Welcome to Andy Worthington

My report about the disturbing news that, in recent weeks, around 60 migrants, from 26 countries including the UK, have been flown to Guantánamo, apparently reviving the use of detention facilities on the naval base, which began with the arrival of 178 Venezuelans in February, but then tailed off after legal challenges, and after the administration was embarrassed by research establishing that, although they were all described as dangerous gang members, this was demonstrably untrue. In a new twist, seeking to overcome these earlier embarrassments, the Department of Homeland Security has published a list naming 26 of these men, and alleging that all of them, including the British national, have been convicted of serious crimes, although, via an internet search, I was unable to verify any of these claims. What the administration’s intention is remains unclear, but two options seem probable. Sending men with criminal convictions to Guantánamo (if these claims are true) may enable the administration to claim that it can hold them without charge or trial, replicating the model used in the existing “war on terror” prison, or it may be a prominent way to deport them to third countries, as recently happened when eight men from a variety of countries, all allegedly with criminal convictions, were sent to an unknown fate in war-torn South Sudan. Drawing analogies with the “extraordinary rendition” program of the Bush administration, and the often flawed resettlements of Guantánamo prisoners in third countries under Obama and Biden, I examine a recent and commendable New York Times investigation into the 58 countries that administration officials have approached, or want to approach, regarding taking in migrants who are not their own nationals. I also discuss the seven countries who have already agreed, and raise the alarm about the threat of the worst abuses of the “war on terror” being revived under Trump and his senior officials, who seem particularly motivated not to safely repatriate migrants, but to defy protections against torture or even death by sending them to unsafe destinations where any rights they should have will be unenforceable. I also sound a similar alarm about the increasing expansion of unaccountable hit squads “disappearing” people on the US mainland, and the creation of new detention facilities, reminiscent of Guantánamo, with “Alligator Alcatraz” in Florida as the first example, and highlight the very real prospect that, without ferocious resistance, the $175 billion allocated to ICE in Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” will lead to a horrendous police state expansion of “disappearances” and gulags across the entire country. As I state in my conclusion, “Resistance is necessary, by all means available.”

Photos from, and my report about the 30th coordinated monthly global vigils for the closure of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay that took place across the US and in London, Brussels, Mexico City and Belgrade on July 2, 2025. As we continue to call for justice for the 15 remaining prisoners in the “war on terror” prison, I point out how our vigils are assuming increasing importance because of the “Gitmoization” of Donald Trump’s vile, racist “war on migrants”, in which new detention facilities are being established on the US mainland that look suspiciously like Guantánamo, or even like concentration camps, with the first notable example having just opened in the Florida Everglades, gleefully dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz.” I also point out how the horrors of the “war on terror” that are being replicated in Trump’s USA extend to the “extraordinary rendition” program that is being revived through the deportation of migrants to uncertain fates in third countries, with the most recent alarming example being the deportation of eight migrants from various nationalities to the war-wracked country of South Sudan.

My response to the horrific news that MPs have voted, by 385 votes to 26, to uphold legislation introduced on Monday by the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, to proscribe Palestine Action, a direct action group, as a terrorist organization. Under the legislation, it is now a criminal offence, punishable by up to 14 years in prison, for anyone to become a member of, or even to support the direct action of Palestine Action. I wrote most of this article before the vote, and in it I run through the long and noble history of direct action in the UK against arms companies and the government’s involvement in war crimes and genocide, which have generally led to jury acquittals. This latest move, condemned yesterday by UN experts, who insisted, correctly, that “mere property damage, without endangering life, is not sufficiently serious to qualify as terrorism”, not only seeks to equate property damage with mass murder; it also, most chillingly, demonstrates how the Starmer government is working not for the interests of the UK, but for the interests of its masters in Israel.

