Archive for February, 2010

Shaker Aamer’s Wife Speaks: “Since he has been away there is no colour in life”

In the Wandsworth Guardian, Paul Cahalan has regularly covered the story of local resident Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo. In December, he wrote a detailed article about Shaker’s court case, in which his lawyers were seeking access to evidence in the possession of the British government, regarding his torture in US custody in Afghanistan before his transfer to Guantánamo, and today he has undertaken an exclusive interview with Shaker’s wife Zin, who has rarely spoken to the press.

The interview is available here, and I reproduce it below, because it provides a powerful insight into the suffering of the wives and children who have no idea when — if ever — their husbands and fathers will be released from the peculiarly aberrant regime of indefinite detention without charge or trial established by the Bush administration, and maintained, in all its key aspects, by President Obama.

Shaker’s story is featured in the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (directed by Polly Nash and myself), and both Polly and I, and released prisoners Omar Deghayes and Moazzam Begg, will be raising awareness of Shaker’s plight during a UK tour of the film, which begins at Amnesty International’s Human Rights Action Centre next Tuesday (February 16). Further details of the tour can be found here.

Wife of Battersea Guantánamo detainee speaks of her family’s torment
By Paul Cahalan

The wife of Shaker Aamer has spoken for the first time about the “psychotic episodes” she developed after her husband’s capture, and explained how his imprisonment has robbed her of a marriage and denied her kids a normal childhood. Mrs. Aamer said “there was no colour in her life” since Shaker left, but said she believes she will see her husband again. The pair met through a family friend and were married in 1997, she said, and had a happy four years together before Shaker [and the family] went to Afghanistan, [and he was then seized and sold to US forces, after making sure that his family escaped safely].

“We liked each other and then we got married and my favourite memories are him playing with our children,” she said, adding the couple’s children Johina, 12, Michael 10, Faris, 9, and Saif, 8, had lost out on happiness. “The thing I miss most about him is his laughing and funny character which entertained us all the time. Since he has been away there is no colour in life. My children’s eight-year chance of being with their father has passed.”

Mrs. Aamer’s dad, Saaed Ahmed, said his daughter developed her illness after Shaker — known by his family and friends as Sawad — was jailed. He said: “She is psychotic. In the beginning she was under the care of doctors at Springfield Hospital [which treats mental illness]. A nurse visited her every month, every day when she was bad. It started two years after his arrest and comes every three or four months. She hears voices in the night calling her. She hears her husband and sometimes religious figures.”

Mrs. Aamer said: “I feel very upset and sad in this illness. I cry a lot and the children tell me to be patient and to believe that he is coming back very soon. I think of my children and if Shaker was home life would have been a lot better. My children do not believe the news stories but we believe we will see him at home, because he was cleared for release two years ago and we don’t understand why he is still there.”

Mr. Ahmed added his daughter and the children write to Shaker, but said they were not sure he received the letters, as communication from him was sporadic. He said: “In one of the letters he wrote to me he said, ‘they are playing with my mind. I cannot trust anyone, not even my lawyer’. Another time we heard that a Saudi national had died, we thought it was Shaker, but we were relieved when we found it wasn’t. He has been in Guantánamo for years and we are being punished. We are suffering too much. The one thing I want to see is his smiling face.”

Mrs. Aamer said her husband had no links to terrorists. She said: “I know my husband, he is a dynamic person of a really good heart. He never believed in harming anyone though he did feel very sorry for the oppressed. He loved America and look what they are doing to him, breaking his love and trust in them. He is suffering from so many illnesses there without medical help and on top of that being tortured.”

What keeps her and the family strong is “faith and trust in God” and the hope one day they will be reunited with their father, husband and son-in-law. Mrs. Aamer added: “We talk about how much we remember about him. I try to be strong for them because their father is in prison. Staying strong and keeping our hopes up for eight years has definitely been extremely hard. I am in contact with the British Government but they are not doing much for his release. It is very difficult for my children to have a life of continued absence of their father.”

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK). To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook and Twitter). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in January 2010, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and launched in October 2009), and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

A letter to the Times regarding Moazzam Begg and Amnesty by Bisher al-Rawi

In response to the hysteria regarding Amnesty International’s association with former Guantánamo prisoner Moazzam Begg and Cageprisoners (which I reported in detail here), another former prisoner, Bisher al-Rawi, has written the following letter to the Times, which I found to be eloquent, understated and unerringly accurate about the role of Amnesty in providing hope to prisoners held outside the law in the “War on Terror”, and of Moazzam in articulating these dark experiences to the world, in an attempt to bring them to an end.

Torch of hope told me I was not forgotten at Guantánamo

Sir, It may be easy to criticise the work that was done by Moazzam Begg and Amnesty, as it might also be easy to criticise Amnesty’s involvement with the Closing Guantánamo campaign, yet this work — along with others — has had a marked influence on where we are today (“How Amnesty chose the wrong poster boy”, David Aaronovitch, Opinion, Feb 9). I know that my memory plays on me sometimes and I forget things, but can we all remember where we were a few years ago, when everyone in Guantánamo was branded a terrorist? I hope we haven’t forgotten; none of us wants to go back to those black days.

Amnesty, and what it stands for, is a torch of hope; that is how it was when I was in Guantánamo, when I received letters of support through Amnesty. In that lonely cell with nothing but emptiness to hold a photocopy of a letter or a card and read the words on it meant so much. They opened up the walls and gave me hope, and whispered to me: “You are not forgotten.”

Mr Begg, whom I hadn’t met in Guantánamo but got to know very well after my release, has from the outset represented the voice of every prisoner caged in Guantánamo and elsewhere. He has reflected to the world the shadows of the horrors of such places. He has, with his words, drawn the pictures that no one else could, the pictures which I, and the hundreds like me who were in Guantánamo, and the thousands who are in their cells today in the so-called black sites, are living with and having nightmares about.

If you want to know, then you must listen, and we must all work together if we want even a small change.

Bisher al-Rawi
Former Guantánamo detainee, Internment Serial Number: 906

Bisher al-Rawi, Guantanamo, Guantanamo media, Moazzam Begg
11.2.10
2 Comments

Defending Moazzam Begg and Amnesty International

Just when it seemed that Republicans in America had a monopoly on Islamophobic hysteria, the Sunday Times prompted a torrent of similar hysteria in the UK by running an article in which an employee of Amnesty International — Gita Sahgal, head of the gender unit at the International Secretariat — criticized the organization that employed her for its association with former Guantánamo prisoner Moazzam Begg.

Before getting into the substance — or lack of it — in Sahgal’s complaints, it should be noted first of all that her immediate suspension by Amnesty was the least that should have been expected. What other organization would put up with an employee badmouthing them to a national newspaper on a Sunday, and then allow them to return to work as usual on Monday morning?

That Sahgal’s many defenders have all chosen to ignore this point suggests that they believe that her allegations were so significant — the actions, indeed, of a self-sacrificing whistleblower — that this blatant unprofessionalism was acceptable, whereas, in fact, it was no such thing.

That Sahgal also chose to air her complaints in the Sunday Times, a newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch, is also significant, particularly because the Times first attempted to smear Begg and Cageprisoners a month ago, in connection with the failed plane bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, in an article by the normally reliable Sean O’Neill, entitled, “Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had links with London campaign group.” To me, this suggests that Sahgal may have been used as part of an ongoing attempt to vilify Begg that was part of a specific editorial policy.

It is also significant that Sahgal confided in Richard Kernaj, a reporter who, as Rick B explained at Ten Percent, enjoys his work “specialising in exposing shortcomings, crime and corruption in the Muslim community” to such an extent that, when he exposed child abuse in an Australian Islamic council in 2006, he boasted afterwards — using a distinctly inappropriate analogy — that being handed the documents that led to his scoop “was like a journalist’s wet dream.”

So what of the allegations? According to Kernaj’s article, Sahgal stated her belief that collaborating with Begg “fundamentally damages” Amnesty’s reputation. Kernaj added that, in an email “sent to Amnesty’s top bosses,” she suggested that “the charity has mistakenly allied itself with Begg and his ‘jihadi’ group, Cageprisoners, out of fear of being branded racist and Islamophobic.” He also explained that she described Begg as “Britain’s most famous supporter of the Taliban.”

Kernaj also claimed that Sahgal had “decided to go public because she feels Amnesty has ignored her warnings for the past two years about the involvement of Begg in the charity’s Counter Terror With Justice campaign,” and quoted more extensively from the email written on January 30, which stated:

I believe the campaign fundamentally damages Amnesty International’s integrity and, more importantly, constitutes a threat to human rights. To be appearing on platforms with Britain’s most famous supporter of the Taliban, whom we treat as a human rights defender, is a gross error of judgment.

Right-wingers — and other thinly-disguised right-wingers described, laughably, as the “decent left” — seized on the article with glee, and responded to Sahgal’s inevitable suspension not with recognition of her lamentable lack of professionalism, but by providing her with a platform for further misplaced allegations, and by writing opinion pieces drawing on their rarely submerged hostility towards Islam.

