Murders at Guantánamo: The Cover-Up Continues

11.6.10

Composite image by TalkLeftSometimes the truth is so sickening that no one in a position of authority — senior government officials, lawmakers, the mainstream media — wants to go anywhere near it.

This appears to be the case with the deaths of three men at Guantánamo on June 9, 2006. According to the official version of events, Salah Ahmed al-Salami (also identified as Ali Abdullah Ahmed), a 37-year old Yemeni, Mani Shaman al-Utaybi, a 30-year old Saudi, and Yasser Talal al-Zahrani, a Saudi who was just 17 when he was seized in Afghanistan, died by hanging themselves, in what Guantánamo’s then-Commander, Rear Adm. Harry Harris, described as an act of “asymmetric warfare.”

Adm. Harris was, appropriately, censured for describing as an act of warfare the deaths of three men, held for over four years without charge or trial, but although his comments — and those of Colleen Graffy, the deputy assistant secretary of state for public diplomacy, who described the men’s deaths as a “good PR move” — were despicable, it was true that all three men had been implacably opposed to the regime at Guantánamo, and that each had expressed their opposition to it — and their solidarity with their fellow prisoners — through resistance, by enduring painful months of force-feeding as three of the prison’s most persistent hunger strikers, and by raising their fellow prisoners’ spirits as accomplished singers of nasheeds (Islamic songs).

Former prisoners cast doubt on the suicide story

In a statement issued just after the announcement of the deaths in June 2006, nine British ex-prisoners recalled the men’s indefatigable spirit, and cast doubt on the US military’s claims that they had committed suicide:

The prisoners in Guantánamo knew Manei al-Otaibi [Mani al-Utaybi] as someone who recited the Qur’an and poetry with a beautiful voice. He was of high moral character and was loved and respected amongst the prisoners, as was Yasser. They both came from wealthy backgrounds and had everything to live for.

They were often involved in protests and hunger strikes, which meant that they were always given “level four” statuses. That means the only items they would be allowed in the cell were a mat, and a blanket (only at night). They didn’t have toilet paper, let alone bed sheets that could be easily constructed into a noose, or even a pen and paper with which to write a suicide note.

A more detailed analysis was provided by one of the nine British ex-prisoners, Tarek Dergoul, who wrote:

I knew them personally, so I can judge well their frame of mind. Their iman (belief in God) was very strong, there was high morale and it comes as a complete shock to my system when it is said to me that they could have committed suicide. I was with them for a long period of time, and it never even came into our mind the thought of committing suicide. We were always far too busy constructing some form of hunger strike or non-cooperation strike, to even register the thought of suicide. It is quite simply ridiculous. When we were not in isolation for our continued protests we were in the regular blocks planning our next move.

Dergoul also provided further descriptions of two of the men and their state of mind, explaining that Yasser al-Zahrani and Manei al-Otaibi “would be the first amongst all others to stand up for our rights and the rights of others.”

He added that al-Zahrani was “a beautiful brother,” who had memorized the entire Qur’an, and “was softly spoken and had a very nice voice. He used to sing nasheeds for us and all the brothers loved him as he was always optimistic. He would sing morale-boosting nasheeds for the other detainees nearby to him. He was very well known to everyone in the camp.”

He also explained that al-Zahrani had “participated in all the hunger strikes and non-cooperation strikes,” which, he added, “include[d] not speaking in interrogation and also not standing for any immoral behavior (such as being sexually harassed or watching the Qur’an being desecrated).” Non-cooperation, he pointed out, “would result in punishment,” and al-Zahrani “ended up doing a lot of time in isolation simply due to the fact that he would never allow for an injustice to take place before him without being defiant for the sake of our rights,” but he “had so much determination, will-power and morale that it is ridiculous to think he could have taken his own life.”

Writing about Manei al-Otaibi, Dergoul described him as “another beautiful brother,” who was “extremely funny,” and explained that, like al-Zahrani, he “used to recite poetry — in fact this was the thing he was best known for — and he also used to sing nasheeds for us.” He added:

I stayed beside Manei for three weeks inside the regular blocks, and that is when he told me about his wealthy family and his previous life and how he used to get up to no good as people do when they are young. It was also during those three weeks that he taught me tajweed (the science of reciting the Qur’an correctly). By the end of that time we had shared with one another our inner most thoughts. I consider it an insult and I am sure that his family finds it equally offensive, to suggest that he would stoop to the level of taking his own life.

