Welcome to Andy Worthington

My appearance, with Clive Stafford Smith, on the ‘Primary Sources’ podcast, hosted by Chip Gibbons of Defending Rights and Dissent, to discuss our long involvement with Guantánamo, the significance of WikiLeaks’ release of ‘The Guantánamo Files’ in 2011, and the reasons why we testified on behalf of Julian Assange in his extradition hearing in October 2020.

My response to the shameful deaths of 27 refugees crossing the Channel to the UK, how it reflects appallingly on the Brexit-soaked racism and xenophobia of the Tory government, the right-wing media and far too many of the British people, and how counter-productive it is to be turning away immigrants when, post-Brexit, all manner of British businesses are critically short of workers.

My report about the seemingly unending ordeal of former Guantánamo prisoner Abdulqadir al-Madhfari. Held at Guantánamo for 14 years, and then for another five years in the UAE (where he was supposed to be freed, but where his imprisonment continued), he was recently forcibly repatriated to Yemen, with eleven of his compatriots, but after just one week reunited with his family, who were alarmed at the decline in his mental health, he was seized by Houthi militia at a checkpoint in Sana’a, and is now being held incommunicado in an undisclosed location.

My latest quarterly fundraiser, in which I’m hoping to raise £1,000 to help me continue my photo-journalism project ‘The State of London’, in which I post a photo a day, with detailed accompanying essays, of the changing face of the capital, with the photos taken on bike rides throughout London’s 120 postcodes over the last nine years.

My report about ‘Guantánamo: 20 Years After’, the successful two-day international online conference hosted by the University of Brighton, which took place on November 12-13, 2021, and which I helped to organize with law lecturer and activist Sara Birch.

The second part of my transcript of the powerful statement that Guantánamo prisoner and CIA “black site” torture victim Majid Khan read out at his sentencing hearing, with its powerful combination of contrition, on the one hand, and the brutality of his torture on the other, which seemed to be undertaken with no regard for discovering the truth, as he had persistently showed a willingness to cooperate with his interrogators.

A transcript of the first part of Majid Khan’s statement at his recent sentencing hearing at Guantánamo, in which he recounted his early life, how he was preyed on by al-Qaeda supporters following the death of his mother, and the horrendous torture to which he was subjected in a number of CIA “black sites”, despite having made it clear from the time of his capture that he intended to be as cooperative as possible.

Publicizing a great two-day online conference about Guantánamo on Nov. 12 and 13, hosted by the University of Brighton, which I’ve been organizing with Sara Birch, a law lecturer at the university, featuring former prisoners, panels of lawyers and other experts, and academic papers from around the world.

My report about the sentencing of former CIA “black site” torture victim and Guantánamo prisoner Majid Khan, finally and belatedly following his plea deal in 2012, his powerful statement during his hearing, and the unprecedented request for clemency from seven of his eight military jurors.

My analysis of the appeal by the US government, heard in the High Court in London this week, against a judge’s refusal in January to allow the extradition to the US of WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange, on the basis that, because of his mental health issues, the risk of him committing suicide if extradited is too severe to allow the extradition to go ahead.