In the Spectator, Martin Bright posted a statement by Sahgal on his blog, David Aaronovitch followed up with an article in the Times, Nick Cohen set up a ridiculous Facebook group, “Amnesty International You Bloody Hypocrites Reinstate Gita Sahgal,” and even the Guardian allowed a friend of Sahgal’s, Rahila Gupta, to write an opinion piece that failed to justify the descriptions of Begg and Cageprisoners, and that also failed to address the question of why Sahgal should keep her job after criticizing her employers in a national newspaper. Gupta also suggested, erroneously, that Amnesty International had “filtered out” negative comments responding to a statement that the organization issued on its website, whereas, in fact, a cursory glance at the comments should convince anyone that Islamophobia is as alive and well in Amnesty’s supporters as it is in the world of Kernaj, Bright, Aaronovitch, Cohen et al.

On Cageprisoners, Begg defended himself admirably, asking Kernaj why, after discussing his planned article with him, and asking him detailed questions, he chose to ignore all his responses. Begg also criticized Sahgal for not talking to him first, noting, “Whilst it gives me no personal pleasure to hear of the suspension of Ms. Sahgal for holding her view, the newspapers were not the right place to air them without first putting them to Cageprisoners or me.”

In key passages addressed to Kernaj, he wrote:

When asked specifically about the Taliban I told you my view: that I have advocated for engagement and dialogue with the Taliban well before our own government took the official position of doing the same — only last week — although I did not say, like the government, we should be giving them lots of money in order to do so.

I also clearly told you, though you deliberately chose to ignore, that I had actually witnessed what I believe were human rights abuses under the Taliban and have detailed them in my book, from which you conveniently and selectively quote. I added that the US administration had perpetrated severe human rights abuses against me for years but that didn’t mean I opposed dialogue with them.

I even told you that Cageprisoners and I have initiated pioneering steps in that regard by organising tours all around the UK with former US guards from Guantánamo and men who were once imprisoned there. Cageprisoners is the only organisation to have done so. One of these soldiers, in response to your article, sent this message to me: “They are attacking you and your causes … don’t forget you have real support by some of us ex-soldiers who have seen the light.” […]

Had you — and Ms Sahgal no doubt — done your homework properly you’d have discovered also that I was involved in the building of, setting up and running of a school for girls in Kabul during the time of the Taliban, but of course, that wouldn’t have sat well with the agenda and nature of your heavily biased and poorly researched article.

Cageprisoners, for whom I write on a regular basis, describes itself, accurately, as an organization that “exists solely to raise awareness of the plight of the prisoners at Guantánamo Bay and other detainees held as part of the War on Terror.” In his letter to Kernaj, Begg also mentioned that Cageprisoners would not “be forced into determining a person’s guilt outside a recognised court of law.” This happens to be a view that I share, and it has motivated me for the last four years as I have assiduously chronicled the stories of the men and boys — all Muslims, in case anyone has overlooked this particular point — who have been redefined as a category of human beings without rights in a post-9/11 world of hysteria in which apparently intelligent non-Muslims regard the indefinite detention without charge or trial of Muslim “terror suspects” as somehow appropriate.

I know from personal experience that Moazzam Begg is no extremist. We have met on numerous occasions, have had several long discussions, and have shared platforms together at many events. He also features in the new documentary about Guantánamo, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo,” directed by Polly Nash and myself, talking about Afghanistan, and his hopes, in 2001, that civilized intervention from other Muslims would help the country to engage with the modern world.

Along with other representatives of Cageprisoners, Moazzam and other released prisoners have all welcomed me — a non-Muslim — with nothing less than friendship, support and openness at all times, as they have with numerous other non-Muslim supporters of universal human rights. Is this really what we should expect from extremists or supporters of the Taliban?

I also know, from my conversations with Moazzam, that he is capable of far more open-minded discussions than many of his critics mentioned above (of the kind that sustained him in his conversations with guards throughout his long ordeal in US custody), and that his calm and considered response to the treatment he received is a far more moderating and moderate influence than that of his divisive critics.

It also seems clear to me that the manner in which this story has been stirred up by the media actually has less to do with Moazzam and Cageprisoners than it does with illiberal attempts to smear Amnesty International’s reputation, and to advance an all too prevalent anti-Islamic agenda.

This is supposedly disguised through the purported defense of an Amnesty employee who had no excuse for speaking to the press as she did, but instead, I would suggest, Gita Sahgal is largely being used by those whose only aim is to stir up hostility towards a man who was imprisoned without charge or trial for three years, who has never been charged with a crime, and who dares to defend the rights of other Muslims not to be held without charge or trial.

Note: Moazzam Begg, Omar Deghayes and Andy Worthington will attend a screening of “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” at Amnesty International’s Human Rights Action Centre in London on Tuesday February 16, at 6.30 pm, and will take part in a Q&A session following the screening, moderated by Sara MacNeice, Amnesty’s Campaign Manager for Terrorism, Security and Human Rights. For further details, see here. Tickets are free, but booking is required. Please visit Amnesty’s site for booking details, and see here for details of other UK tour dates for the film.

Guantanamo, Guantanamo media, Life after Guantanamo, Moazzam Begg
10.2.10
87 Comments

Taking Guantánamo to Norway: “Human Rights, Human Wrongs” Film Festival Report

Over the weekend, Polly Nash and I, co-directors of the new Guantánamo documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo,” travelled to Oslo, where our film had been chosen as part of the Human Rights, Human Wrongs Film Festival.

Organized by Oslo Dokumentarkino and the Human Rights House Network of human rights organizations, the festival, which is in its second year, took place in Parkteatret, a wonderful old theatre with an intimate atmosphere that made for a perfect venue. The festival began on Wednesday and ran through to Sunday, with packed houses throughout for a powerful programme put together by a group of committed, knowledgeable and very friendly activists, lawyers and human rights advocates.

Polly and I arrived in Oslo late on Friday afternoon, marvelling at the deep blanket of snow covering the entire country, and then made our way by tram to the venue (via our hotel), where we received a warm welcome from Sarah Prosser, one of the organizers, and managed to catch the last film of the day, “The Problem: Testimony of the Saharawi People,” a new documentary by Spanish directors Jordi Ferrer and Pablo Vidal. Combining undercover filming with archive material, the film revealed, unflinchingly, how, in the Western Sahara, abandoned by the Spanish in 1975 and then illegally occupied by Morocco, the Saharawi people are subjected to a brutal and little-known occupation, and how condemnation of the regime is stifled largely by Spain and France. Guided around the country by a veteran campaigner for the Saharawi people’s rights, who has been repeatedly imprisoned and tortured in the many “black prisons” maintained by the Moroccan government, the directors also interviewed two women activists who have been subjected to brutal torture.

Last summer, I received a crash-course in the history of the Moroccan government’s oppression of the Saharawi people at WOMAD, during and after an appearance by Mariem Hassan, an extraordinarily powerful singer and spokeswoman for the Saharawi people. Originally based in the El-Ayoun Refugee Camp in Algeria, one of four camps where around 165,000 displaced Saharawi have been living since 1976, Hassan now lives in exile. Although the directors of “The Problem” also visited the El-Ayoun camp, it is their footage from inside Western Sahara, and their encounters with peaceful opponents of the occupation, who wonder, pointedly, whether western governments only pay attention to violent resistance movements, that made the deepest impression on me. Further information about “The Problem” can be found here, on the official website.

On Saturday, Polly and I arrived at Parkteatret too late to see “Getting Justice: Kenya’s Deadly Game of Wait and See,” but we did manage to see most of “The Reckoning: The Battle for the International Criminal Court,” a fascinating account of the development of the ICC, and its struggles to become established as the first ever international court to tackle war crimes and crimes against humanity. This was a gripping exploration of the long struggle to establish a global body capable of judging cases of genocide when national bodies fail to do so, whose origins can be traced back to the Nuremberg Trials and the founding of the United Nations, even though, of course, the project is being resisted by the US, China and Russia, all of whom have refused to recognize the ICC. Further information can be found on the film’s official website here.

In a panel discussion following the screening, chaired by Niels Jacob Harbitz of Human Rights House, Maina Kiai, Advocate of the High Court of Kenya, and the founding chairman of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (who made “Getting Justice” with the Nairobi-based British director Lucy Hannan), discussed the ICC, accountability for war crimes and crimes against humanity, and the current situation in Kenya with Nora Sveaass, Professor of Psychology at the University of Oslo and Norway’s representative on the UN Committee Against Torture, and Gunnar Ekeløve Slydal, Deputy Secretary General of the Norwegian Helsinki Committee, who participated in the establishment of the ICC. An interview with Maina Kiai is available here.

At 2.15, following a brief introduction by Polly and myself, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” was screened to a full house. The film was very well received, and was followed by the screening of a short film by the celebrated Norwegian journalist and filmmaker Erling Borgen, exposing Norway’s complicity in the crimes of the “War on Terror” through Aker Kværner, a company hired by the US military at Guantánamo to provide much of the prison’s infrastructure and technical support. Plans to prosecute Aker Kværner were stifled in the Norwegian courts, but in a panel discussion following the screenings, chaired by Borgen (who was also the festival’s first patron), Ståle Eskeland, Professor of Law at the University of Oslo, condemned the politicization of the legal process in this case, lamenting how it demonstrated that in Norway (as in so many other countries), terrorism was being used as an excuse to pretend that the rule of law no longer applies.

