as an independent reader-funded journalist and activist.

A detailed examination of the current Guantánamo cases before the US courts, some involving a long-running struggle for due process rights, others involving the imminent end to the war in Afghanistan, and another involving severe mental health issues. There are glimmers of hope in the litigation, but it already seems clear that the Biden administration is intent on resisting judicial interference when it comes to Guantánamo, and is more interested in making decisions about whether or not to release prisoners through the purely administrative Periodic Review Board process, which, just last month, approved three long-standing “forever prisoners” for release.

Today marks the 36th anniversary of the Battle of the Beanfield, when the police, under Margaret Thatcher, destroyed, with unprecedented violence, a convoy of vehicles containing men, women and children, as they tried to make their way to Stonehenge to set up what would have been the 12th annual Stonehenge Free Festival. Despite the trauma caused that day, the Tories continued to persecute Travellers, passing punitive legislation in 1986 and 1994, and now, under Priti Patel, are seeking to outlaw the entire nomadic way of life through a draconian clampdown on “trespass” in the new Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill.

A cross-post, with my own introduction, of a recent CNN article looking at how US support for the Chinese government’s assertion that the Uyghur prisoners held at Guantánamo were terrorists not only continues to dog the men released from the prison between 2006 and 2013, but has also reinforced the Chinese government’s rationale for its brutal and horrendous “re-education” camps in Xinjiang province, where at least a million Uyghurs have been detained arbitrarily and have been subjected to human rights abuses.

My detailed report about some extremely encouraging news from Guantánamo: that three men, including the prison’s oldest inmate, Saifullah Paracha, have been approved for release from the prison by Periodic Review Boards, the high-level government review process established under President Obama.

A cross-post, with my own introduction, of a New York Times op-ed calling for the closure of Guantánamo by Lee Wolosky, who was the Special Envoy for Guantánamo Closure from 2015-17 under President Obama, and whose words ought to carry weight with the Biden administration.

A fundraiser marking nine years since I first began photographing London’s 120 postcodes by bike for my ongoing, reader-funded photo-journalism project ‘The State of London’, for which I have no institutional backing whatsoever. Any donations you can make will be very gratefully received.

News of an important complaint filed with the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, on behalf of Abu Zubaydah, held in CIA “black sites” for four and a half years, and at Guantánamo since September 2006, without ever being charged. The complaint is not only against the US, but also against Thailand, Poland, Morocco, Lithuania and Afghanistan (the five countries in which he was held in “black sites”), as well as the UK, which is regarded as complicit in his torture.

My most recent interview about Guantánamo, and the prospects for its closure under Joe Biden, with the indefatigable Scott Horton, who has conducted over 5,500 interviews since 2003, and who I have been talking to on a regular basis since 2007.