The remaining 15 “war on terror” prisoners at Guantánamo have largely been forgotten, although detention facilities at the naval base have been cynically used by Donald Trump in the “war on migrants” he declared when he took office five months ago. While Trump’s interest in Guantánamo has largely waned, migrants are still being sent there, with the latest including a group of Haitians who were subsequently deported back to Haiti, on the same day that it was reported that the Trump administration was planning to send 9,000 new migrants to Guantánamo, including 800 Europeans. The claim was dismissed as “fake news” by the White House, but it seems to me that the officials who leaked the documents did so in an effort to derail the proposals by enraging European allies, which seems to have been successful. I also report on a letter to Kristi Noem and Pete Hegseth by 15 lawmakers, led by Rep. Rashida Tlaib, calling for the prison’s closure, and I also reflect on Guantánamo’s sordid history, and its still tainted present, to mark the UN International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, which was yesterday.

When an Israeli hospital was struck by a missile yesterday — whether deliberately or not is difficult to ascertain — it nevertheless prompted a wave of hysteria and unparalleled hypocrisy in Israel. Even though no one was killed in the attack, Benjamin Netanyahu spoke about how Iran’s aim was “to destroy every one of us”, and defense minister Israel Katz said that Ayatollah Khameini “can no longer be allowed to exist”, and called the hospital attack “war crimes.” Attacking a hospital is indeed a war crime, but nowhere in Israel’s response to the attack was there even the slightest scintilla of recognition that, if the attack on the Soroka Hospital was a war crime, Israel’s war crimes in relation to hospitals in Gaza are of a magnitude that is so much greater that it is almost incalculable. Last October, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory found that “Israel has perpetrated a concerted policy to destroy Gaza’s healthcare system as part of a broader assault on Gaza, committing war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination with relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities.” Over the last 20 months, Israel has attacked all 36 hospitals in Gaza, often repeatedly, destroying many, and decommissioning all but one, Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, which is now the last surviving hospital for 2 million people, although it too is on the verge of collapse. As Israeli officials were whining, the WHO warned that, even as Nasser Hospital is overwhelmed with casualties from the ongoing aid massacres, fuel will run out within the next few days, with premature babies on incubators particularly vulnerable, not only because of the need for fuel for their incubators, but also because the hospital is running out of milk for them because of Israel’s ongoing siege. As I also note, Israel has also attacked hospitals and healthcare facilities in Lebanon, and, in the last week, has also attacked two hospitals in Iran.

Five days since Israel’s unprovoked attack on Iran, which led to immediate military retaliation, I examine the shameful hypocrisy of the west, which has been insisting yet again that Israel has “the right to defend itself”, even though Israel is very clearly not the victim in this scenario, having launched its unprovoked attack on the spurious basis that Iran was about to secure nuclear weapons. In particular, I note how, 20 months ago, the west’s unconditional support opened the door to all the horrors that have been taking place ever since, and especially the ongoing genocide in Gaza, which, until this latest development, had become so severe that western leaders were finally beginning to condemn Israel. Shamefully, as the situation in Gaza deteriorates still further, the west’s sudden indifference is especially despicable. I also focus on the crucial role of the US, under Donald Trump, who faces a divided Republican Party — on the one hand, fanatical supporters of Israel, and neo-cons who have long hoped to wage war on Iran, and, on the other, opposition from MAGA isolationists within his own Party who support his “America First” policy, which was supposed to eschew any further involvement in ruinously expensive foreign wars. I also mock Israeli efforts to make themselves the victims, as they finally face some blowback from their monstrous actions over the last 20 months, and I end by examining whether one imminent problem, not much discussed, is that the supply of the very expensive weapons for this type of conflict may soon run out.

An appraisal of my work as an independent journalist and human rights activist in the 20th year since I first began, on a full-time basis, researching and writing about Guantánamo and the men held there, and exposing the truth about the Bush administration’s lies and distortions regarding their alleged status as “enemy combatants”, who, they claimed, in defiance of all international and domestic laws and treaties, could be held indefinitely without charge or trial. I also reflect on my other writing over the years, most recently about Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and I invite your support, if possible, for what is an ongoing truth-telling endeavour, involving in-depth articles that provide more detail than is usually available through the mainstream media, and with a moral compass that also generally eludes the “liberal” media gatekeepers, with their alleged “objectivity” and “impartiality”, which either discourages entirely valid outrage, or props up the establishment “status quo.”