In a wide-ranging discussion, followed by a lively Q&A session, I also explained the problems facing President Obama as he tries to close Guantánamo (involving cowardice and compromise on the part of the administration, but also a right-wing propaganda machine that is out of control), described how complicity in the “War on Terror” involved the whole of Europe, and encouraged those attending the festival to put pressure on the Norwegian government to accept cleared prisoners from Guantánamo. To date, the Norwegian government has refused to join Belgium, France, Hungary, Ireland, Portugal, Slovakia and Switzerland in accepting cleared prisoners, in order to help close Guantánamo — and to demonstrate a commitment to universal humanitarian principles — and I put forward the case that, as with other countries in Europe (including the UK), pressure should be exerted to accept prisoners as a kind of moral trade-off for complicity in the “War on Terror.” In Norway, this occurred not only through the actions of Aker Kværner, but also through the Norwegian government’s decision to turn a blind eye to US rendition flights through Norwegian territory. Although this may well have taken place as part of a NATO-wide agreement in October 2001 to provide unquestioning support to the Bush administration, it remains unacceptable that any country can be allowed to behave as through the rule of law was suspended in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

After this stimulating debate and Q&A session, Polly and I watched the last two films of the day. The first was “My Neighbour, My Killer,” which captured the sometimes disconcerting results of the Gacaca courts in Rwanda. These traditional local courts, established to deal with the 1994 genocide, function partly as a truth and reconciliation commission, and partly as a system for accountability, with what appears to be a fragile success, although it was disturbing that so little remorse was demonstrated by some of the accused. Further information can be found on the film’s official website here.

Following up on these themes, “Enemies of the People,” directed by Rob Lemkin and Thet Sambath, is an extraordinary new documentary addressing Cambodia’s “Killing Fields,” the genocide that took place under Pol Pot (“Brother No. 1”) and Nuon Chea (“Brother No. 2”). At the heart of the film is Sambath, whose family members were killed in the genocide, who embarked on a one-man mission to create a truth and reconciliation process in Cambodia. After spending ten years visiting Nuon Chea, and tracking down other former Khmer Rouge leaders further down the chain of command, Sambath succeeded in persuading Nuon Chea to speak about his responsibility for the genocide, and drew out the most extraordinary confessions from those who fulfilled the regime’s merciless aims. For further information about the film, see the official website here.

Afterwards, the organizers took the guests — myself, Polly, Maina Kiai, Lucy Hannan and Rob Lemkin — out to dinner, and afterwards we returned to the Parkteatret, magically transformed into a sweaty concert venue, for a “Balkan Beat Party” featuring an excellent Balkan band with a seven-piece horn section. It was a refreshing antidote to the often troubling messages of the day’s screenings, but although the party music was ringing in my head as Polly, Rob and I took a taxi back to the hotel at 2 am, it was difficult to escape the extraordinary intimacy of Thet Sambath’s encounters — not with Nuon Chea, whose warped idealism remained largely intact, but with the other Khmer Rouge murderers featured in “Enemies of the People”; ordinary men, haunted by their deeds, who demonstrated, it seemed to me, that contrition and forgiveness are amongst the most difficult tasks that we face as human beings.

My congratulations again to the organizers, and I only wish that I had another film lined up for next February. Instead, please see here for upcoming tour dates for “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo,” and, if you can read Norwegian, check out this newspaper article, based on a telephone interview with me, which appeared in Saturday’s edition of the Norwegian newspaper, Klassekampen.

White House Repeats Pentagon Lies About Guantánamo “Recidivists”

What is to be done about the idiocy that has spread, like a poisonous but imperceptible gas, from the Pentagon to Congress, and is now wafting through the White House, deranging all it touches? As it travels, this dismal infection transforms statistical impossibilities into magic numbers, which appear, to the uninformed observer, to confirm the most shameless lies of former Vice President Dick Cheney: that Guantánamo was teeming with hardcore terrorists, who couldn’t wait to “return to the battlefield.”

Only last month, I tore into the mainstream media for abandoning all its fabled fact-checking and objectivity, when the Pentagon claimed, without producing any evidence whatsoever, that 1 in 5 prisoners freed from Guantánamo had “engaged in terrorist activity after their release,” and these claims were repeated as facts by numerous supposedly reputable media outlets.

As I explained at the time, this was just the latest installment in a campaign of misinformation, which, in May last year, led to humiliation for the New York Times, when its editors allowed a front-page story to run, claiming that 1 in 7 released prisoners (74 in total) had “returned to terrorism,” even though only 27 names were provided, and, of those, independent experts could only verify somewhere between 13 and 20 of them.

Last May, the Pentagon at least provided names, but last month’s fact-free assertions have now found their way to the White House, and were repeated on February 1 by John Brennan, the assistant to President Obama for homeland security and counterterrorism, in a letter to House Leader Nancy Pelosi, which was obtained by ABC News (PDF).

Brennan wrote that:

[T]he Intelligence Community assesses that 20 percent of detainees transferred from Guantánamo are confirmed or suspected of recidivist activity. This includes 9.6 percent of detainees who have been confirmed as having returned to terrorist activities, and 10.4 percent whom the Intelligence Community suspects, but is not certain, may have engaged in recidivist activities.

Brennan attempted to use these spurious figures to score points, asserting that all of the largely unidentified prisoners had been released by the Bush administration. Defending the Obama administration’s careful and thorough interagency review of the remaining prisoners’ cases, he wrote:

I want to underscore the fact that all of these cases relate to detainees released during the previous administration and under the prior detainee review process. The report indicates no confirmed or suspected recidivists among detainees transferred during this Administration, although we recognize the ongoing risk that detainees could engage in such activity.

Despite this, it frankly beggars belief that a spokesman for an administration that has pledged to close Guantánamo would publicly cleave to the kind of wretched propaganda that will make that task all but impossible.

So who are these approximately 116 men (out of the 532 prisoners released from Guantánamo under George W. Bush) who have allegedly “engaged in recidivist activities”?

We know, from earlier Pentagon claims, that this “recidivism” has included — and may well still include — publishing houses, the offices of newspapers, TV studios and film sets, because the Pentagon admitted (in a press release that was subsequently deleted from the Pentagon’s website, but is mirrored here) that it included former prisoners, like the Tipton Three — three young men from the West Midlands — who appeared in a film, “The Road to Guantánamo,” which dramatized their experiences, and the five Uighurs sent to Albania in 2006, after tribunals at Guantánamo cleared them of being “enemy combatants.” In the latter case, this was apparently because one of them, Abu Bakker Qassim, wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times in which he urged US lawmakers to defend habeas corpus.

In the years since, many more ex-prisoners have written books, newspaper articles and op-eds, and have appeared on TV and in films. Perhaps Omar Deghayes, the British resident (released in 2007), who appeared in the Guantánamo documentary that I co-directed, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo,” has now joined this ever-expanding group of “recidivists” who have dared to use their words and their voices to “attack” the United States for what it did to them in its brutal, experimental prisons in Afghanistan, Guantánamo and elsewhere.

Clearly, however, the main thrust of this propaganda is directed not at these men, but at others — 70, 80, 90 men, perhaps — who have supposedly engaged in terrorism since their release.

Is this plausible? In a word, no.

Even the most rampant apologists for the lawless regime created by George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld have never realistically tried to claim that more than a dozen or so Saudis slipped through the Saudi government’s rehabilitation program with their burning hatred of America still intact. Moreover, once a handful of other regularly cited names have been dealt with, and it becomes apparent that no “recidivists” have emerged from a vast array of countries — throughout Europe, North Africa and the Gulf — the only conclusion that a logical analyst can reach is that this vast and largely undefined number of “recidivists” must include as many as 1 in 3 of all the Afghans who were ever held.

This, to be honest, is no less preposterous, as only a handful of Taliban commanders (released through the Pentagon’s own ineptitude) were mistakenly freed from Guantánamo, but it at least has the benefit of a certain amount of logic, in that men repatriated to a country still occupied by a foreign army that is as useless at rounding up “terrorists” as it was eight years ago, may find a reason to resist the occupier on their doorstep, even if they have never been near a “battlefield” before.

Even this, however, presupposes that the Pentagon’s “facts” and “suspicions” are remotely accurate, and as researchers — particularly those at the Seton Hall Law School, who have relentlessly analyzed the repeated claims of recidivism — have demonstrated time and again (PDF), the propaganda does not stand up to any form of scrutiny. John Brennan may be at liberty to talk about a few dozen released prisoners who have “engaged in recidivism,” but entertaining the prospect that this figure could be as high as 116 is, to put it frankly, either a dereliction of duty, or a sign that he has fallen under the sway of Dick Cheney’s still malevolent influence.