Admittedly, the men’s outlook on life could have changed in the two years following Tarek Dergoul’s release from Guantánamo, but Omar Deghayes, who was still in Guantánamo at the time of their deaths, recently backed up his analysis, describing them as poets with beautiful voices whose spirits were unbroken at the time of their deaths, although he did acknowledge that they had been subjected to severe mistreatment.

Seton Hall Law School demolishes the suicide story

If the profiles above suggest problems with the official suicide story, that is entirely appropriate, as development in the last two years — and particularly in the last six months — have demonstrated. The first of these was the publication, in August 2008, of the official report into the deaths, conducted by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. The report — actually, nothing more than a 934-word statement — was presumably intended to be buried under coverage of the Presidential election, and did nothing to address doubts about the official story, but over the next year a colossal archive of documents collected for the investigation was thoroughly analyzed by staff and students at the Seton Hall Law School in New Jersey.

On December 7, 2009, Seton Hall published a 136-page report, “Death in Camp Delta” (PDF), which comprehensively undermined the conclusion of the NCIS investigation. Some of the most important questions asked in the report were:

  • “[H]ow each of the detainees, much less all three, could have done the following: braided a noose by tearing up his sheets and/or clothing, made a mannequin of himself so it would appear to the guards he was asleep in his cell, hung sheets to block vision into the cell — a violation of Standard Operating Procedures, tied his feet together, tied his hands together, hung the noose from the metal mesh of the cell wall and/or ceiling, climbed up onto the sink, put the noose around his neck and released his weight to result in death by strangulation, hanged until dead and hung for at least two hours completely unnoticed by guards.”
  • “[H]ow three bodies could have hung in cells for at least two hours while the cells were under constant supervision, both by video camera and by guards continually walking the corridors guarding only 28 detainees.”
  • Why the authorities did not report that, “when the detainees’ bodies arrived at the clinic, it was determined that each had a rag obstructing his throat.”
  • Why the authorities did not report that the detainees “had been dead for more than two hours when they were discovered, nor that rigor mortis had set in by the time of discovery.”
  • How the supposed suicides “could have been coordinated by the three detainees, who had been on the same cell block fewer than 72 hours with occupied and unoccupied cells between them and constant supervision.”

Moreover, the researchers also discovered so many omissions and contradictions in the reports of the various personnel who were present on the night of the men’s deaths that it was impossible to construct a coherent narrative. It was also impossible not to conclude that, with so many holes in the official account, the investigation was, as Professor Mark Denbeaux explained in a press release, “a cover up,” and, in addition, one that raised “more compelling questions”: “Who knew of the cover up? Who approved of the cover up, and why? The government’s investigation is slipshod, and its conclusion leaves the most important questions about this tragedy unanswered.”

In the Seton Hall report, the omissions and contradictions focus on the fact that the only guards who were asked to make statements on the night “were advised that they were suspected of making false statements or failing to obey direct orders” (the statements have never been publicly released); on asking why other guards were “ordered not to provide sworn statements about what happened that night”; on asking why the government “seemed to be unable to determine who was on duty that night in Alpha Block” (where the deaths supposedly occurred); on asking “why the guards who brought the bodies to the medics did not tell the medics what had happened to cause the deaths and why the medics never asked how the deaths had occurred”; on why there is “no indication that the medics observed anything unusual on the cell block at the time that the detainees wee hanging dead in their cells”; and, finally, on “why the guards on duty in the cell block were not systematically interviewed about the events of the night, why the medics who visited the cell block before the hangings were not interviewed, [and] why the tower guards, who had the responsibility and ability to observe all activity in the camp, were not interviewed.”