Today is the eighth anniversary of the Grnefell Tower fire, a disaster that should never have happened, when 72 residents of a social housing block in west London died after an inferno engulfed the tower, a situation that only happened because those responsible for the safety of the residents were complicit in an industry-wide policy of profiteering and cost-cutting with the full backing of central and local government. In my annual reflection on the enduring significance of the fire, I focus in particular on issues of race and class, largely ignored in mainstream media reporting, and by the official inquiry, even though 85% of the inhabitants of the tower were of Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic (BAME) origin, who are, it seems, disproportionately housed on the upper floors of high-rise social housing blocks. I also reflect on how social tenants have been marginalized in favour of a privatised rentier economy, resulting in them becoming, at best, second-class citizens, and, at worst, disposable, as the victims of ‘regeneration’ and ‘gentrification’, and draw comparisons with the ultimate process of ‘regeneration’ and ‘gentrification’; essentially, the entire State of Israel, where, with the backing of the same elites responsible for Grenfell, Israel is engaged, in Gaza, in a diabolical process of genocidal ‘gentrification.’

In an update on the legal challenges to the Trump administration’s decision, three months ago, to invoke the little-used Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to send 238 Venezuelans on a one-way trip to El Salvador’s CECOT prison for alleged terrorists, I look at a recent ruling by Judge James Boasberg, the Chief Judge of the District Court in Washington, D.C., in which, after comparing the treatment of these men to the lawless ordeal endured by K., the lead character in Franz Kafka’s novel “The Trial”, he ordered the administration to arrange for the men to have habeas corpus hearings. Judge Boasberg did so because of the failure of the administration to demonstrate that they had made any efforts to establish whether, as they alleged, these men were members of the notorious Tren de Aragua gang, noting that “significant evidence has come to light indicating that many of those currently entombed in CECOT have no connection to the gang and thus languish in a foreign prison on flimsy, even frivolous, accusations.” The administration, predictably, has appealed Judge Boasberg’s ruling, which will now make its way to the D.C. Circuit Court, where, back in April, one appellate judge memorably declared that, the last time the Alien Enemies Act was used (in the Second World War), “Nazis got better treatment than has happened here.” I also look at how Trump’s “war on migrants” — and his use of the CECOT prison — has been influenced by the “war on terror”, the prison established at Guantánamo by George W. Bush, and the CIA’s “black site” torture program, and I also examine the well-chronicled lack of evidence against these Venezuelan men, the troubling manner in which many of them were sent to El Salvador even though they had ongoing immigration appeals, and the recent revelation that some of them also had Temporary Protected Status. Introduced under Joe Biden, TPS applied to hundreds of thousands of migrants, but it has also been under fire from Trump, and in two recent cases the Supreme Court, alarmingly, complied with his requests to strip these and other protections from nearly 900,000 migrants from Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti and Nicaragua, which could lead to another tsunami of detentions and deportations.

Photos from, and my report about the coordinated monthly global vigils for the closure of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay that took place across the US and in London, Brussels and Mexico City on June 4, 2025. The “First Wednesday” vigils have been taking place on the first Wednesday of every month for the last 29 months, and will continue while the prison is still open. I also run through the horrors of Guantánamo under Donald Trump, usurped as a theater of performative cruelty in the “war on migrants” that he declared when he took office, until he took more interest in sending migrants on a one-way trip to the CECOT prison, a mega-Guantánamo for alleged terrorists in El Salvador. I also point out that Trump’s indifference towards the 15 men still held in the “war on terror” prison — who include the men allegedly responsible for the 9/11 attacks and previously regarded as the most significant terrorists in US history — ironically reveals how Guantánamo is no longer of any relevance, although that won’t, sadly, help any of the men still held either secure their freedom or anything resembling justice.