To understand how easy it is for credulous officials to fall for this propaganda, I’d like to take you back to last month, when Senator Dianne Feinstein, who, laughably, is the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, falsely claimed on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that “about a third of former inmates at the US naval base who have returned to fight against US interests come from Yemen,” as AFP described it. “If you look at Yemen, and we’re taking a good look at Yemen,” Feinstein said, “what you see is, I think, at least 24 or 28 are confirmed returned to the battlefield in Yemen, and a number are suspected. If you combine the suspected and the confirmed, the number I have is 74 detainees have gone back into the fight, and I think that’s bad.”

It was a poor day for the Senate’s “intelligence” when Feinstein (drawing on the May report) made this ridiculous statement. Its most baleful effect was to add a deceptive veneer of acceptability to the pressure exerted on President Obama to suspend the release of any more cleared Yemeni prisoners at Guantánamo, for one simple reason: only 16 Yemeni prisoners were released from Guantánamo between 2004 and November 2009, and only one of these men allegedly became involved in terrorism.

But in this new world of groundless hysteria, which seems to reveal only how the baleful reach of the Pentagon’s scaremongering has finally engulfed the White House, no one cares that Feinstein couldn’t even get her facts straight.

With John Brennan embracing the lie that 116 of the 532 men released from Guantánamo between 2002 and January 2009 have “engaged in recidivist activities” — and with a compliant and complacent mainstream media happy to regurgitate such rubbish without asking for facts — it may as well be true, as Feinstein claimed, that 28 of the 16 Yemenis returned from Guantánamo have become terrorists.

Once upon a time, we used to pride ourselves on making policy decisions based on facts, rather than on the propaganda that was so prevalent in totalitarian regimes. Now, however, we might as well give up all pretense that this is the case. Just as people were tortured in Guantánamo to produce false confessions that could be used in show trials, like every other totalitarian regime, representatives of the US government now attempt to scare and intimidate the American public with “facts” about “recidivism” that have no basis in reality. In 2010, fear blinds reason, and the truth, it seems, is irrelevant.

As published exclusively on the website of the Future of Freedom Foundation. Cross-posted on The Public Record and Uruknet.

Andy Worthington Discusses Bagram and Guantánamo with Jeff Farias

Last week, I was delighted to be invited by Jeff Farias to take part in his radio show, just a week after my previous visit. The show is available here (it starts just over two hours in), and Jeff wanted to talk in particular about my article on the recent appeal in the Military Commissions, in the cases of Salim Hamdan and Ali Hamza al-Bahlul, and also about the latest developments at the US prison at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan.

I wrote about the Military Commissions appeal in “Lawyers Appeal Guantánamo Trial Convictions,” which covers in depth what Jeff and I discussed, focusing primarily on whether it was legitimate to try (and convict) Hamdan and al-Bahlul on charges of supporting material support to terrorism, which even the Obama administration believes may be overturned on appeal. In al-Bahlul’s case, he was also convicted on a conspiracy charge, but what makes his case most alarming is that he was convicted (on the eve of 2008 Presidential election) in a one-sided trial in which he refused to mount a defense, and received a life sentence, which he is now serving in isolation in Guantánamo. Disturbingly, he will remain there, while Guantánamo closes around him, unless the government presses for legislation to move him to a prison on the US mainland.

Jeff and I also discussed how inadvisable it was for the Obama administration to revive the Commissions, given their lamentably poor history under the Bush administration, and their reemergence as what appears to be part of a three-tier quasi-judicial system, involving federal court trials for some prisoners (when the evidence appears to be secure), Military Commissions (when it is less reliable), and, most shockingly, indefinite detention without charge or trial in 50 cases in which the government has no reliable evidence whatsoever.

We also discussed the case of Omar Khadr, the Canadian who was seized in Afghanistan when he was just 15 years old, following a recent ruling by the Canadian Supreme Court, in which Canada’s most important judicial body ruled that the Canadian government violated Khadr’s rights when it sent interrogators to question him at Guantánamo, but failed to order the government to demand his repatriation.

This discussion allowed me to lament Canada’s continuing indifference and hypocrisy regarding Khadr, and also to criticize the Obama administration for reviving his trial by Military Commission. With regard to Canada, I pointed out that the government’s position is particularly hypocritical because the country has done so much to promote the rights of child soldiers in other conflicts, but has been content to abandon one of its own citizens.

Analyzing the US position, I pointed out that it was always unforgivable that the Bush administration chose to prosecute a child soldier, even before the hidden evidence emerged which demonstrates that Khadr was unconscious and buried under a pile of rubble when he allegedly threw a grenade that killed a US soldier. I added that it was deeply distressing that the Obama administration has revived the prosecution, and has failed to realize not only that prosecuting a former juvenile prisoner in a war crimes trial will attract international criticism, but also that it repeats the Bush administration’s unjustifiable claims that, in armed conflict, those who fight for the US are soldiers, but those who oppose them are war criminals and terrorists.

Jeff and I also talked about Bagram, following up on the recent publication of my annotated prisoner list (which, in turn, followed the publication of the first ever prisoner list, obtained by the ACLU), and two accompanying articles, “Dark Revelations in the Bagram Prisoner List,” and “UN Secret Detention Report Asks, ‘Where Are The CIA Ghost Prisoners?,’” analyzing the list and an important new UN report on secret detention, which includes a detailed account of the US secret detention program under George W. Bush. Shortly after the interview, I also published another article, “Bagram: Graveyard of the Geneva Conventions,” which looks at how President Obama has failed to revive the Geneva Conventions regarding the detention of prisoners in wartime, and which also provides new information about other secret prisons in Afghanistan.

After running through the vile — and violent — history of Bagram, where several men were murdered in US custody in 2002, I discussed Bagram’s more recent history, covering the cases of the three men rendered to Bagram from other countries who won habeas corpus petitions last year (in a ruling which has been challenged by the Obama administration) and explaining how I researched the names on the list made available by the Pentagon, with the intention of discovering what happened to the many dozens of foreign prisoners held at Bagram, who are not listed. I also explained that I hope to encourage other people who have information about Bagram to come forward to provide further details about those who are still held — and those who have disappeared — so that I can update the list as a collaborative project, and can continue to expose the disturbing truth about US detention policies in Afghanistan.

As I also explained, the importance of exposing the truth about Bagram and secret prisons in Afghanistan is not just because of the ongoing need for accountability for crimes committed by the Bush administration, but also because of increasing evidence that current US detention policy in Afghanistan remains a disturbingly gray area in the Obama administration’s policies.

There was much more in the interview, which lasts for about 35 minutes (including an analysis of Glenn Greenwald’s important article about the seemingly permanent right-wing drift in American consciousness regarding terrorism), and I look forward to talking to Jeff again in the near future.

Andy Worthington's TV and radio appearances, Bagram, Military Commissions, Omar Khadr
8.2.10
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Bagram: Graveyard of the Geneva Conventions

A cell in the US prison at Bagram airbase, Afghanistan On January 15, 2010, the Pentagon released the first ever list of prisoners held in the Bagram Theater Internment Facility, the main US prison in Afghanistan for the last eight years (PDF). An annotated version of the list is available here. In a previous article, “Dark Revelations in the Bagram Prisoner List,” I examined the stories of the foreign prisoners rendered to Bagram from other countries, and described the legal challenges mounted on their behalf, explaining how, last March, three of these men won their habeas corpus petitions in a US court, in a ruling that has been challenged by the Obama administration.

I also explained the use of a secret facility within Bagram as part of a network of secret CIA prisons in Afghanistan, and asked pointed questions about the whereabouts of a number of men, known to have been held in secret prisons in Afghanistan, who are not on the list and whose apparent disappearance has never been explained — and also covered this topic in another recent article, “UN Secret Detention Report Asks, ‘Where Are The CIA Ghost Prisoners?’”

In this second article based on the prisoner list, I look specifically at Bagram as a prison in a war zone, examining the murky relationship between the US and Afghan authorities regarding the detention of prisoners in wartime, asking whether the prison under President Obama conforms to the Geneva Conventions, and exposing new information about a network of secret prisons in forward operating bases and other locations around the country.

For those who fear that there are hundreds of prisoners in Bagram who have been have been held for many years, it should be noted that the limited information provided by the list is somewhat reassuring. Of the 645 prisoners listed, all but a hundred or so were seized in the last two years. There is a caveat, however. Based on the numbering system used, it appears that a total of 3,000 prisoners have been held at Bagram since the last of the regular prisoners was transferred to Guantánamo in November 2003, but although some have been freed — as part of an essentially inscrutable review process — it is not known how many others have been transferred either to Afghan custody (under a similarly inscrutable arrangement) or to Block “D” of Kabul’s main prison, Pol-i-Charki.

Refurbished by US forces in early 2007, Block “D” is where 45 of the 46 Afghan prisoners repatriated from Guantánamo since August 2007 have ended up. The one exception is Mohamed Jawad, released last August, who won his habeas corpus petition in a US court, but the other 45 have been subjected to equally opaque policies regarding their continued detention, and decisions about whether they should be tried or released, and, if the former, whether trials should be based on anything other than dubious “evidence” recycled from Guantánamo. The overriding question about Block “D” — which lawyers are hoping to test in US courts following the recent transfer of four Afghans from Guantánamo — is whether Block “D” is under Afghan or American control.

Despite these small reassurances about Bagram, I would not like to give the impression that all is well with the prison. The length of time that the majority of the 645 men have been held may appear to be quite reasonable — between one and two years — but this is supposed to be a prison in a war zone, and those detained should be screened on capture to make sure that they have not been seized by mistake, and then held for the duration of hostilities. Instead, there is every indication that prisoners are, in general, seized according to the defining characteristics of the “War on Terror,” as played out in both Iraq and Afghanistan — indiscriminate dragnets and raids based on often dubious intelligence — which not only fail to win “hearts and minds,” but also demonstrate a unilateral (and illegal) reworking of the Geneva Conventions.

The Geneva Conventions and the prevention of torture

If there is any doubt about a wartime prisoner’s status — because he is not wearing a uniform, for example — he is entitled to an Article 5 competent tribunal, held close to the time and place of capture, at which he can call witnesses. The US military pioneered these tribunals from Vietnam onwards, and was preparing to undertake them in December 2001, when the prisons at Kandahar and Bagram opened, until the orders came from on high that, in the “War on Terror,” they were unnecessary. In its extraordinary arrogance and contempt for the law, the Bush administration decided that no screening was required, and that it was sufficient for the President to declare that, on capture, all the men were “enemy combatants,” who could be held indefinitely without any rights whatsoever.

The purpose — as became apparent at Guantánamo, when President Bush declared that the Geneva Conventions did not extend to those held in the “War on Terror” — was not to keep men off the battlefield for the duration of hostilities, but to provide the lawless conditions in which they could be interrogated for “actionable intelligence.” The result, as has been chronicled as Guantánamo, at Bagram, at Abu Ghraib and in the secret prison network, was a torture regime, purportedly sanctioned by memos written by lawyers in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which claimed to redefine torture for the use by the CIA, or, in the case of the military, through “enhanced interrogation techniques” approved by defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld for use at Guantánamo, which later migrated to Iraq.

In many ways, these techniques were first conceived at Bagram, where the use of sleep deprivation and brutal stress positions (the “strappado” technique, or “Palestinian hanging”) was widespread, and the regime was so brutal that, in 2002, at least two prisoners (and possibly as many as five) were murdered in US custody.

Despite official claims that the conditions at Bagram have improved in the years since, a BBC report in June 2008, based on interviews with men held in the prison between 2002 and 2008, found that only two “said they had been treated well,” while the rest complained that “they were beaten, deprived of sleep and threatened with dogs.” In “Undue Process” (PDF), a Human Rights First report published in November 2009, a distinction was made between those held in Bagram’s early years, and those held since 2006, when, as the report noted, ex-detainees “described significantly better treatment than those captured earlier, but some still told of being assaulted at the point of capture and being held in cold isolation cells for several weeks after their capture.”

Moreover, in October 2009, during a panel discussion following the launch of the new Guantánamo documentary, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo,” former prisoner Omar Deghayes explained how his Pakistani brother-in-law was recently captured on a visit to Afghanistan and ended up in Bagram. As Omar described it, his brother-in-law’s wife, who was allowed to talk to her husband through a videophone system established by the International Committee of the Red Cross in early 2008, reported “how horribly and badly tortured he was, how he had marks on his eyes and was really badly battered.”

Importing Guantánamo-style reviews to Bagram

In an attempt to stifle dissent — and, it seems, as part of a cynical maneuver to encourage the Court of Appeals to reverse the habeas victories last March of the three foreign prisoners rendered to Bagram from other countries — the Obama administration announced last September that it was introducing a new review process for the Bagram prisoners. Submitted in court documents relating to the government’s appeal (PDF), the proposals allowed, for the first time, prisoners to call witnesses in their defense.

This was an improvement, because, until 2007, there was no formal review process at all, and as District Court Judge John D. Bates noted last March, when he granted the habeas corpus petitions of the three foreign prisoners rendered to Bagram, the system that was then put in place — consisting of Unlawful Enemy Combatant Review Boards — “falls well short of what the Supreme Court found inadequate at Guantánamo” (the Combatant Status Review Tribunals, the one-sided review process convened in 2004-05, which the Supreme Court found inadequate in Boumediene v. Bush, the June 2008 ruling granting the prisoners constitutionally guaranteed habeas corpus rights).

With incredulity, Judge Bates noted that the Bagram prisoners are not even allocated a personal representative from the military, as happened during the CSRTs at Guantánamo, and also noted that, although they are allowed to represent themselves:

Detainees cannot even speak for themselves; they are only permitted to submit a written statement. But in submitting that statement, detainees do not know what evidence the United States relies upon to justify an “enemy combatant” designation — so they lack a meaningful opportunity to rebut that evidence. [The government’s] far-reaching and ever-changing definition of enemy combatant, coupled with the uncertain evidentiary standards, further undercut the reliability of the UECRB review. And, unlike the CSRT process [which was followed by annual review boards], Bagram detainees receive no review beyond the UECRB itself.

In what appeared to be a direct response to Judge Bates’ damning criticisms, the Obama administration announced that, under the new rules, each prisoner would be assigned a US military official to represent him (as happened at Guantánamo), and that prisoners would also have the right to call witnesses and present evidence when it is “reasonably available” (as also happened at Guantánamo, even though no foreign witness was ever summoned to Cuba to testify).

It was also announced that the boards would determine whether prisoners should be held by the United States, turned over to Afghan authorities or released, but although the proposals included a promise that, “For those ordered held longer, the process will be repeated at six-month intervals,” the unilateral flight from the Geneva Conventions was confirmed not only in the decision to export Guantánamo’s discredited tribunal system to Bagram, but also in a section detailing how prisoners would be treated on capture.

As the submission explained, new prisoners would be subjected, on capture, not to Article 5 tribunals, but to cursory reviews by “the capturing unit commander” and by the commander of Bagram to ascertain that they “meet the criteria for detention.” Moreover, the DoD insisted that it was not merely holding prisoners “consistent with the laws and customs of war,” but was also holding those who fulfill the criteria laid down in the Authorization for Use of Military Force (the founding document of the “War on Terror,” approved by Congress within days of the 9/11 attacks), which authorized the President to detain those who “planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001,” or those who supported them.

This is depressingly close to the “new paradigm” of warfare introduced by Bush and Cheney, and it is, perhaps, no surprise that, as criticisms began to mount, the administration strategically announced that it was in the process of transferring control of Bagram to the Afghan government. It remains to be seen how swiftly the proposed transfer will occur, but it is unsurprising that the announcement has been made, for two reasons: firstly, because it diverts attention from current US policy, and secondly, because, as with the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) in Iraq, it allows the US government to abdicate all responsibility for the mistakes it has made. Signed in November 2008, the SOFA in Iraq has led to the transfer of thousands of prisoners in US control to the custody of the Iraqi government, even though what awaits them is not a review of whether their detention by US forces was a mistake, but the chaos of the Iraqi judicial system.

Secret prisons

This is disturbingly cynical, of course, but what makes it even worse is a reasonable assumption that the transfer of Bagram to Afghan control will not include the transfer of any prisoners regarded as significant. For these men, the likelihood is that the US government will retain control of a secretive “black jail” within Bagram airbase, exposed by the Washington Post and the New York Times in November 2009, and will continue to seize men in nighttime raids, sending them either to this facility, or to one of nine “Field Detention Sites” on military bases, “often on the slightest suspicion and without the knowledge of their families,” as Anand Gopal reported in a ground-breaking exposé last week, which revealed the extensive torture and abuse of those held.

Gopal’s account is not the only insight into the dark realities of current US detention policies in Afghanistan, beyond Bagram, beyond the Geneva Conventions, and, it seems, beyond the law. Late last year, a reliable Afghan source informed a lawyer friend of mine that there were, at the time, about two dozen secret facilities in Afghanistan, including three or four in Herat, four or five in northern Afghanistan, and three or four in Kabul. According to this source, the majority were US facilities, although a few were run by the National Directorate of Security (NDS), the Afghan government’s domestic intelligence agency, and a few others were run by the Afghan Army. The source added, “They are all worse than Bagram. All contain a mix of combatants, criminals, and totally innocent persons. The main difference is that those at the US prisons are fed better. No one has any rights.”

In addition, just last week, in response to my recent articles, a military insider let me know that, “Not only were there facilities in Bagram, but in Kandahar and Salerno as well. Saw them first-hand between 2006 and 2009, but was told not to speak of the jails.” These, it was noted, were “unsanctioned facilities,” which were off-limits to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

As eight years of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld should have taught us, once you abandon the Geneva Conventions, all that lies beyond is secrecy and torture. The Obama administration has certainly tinkered with the Bush administration’s legacy, but as the stories of Bagram, the “dark jail” and the network of secret facilities demonstrates, tinkering threatens only to drive the dark truths further underground, and what is needed is the courage to thoroughly repudiate the brutal practices at the heart of the “War on Terror.”

A slightly edited version of this article was published exclusively on Truthout. Cross-posted on Uruknet.

American torture, Bagram, Barack Obama, Extraordinary rendition and secret prisons, FBI/CIA, Guantanamo
5.2.10
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Swiss Take Two Guantánamo Uighurs, Save Obama from Having to Do the Right Thing

Congratulations to the Swiss Canton of Jura, which recently accepted the asylum claims of two Uighur prisoners at Guantánamo, and to the Swiss federal government for agreeing to accept Jura’s decision on Wednesday.

The two men in question — Arkin Mahmud, 45, and his brother Bahtiyar Mahnut, 32 — were seized with 20 other Uighurs in December 2001. The US authorities realized almost immediately that all of these men, who are Turkic Muslims from China’s Xinjiang province, had only one enemy — the Chinese government — and had been seized (or bought) by mistake. However, although the majority of the men were cleared for release by 2005, the Bush administration accepted that it could not return them to China, because of fears that they would face torture or other ill-treatment, but then struggled to find another country that would take them instead.

In May 2006, Albania was persuaded to take five of these men, but the other 17 had to wait until October 2008, when Judge Ricardo Urbina, a US District Court judge, ruled on their long-delayed habeas corpus petitions, and ordered their release into the United States, because no other country had been found that would take them, and because their continued detention was unconstitutional.

Predictably, the Bush administration appealed, and in February 2010 the Obama administration, to its eternal shame, followed suit, backing a ruling by the Court of Appeals, which overturned the lower court ruling, and hurled the Uighurs back into limbo.

In June 2009, the State Department managed to find new homes for four of these men in Bermuda, and in November the Pacific island of Palau took another six. As a result, seven Uighurs remained in Guantánamo, but by taking the brothers, the Swiss government has not only dared to take on the might of the Chinese government, which threatens any country that dares to entertain the prospect of taking any of the men from Guantánamo, but has also helped President Obama out of what appeared to be an intractable problem.

In a statement, the Swiss Justice Ministry said, “Today the Federal Council decided to admit for humanitarian reasons two Uighurs with Chinese citizenship, who have been imprisoned in Guantánamo for years by the United States without being charged with a crime nor [convicted].” Brushing aside the threats that the Chinese government had made last month, when Chinese officials warned that Switzerland should avoid damaging “overall Sino-Swiss relations,” the Justice Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf added that Switzerland has a “stable, good relationship with China, and we want to keep it that way.”

Not mentioned publicly was the fact that, until Jura accepted the men’s asylum claims, one of them, Arkin Mahmud, appeared to stuck at Guantánamo, his only way out being to hope that the Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the Uighurs’ case last year, would overturn last February’s appeals court ruling, and allow cleared prisoners who cannot be repatriated into the United States.

The problem is that Palau had refused to take Arkin Mahmud, because, as the Washington Post noted in an editorial in October, he “suffers from serious mental health issues because of his detention and lengthy periods of solitary confinement.” As a result, Bahtiyar Mahnut turned down Palau’s offer of a new home for himself, in order to stay with his brother, and, as the Post noted, “Unless another country accepts the brothers, they could remain in custody indefinitely — a prospect that is unconscionable and that no doubt informed the justices’ decision to hear the matter.”

As I explained in an article at the time:

[T]he Supreme Court was faced with a tricky legal decision, because the justices will be considering whether, in defense of habeas corpus, and in reference to the unique position in which the Guantánamo prisoners are held, they are being asked to decide whether a judge has the power to order the release of prisoners into the US, when all the precedents, as the Court of Appeals made clear, establish that the admission of foreigners into the US is a matter for the executive and legislative branches of government.

At the time, the Post reached a principled conclusion with profound implications for the government, arguing that the “moral and ethical imperatives” were “clear and compelling,” and that the government should introduce “narrowly crafted legislation that would allow Mr. Mahmud and Mr. Mahnut into the United States, where they could remain together and Mr. Mahmud could get the medical help he needs.”

This “narrowly crafted legislation” will not now be needed, but it remains to be seen if the imminent release of Arkin Mahmud and Bahtiyar Mahnut will affect the Supreme Court’s planned deliberations about the remaining five Uighurs.

The Supreme Court has scheduled argument for March 23 to decide whether to overturn the precedents regarding the admission of foreigners into the US, when, as in the cases of the Uighurs, these men are held in Guantánamo because it is not safe to repatriate them, and no other nation will take them.

The men’s lawyers will argue, as they have consistently, that the Supreme Court ruling in June 2008, granting constitutionally guaranteed habeas corpus rights to the prisoners, is meaningless if a judge cannot actually order prisoners to be released.

As the Associated Press explained on Wednesday, the government could now try to argue that the Supreme Court should drop the case, because the remaining Uighurs were apparently offered new homes in Palau but turned down the offer. Sharon Bradford Franklin, senior counsel at The Constitution Project, told the AP that she feared this outcome. “I would not be surprised,” she said, “if the administration says that the Uighurs themselves are at fault that they have not been resettled to Palau.”

However, Sabin Willett, an attorney who has represented the Uighurs for many years, was more hopeful, telling the AP by email that he “expects the case to go forward.” I tend to share Willett’s optimism, but not, of course, if the remaining five men are miraculously resettled in some other country, perhaps just days before the March 23 deadline.

If there is one thing we have learned from the Obama administration, since the President shelved plans made last April by his counsel, Greg Craig, to bring the Uighurs to live in the US, it is that, regardless of whether senior officials may agree in private that resettling the Uighurs in the US would be the right thing to do, they are not prepared to tackle their critics — and the Bush administration’s poisonous legacy — head-on. Instead, senior officials prefer not only to avoid confrontation, but also, sadly, to avoid doing anything that would demonstrate to the American public that enormous mistakes were made at Guantánamo, and that the rhetoric of Dick Cheney and his thriving acolytes is disturbingly mistaken.

I can think of no finer way to demonstrate this than to allow the Uighurs to walk free on the streets of, say, Washington D.C., but it remains clear that this is not something that the administration will undertake willingly, and in the meantime, the people of Bermuda and Palau have been learning this instead, and are soon to be joined by the people of Switzerland.

President Obama is fortunate to have such kind allies, but he himself is the loser, the longer he refuses to tackle those who insist, in the face of overwhelming evidence, that everyone who was held at Guantánamo was a “terrorist,” and that it is somehow appropriate to continue to deprive innocent men of their liberty in Guantánamo, rather than giving them new homes in the country that, through cruelty and incompetence, deprived them of so many years of their lives.

As published on Antiwar.com, ZNet, the Huffington Post and CounterPunch. Cross-posted on Common Dreams and The Public Record.

The Guantánamo Files: An Archive of Articles – Part Five, July to December 2009

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For four years, I have been providing detailed information about the prisoners in Guantánamo, first through my book The Guantánamo Files, which tells the story of the prison and around 450 of the prisoners held, and then through 12 online chapters, which provide information about the majority of the other 329 prisoners. Alongside this project, I have been working assiduously as a full-time independent journalist, covering stories as they develop, and focusing in particular on the stories of released prisoners, the Military Commission trial system, and the prisoners’ progress in the courts, through their habeas corpus petitions.

My intention, all along, has been to bring the men to life through their stories, dispelling the Bush administration’s rhetoric about the prison holding “the worst of the worst,” and demonstrating how, instead, 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 on January 1), I remain convinced, through detailed research and through comments from insiders with knowledge of Guantánamo, 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 website, I recognize that it’s increasingly difficult to navigate, as there are so many “Categories,” and, most crucially, there is no access to articles in anything other than reverse chronological order. In an attempt to remedy this shortcoming, and to provide easy access to the most important articles on the site, I’ve put together five chronological lists, covering the periods May to December 2007, January to June 2008, July to December 2008, January to June 2009 and July to December 2009, in the hope that they will provide a useful tool for navigation.

In this final part (for now, pending an update this summer), I continued writing for the Guardian, the Future of Freedom Foundation and Cageprisoners, and was also thrilled to be asked to start writing regularly for Truthout. I also maintained my involvement with the Huffington Post, CounterPunch, Antiwar.com, AlterNet and ZNet, and also kept up contact with the Daily Star, Lebanon. A number of other sites also started regularly cross-posting my articles, including Jason Leopold’s The Public Record, and I also made a number of appearances on al-Jazeera and Democracy Now!

In terms of content, this was the period when, distressingly, the high hopes human rights activists had for President Obama began to unravel. I covered some spectacular testimony in Congress, when Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld and Maj. David Frakt did their utmost to prevent the revival of the Military Commissions, but then watched in horror as the Commissions were revived in November, in a three-tier system of “justice” that involved federal court trials for some prisoners, Military Commissions for others, and, most alarmingly, indefinite detention without charge or trial for others. In September, the administration dropped its plans to apply for new legislation to endorse this disturbing plan, but ended up claiming that it needed only to rely on the sweeping and open-ended powers that Congress granted George W. Bush in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, which, to be frank, are in drastic need of an overhaul.

I also covered the prisoners’ habeas corpus petitions in great detail, rounding up the stories to date in a three-parter in the summer, cheering as Judge Ellen Huvelle granted the habeas petition of the former juvenile prisoner (and torture victim) Mohamed Jawad, and then reeling in shock as Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly granted the habeas petition of a Kuwaiti, Fouad al-Rabiah, and revealed, in her ruling, how he had been tortured into making false confessions that he had then repeated in publicly-available documents. This was one of my most successful articles of the period, along with a two-part interview with Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, formerly Colin Powell’s Chief of Staff.

I also covered the stories of the 31 prisoners released between July and December, continued to monitor Binyam Mohamed’s ongoing UK court case regarding his “extraordinary rendition” and torture, maintained a regular commentary on the UK’s domestic anti-terror laws, exposed what is known to date about murders in US custody in Afghanistan, and, in September, focused on the Obama administration’s shameless attempts to maintain Bush-era secrecy at Bagram, and to introduce a review process, unrelated to the Geneva Conventions, which was essentially copied from the discredited system used at Guantánamo.

In addition, I branched out into film, with the launch of a new documentary film, “Outside the law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by filmmaker Polly Nash and myself) in October, which I then followed up with a short US tour, taking in New York, Fairfax, Virginia, Washington D.C., and the Bay Area. The film was later featured on Democracy Now!, ABC News and Truthout, and although I had a great time in the States, and met some wonderful people, I couldn’t help thinking that the hopes of January 2009 were being dashed, with right-wingers out of control, members of Obama’s own party demonstrating their own stupidity, and a voter base that was either blind to reality, believing that Obama had waved a magic wand and made everything fine, or thoroughly disillusioned and comparing him to George W. Bush. In several articles, I expressed my disgust with lawmakers of both parties, and also my disappointment that, when it came to being challenged, the Obama administration chose cowardice, and acted with pragmatism rather than with the principles that are so desperately needed if the crimes of the Bush administration are ever to be thoroughly repudiated.

An archive of Guantánamo articles: Part Five, July to December 2009

July 2009

1. Murders in US custody: When Torture Kills: Ten Murders In US Prisons In Afghanistan
2. Torture: Release Of The “Holy Grail” Of Torture Reports Delayed Again
3. Federal court trials: African Embassy Bombing Suspect To Face Trial In September 2010 (Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani)
4. UK anti-terror laws: Seven years of madness: the harrowing tale of Mahmoud Abu Rideh and Britain’s anti-terror laws
5. UK anti-terror laws: “Would you be able to cope?”: Letters by the children of control order detainee Mahmoud Abu Rideh
6. UK anti-terror laws: Control order detainee Mahmoud Abu Rideh to be allowed to leave the UK
7. Bagram: Judge Rules That Afghan “Rendered” To Bagram In 2002 Has No Rights
8. Military Commissions: Military Commissions: Government Flounders, As Admiral Hutson Nails Problems
9. UK torture: Britain’s Secret Torture Policy Exposed
10. UK torture: How David Davis Exposed Britain’s Secret Torture Scandal
11. Military Commissions: Former Insider Shatters Credibility of Military Commissions (Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld)
12. UK anti-terror laws: Testing control orders (in the Guardian)
13. Torture: Will Eric Holder Be The Anti-Torture Hero?
14. Afghanistan: The Convoy of Death: Will Obama Investigate The Afghan Massacre Of November 2001?
15. Guantánamo and habeas corpus: Guantánamo And The Courts (Part One): Exposing The Bush Administration’s Lies
16. China: Is The World Ignoring A Massacre of Uighurs In China?
17. Uighur prisoners: Chair Of The American Conservative Union Supports The Guantánamo Uighurs
18. UK anti-terror laws: Dismantle the secret state (in the Guardian)
19. Tunisian prisoners: Italy’s Guantánamo: Obama Plans “Rendition” Of Tunisians In Guantánamo To Italian Jail
20. Military Commissions: Predictable Chaos As Guantánamo Trials Resume
21. UK anti-terror laws: UK government issues travel document to control order detainee Mahmoud Abu Rideh after horrific suicide attempt
22. Uighur prisoners: Three Uighurs Talk About Chinese Interrogation At Guantánamo
23. Uighur prisoners: House Threatens Obama Over Chinese Interrogation Of Uighurs In Guantánamo
24. Guantánamo and habeas corpus: Obama’s Failure To Deliver Justice To The Last Tajik In Guantánamo (Umar Abdulayev)
25. Interviews: An interview with Andy Worthington, author of The Guantánamo Files (July 2009)
26. Video: Andy Worthington discusses the closure of Guantánamo on Al-Jazeera
27. Closing Guantánamo: Obama And The Deadline For Closing Guantánamo: It’s Worse Than You Think
28. Torture: US Torture Under Scrutiny In British Courts
29. Guantánamo and habeas corpus: How Judge Huvelle Humiliated The Government In Guantánamo Case (Mohamed Jawad)
30. Guantánamo and habeas corpus: As Judge Orders Release Of Tortured Guantánamo Prisoner, Government Refuses To Concede Defeat (Mohamed Jawad)

August 2009

31. Video: Former prisoners launch the Guantánamo Justice Centre in London
32. Closing Guantánamo: Guantánamo As Hotel California: You Can Check Out Any Time You Like, But You Can Never Leave
33. Guantánamo and habeas corpus: Judge Orders Release From Guantánamo Of Kuwaiti Charity Worker (Khalid al-Mutairi)
34. UK anti-terror laws: Secret evidence in the case of the North West 10 “terror suspects”
35. Binyam Mohamed: What The British Government Knew About The Torture Of Binyam Mohamed
36: Uighur prisoners: A Profile of Rushan Abbas, The Guantánamo Uighurs’ Interpreter
37. Uighur prisoners: A Plea To Barack Obama From The Guantánamo Uighurs
38. Military Commissions: David Frakt: Military Commissions “A Catastrophic Failure”
39. Guantánamo and habeas corpus: Guantánamo And The Courts (Part Two): Obama’s Shame
40. Closing Guantánamo: Guantánamo In Belgium: The Questionable Fate Of Two Tunisians
41. Bagram: Bagram Isn’t The New Guantánamo, It’s The Old Guantánamo
42. Guantánamo and habeas corpus: Guantánamo And The Courts (Part Three): Obama’s Continuing Shame
43. Guantánamo history: Arrogance And Torture: A History of Guantánamo
44. Interviews: An Interview With Col. Lawrence Wilkerson (Part One)

September 2009

45. Prisoners released from Guantánamo: Reflections On Mohamed Jawad’s Release From Guantánamo
46. Prisoners released from Guantánamo: Who Are The Two Syrians Released From Guantánamo To Portugal?
47. UK anti-terror laws: Letting go of control orders (in the Guardian)
48. Torture: Spanish judge resumes torture case against six senior Bush lawyers
49. Interviews: An Interview With Col. Lawrence Wilkerson (Part Two)
50. Guantánamo and habeas corpus: No Escape From Guantánamo: The Latest Habeas Rulings
51. 9/11 anniversary: Remember 9/11, remember Guantánamo (in the Guardian)
52. Bagram: Obama Brings Guantánamo And Rendition To Bagram (And Not The Geneva Conventions)
53. Bagram: Is Bagram Obama’s New Secret Prison?
54. Guantánamo and habeas corpus: First Guantánamo Prisoner To Lose Habeas Hearing Appeals Ruling
55. Closing Guantánamo: Guantánamo Envoy: US Should Have Taken Cleared Prisoners; Some Should Never Have Been Held
56. Guantánamo and habeas corpus: Judge Orders Release From Guantánamo Of Kuwaiti Who Met Bin Laden (but please see 71, below)
57. Mohamed Jawad: The Unsung Heroes Who Helped Secure Mohammed Jawad’s Release From Guantánamo
58. Video: Freed From Guantánamo, Mohammed Jawad Celebrates Eid With His Family
59. Return to torture: Court Allows Return Of Guantánamo Prisoners To Torture
60. Military Commissions: 9/11 Trial At Guantánamo Delayed Again: Can We Have Federal Court Trials Now, Please?
61. Video (in German): Andy Worthington Discusses Guantánamo On Swiss TV
62. UK anti-terror laws: Another Blow To Britain’s Crumbling Control Order Regime
63. Prisoners released from Guantánamo: Three Prisoners Released From Guantánamo: Two To Ireland, One To Yemen
64: Video: Former Guantánamo Prisoner Binyam Mohamed Speaks (Video)
65. Prisoners released from Guantánamo: The Story of Oybek Jabbarov, An Innocent Man Freed From Guantánamo
66: Closing Guantánamo: Obama Drops Plan For New “Indefinite Detention” Policy At Guantánamo
67. Prisoners released from Guantánamo: A Teenage Refugee Freed From Guantánamo And Released In Ireland
68. Torture: Torture in Bagram and Guantánamo: The Declaration of Ahmed al-Darbi
69. Military Commissions: Torture And Futility: Is This The End Of The Military Commissions At Guantánamo?
70. Video: Andy Worthington Discusses Bagram on al-Jazeera
71. Guantánamo and habeas corpus: A Truly Shocking Guantánamo Story: Judge Confirms That An Innocent Man Was Tortured To Make False Confessions (Fouad al-Rabiah)

October 2009

72. Closing Guantánamo: 75 Guantánamo Prisoners Cleared For Release; 31 Could Leave Today
73. Guantánamo and US Congress: On Guantánamo, Lawmakers Reveal They Are Still Dick Cheney’s Pawns
74. Guantánamo and US Congress: Lawyer Blasts “Congressional Depravity” On Guantánamo
75. Barack Obama: Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize: OK, He’s A Nice Guy, But …
76. Prisoners released from Guantánamo: Two More Guantánamo Prisoners Released: To Kuwait And Belgium
77. Afghanistan (guest post): A Letter From Afghanistan: Bagram, Afghan suffering and the futility of war
78. Closing Guantánamo: Finding New Homes For 44 Cleared Guantánamo Prisoners
79. Kuwaiti prisoners: Resisting Injustice In Guantánamo: The Story Of Fayiz Al-Kandari
80. Binyam Mohamed: UK Judges Order Release Of Details About The Torture Of Binyam Mohamed By US Agents
81. Uighur prisoners: Justice At Last? Guantánamo Uighurs Ask Supreme Court For Release Into US
82. Guantánamo media: Photos from the launch of “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo”
83. Torture: Musicians (Finally) Say No To Music Torture
84. Guantánamo media: New Book: The Guantánamo Lawyers – and a talk by Jonathan Hafetz
85. Guantánamo and US Senate: Senate Finally Allows Guantánamo Trials In US, But Not Homes For Innocent Men
86. Prisoners released from Guantánamo: Six Uighurs Go To Palau; Seven Remain In Guantánamo

November 2009

87. US enemy combatants: Ali al-Marri’s Statement In Court, October 30, 2009
88. US enemy combatants: Ali al-Marri, The Last US “Enemy Combatant,” Receives Eight-Year Sentence
89. Prisoners released from Guantánamo: Who Are The Six Uighurs Released From Guantánamo To Palau?
90. Uighur prisoners: Guantánamo Uighurs In Palau: First Interview And Photo
91. Military Commissions: Military Commissions Revived: Don’t Do It, Mr. President!
92. Rendition: Italian Judge Rules “Extraordinary Rendition” Illegal, Sentences CIA Agents (Abu Omar)
93. US tour: Bringing Guantánamo To New York
94. Video: On Democracy Now! Andy Worthington Discusses the Forthcoming 9/11 Trials and “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo”
95. Video: An Evening with Andy Worthington, Discussing Guantánamo (Video)
96. US tour: Guantánamo Comes To The United States: Andy Worthington’s Tour Report
97. Federal court trials, Military Commissions: The Logic of the 9/11 Trials, The Madness of the Military Commissions
98. UK torture: UK Judge Approves Use of Secret Evidence in Guantánamo Case
99. Video: Andy Worthington Discusses Guantánamo on VOA News (Video – In Urdu)
100. Federal court trials, Military Commissions: Rep. Jerrold Nadler and David Frakt on Obama’s Three-Tier Justice System For Guantánamo
101. Closing Guantánamo: Obama’s Failure To Close Guantánamo By January Deadline Is Disastrous
102. Guantánamo lawyers: Justice Department Pointlessly Gags Guantánamo Lawyer (Candace Gorman, lawyer for Abdul Hamid al-Ghizzawi)
103. Video: On ABC News, Andy Worthington Discusses New Film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo”
104. Guantánamo and habeas corpus: Judge Orders Release Of Algerian From Guantánamo (But He’s Not Going Anywhere)
105. UK torture: Cruel Britannia: Human Rights Watch Exposes British Complicity In Torture In Pakistan
106. Iraq: Iraq Inquiry: Sir Christopher Meyer Confirms That Iraq War Was Illegal
107. Binyam Mohamed: UK Judges Compare Binyam Mohamed’s Torture To That Of Abu Zubaydah

December 2009

108. Closing Guantánamo: Guantánamo: Idealists Leave Obama’s Sinking Ship
109. UK anti-terror laws: The end of secret evidence? (in the Guardian)
110. Video: Andy Worthington Discusses Guantánamo, Plus Clips From “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (Truthout video)
111. Prisoners released from Guantánamo: Four Men Leave Guantánamo; Two Face Ill-Defined Trials In Italy
112. UK anti-terror laws: Living With A Terror Suspect: Detainee U’s Landlord Tells His Story
113. Guantánamo lawyers: Guantánamo Lawyer Calls Off Talk In Illinois After Receiving Threats Of Violence
114. Closing Guantánamo: 116 Guantánamo Prisoners Cleared For Release; 171 Still In Limbo
115. Military Commissions: Former Guantánamo Prosecutor Loses Job For Criticizing Military Commissions
116. UK anti-terror laws: Calling Time On The Use Of Secret Evidence In The UK
117. Military Commissions: Chaos and Confusion: The Return of the Military Commissions
118. Prisoners released from Guantánamo: Innocent Guantánamo Torture Victim Fouad al-Rabiah Is Released In Kuwait
119. Guantánamo and habeas corpus: What Does It Take To Get Out Of Obama’s Guantánamo?
120. Guantánamo and habeas corpus: “Model Prisoner” at Guantánamo, Tortured in the “Dark Prison,” Loses Habeas Corpus Petition
121. UK torture: UK Court Orders Release Of Torture Evidence In The Case Of Shaker Aamer, The Last British Resident In Guantánamo
122. Guantánamo and habeas corpus: Judge Orders Release From Guantánamo Of Unwilling Yemeni Recruit
123. Mohammed El-Gharani: Stranded In Chad: Mohammed El-Gharani, Once Guantánamo’s Youngest Prisoner
124. UK torture: Shaker Aamer: UK Government Drops Opposition To Release Of Torture Evidence
125. Prisoners released from Guantánamo: The Stories Of The Two Somalis Freed From Guantánamo
126. Closing Guantánamo: Serious Problems With Obama’s Plan To Move Guantánamo To Illinois
127. Somali prisoners: “Hell on Earth”: Released Somali Speaks about Guantánamo
128. Prisoners released from Guantánamo: Who Are The Four Afghans Released From Guantánamo?
129. Uzbek prisoners: At Christmas, Ex-Guantánamo Prisoner Is Reunited With His Family
130. Interviews: An Interview With Andy Worthington About Guantánamo, “Outside the Law” and New Media
131. Video: Q&A with Moazzam Begg, Omar Deghayes, Andy Worthington and Polly Nash at the Launch of “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo”
132. Prisoners released from Guantánamo: Why Obama Must Continue Releasing Yemenis From Guantánamo

“Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” – Announcing the UK Tour

Throughout 2010, former Guantánamo prisoner Omar Deghayes and Andy Worthington, journalist and author of The Guantánamo Files, will be touring the UK, showing the new Guantánamo documentary “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo,” and attending post-screening Q&A sessions. On some dates, Omar, who is now the legal director of the Guantánamo Justice Centre, and Andy, who co-directed the film, will be joined by former prisoner Moazzam Begg (the director of Cageprisoners) and Polly Nash, the film’s co-director, representing Spectacle, the production company, and, occasionally, other guests.

On Saturday February 6, Andy and Polly will be traveling to Oslo for a screening of the film at the Human Rights, Human Wrongs Festival. See here for further details.

The UK tour starts the week after. A dedicated page here, which contains further details, will be updated regularly, but these are the dates confirmed so far:

Tuesday February 16, 6.30 pm: Amnesty International Human Rights Action Centre, 17-25 New Inn Yard, London, EC2 (also see here).

Tuesday February 23: QMUL (Queen Mary, University of London), Mile End Campus, London, E1, venue tbc. The screening follows an afternoon seminar, “Closing Guantánamo: one year on,” organized by QMUL’s Centre for Global Security and Development.

Saturday February 27, 2 pm: NFT2 (National Film Theatre), South Bank, London (also see here). Organized by the BFI (British Film Institute).

Monday March 1, 6 pm: New Theatre, East Building, LSE (London School of Economics), London, WC2. Part of LSE Amnesty International Society’s Human Rights Week 2010.

Friday March 5, 7 pm: Headington Hill Hall, Headington Campus, Oxford Brookes University, Gipsy Lane, Oxford. Part of the annual Human Rights Film and Music Festival.

Tuesday March 9, 7.30 pm: Bradford Playhouse, 4-12 Chapel St, Little Germany, Bradford. Facilitated with the support of Bradford Amnesty International Group.

Tuesday March 16, 7 pm: Khalili Lecture Theatre, SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies), Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London, WC1.

Thursday March 18, 5 pm: University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, CT2 7NF. Venue tbc.

Monday March 22: University of Dundee, Nethergate, Dundee. Venue tbc.

Tuesday March 23: University of Aberdeen, King’s College, Aberdeen. Venue tbc.

Tuesday April 27: University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester. Venue tbc. Part of the annual “Spring Festival: Art & Culture For Humanity,” organized by the Human Rights Centre and societies.

About the film

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

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

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

Take action for Shaker Aamer

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

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

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

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

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

Recent feedback

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

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

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

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

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

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

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