In addition, the report also noted the NCIS’s failure to review “audio and video recordings which are systematically maintained; ‘Pass-On’ books prepared by each shift to describe occurrences on the block for the next shift; the Detainee Information Management System, which contains records of all activity for that night as the events occur; and Serious Incident reports, which are the reports used when there are suicide attempts.”

The authors were also particularly concerned that a prominent claim in the NCIS statement — “that on the night in question, another detainee (who did not later commit suicide) had walked through the cell block telling people ‘tonight’s the night’” — was not explained. “There is no indication,” they wrote, “of how this could have happened given camp security rules or, if it had taken place, why security was not tighter as a result.”

Harper’s Magazine reports soldiers’ testimony, suggests prisoners died in torture sessions

Just six weeks after the Seton Hall report was published, answers to some of these questions were provided in the most extraordinary manner. In an article for Harper’s Magazine, law professor Scott Horton revealed the story of Army Staff Sgt. Joe Hickman, and a number of other soldiers — the tower guards mentioned in the Seton Hall report, who “had the responsibility and ability to observe all activity in the camp, [but] were not interviewed.”

Sgt. Hickman, who was on duty in a tower on the prison’s perimeter on the night the three men died, addressed some of the NCIS investigations’ omissions and contradictions by explaining that the reason that men had been dead for over two hours before their deaths were reported, that few reports were taken from the personnel on duty, and that rags were stuffed in the men’s throats was not because they had committed suicide, but because they had been taken from the cell block earlier that evening to a secret facility outside the main perimeter fence of Guantánamo — known to the soldiers as “Camp No” — where they had either been deliberately killed, or had a died as the result of particularly brutal torture sessions.

Sgt. Hickman, and several other witnesses under his supervision, told Scott Horton personally that they had not seen anyone moved to the clinic from Alpha Block, where the prisoners reportedly died, and when I spoke to Sgt. Hickman a few months ago, he confirmed that this was the case, telling me categorically that neither he, nor three men he was in charge of who were stationed no more than 40 feet away from the clinic, saw anyone moved from the block to the clinic. “They didn’t die in their cells,” he explained.

This was not all. Sgt. Hickman — and other witnesses — also explained that the false suicide story required a cover-up, and that this involved Col. Mike Bumgarner, the warden at Guantánamo, telling a meeting of between 40 and 60 men on the morning of June 10 that, although “‘you all know’ three prisoners in the Alpha Block at Camp 1 committed suicide during the night by swallowing rags, causing them to choke to death,” the media would report that the three men “had committed suicide by hanging themselves in their cells. It was important, he said, that servicemen make no comments or suggestions that in any way undermined the official report. He reminded the soldiers and sailors that their phone and email communications were being monitored.”

In no time at all, the deaths were reinvented as acts of “asymmetrical warfare,” and the whole sordid cover-up began in earnest.

Sgt. Hickman has no reason to lie. He joined the US military in 1983, at the age of 19, as a Marine, and spent time in military intelligence. Later, as a civilian, he worked as a private investigator, but after the 9/11 attacks, he re-enlisted in the Army National Guard and was deployed to Guantánamo in March 2006, where he “was selected as Guantánamo’s ‘NCO of the Quarter’ and was given a commendation medal.” When his tour of duty ended in March 2007 and he returned to the US, he was “promoted to staff sergeant and worked in Maryland as an Army recruiter.”

However, as he explained to Scott Horton, “he could not forget what he had seen at Guantánamo. When Barack Obama became president, [he] decided to act. ‘I thought that with a new administration and new ideas I could actually come forward,’ he said. ‘It was haunting me.’” And as he told me a few months ago, he felt “physically sick” after holding onto his story for three years.

Unfortunately, as I mentioned at the start of this article, some stories are so disturbing that no one in authority wants to go near them, and this is clearly the case with the deaths of Salah Ahmed al-Salami, Mani Shaman al-Utaybi and Yasser Talal al-Zahrani. Although the Harper’s article received widespread coverage around the world, it was almost entirely ignored by the mainstream media in the US, with the New York Times and the Washington Post content to run an Associated Press story, without following up on it, and only Keith Olbermann of MSNBC covering the story on TV.

Part of the problem is that, although a Justice Department investigation was launched after Sgt. Hickman approached Mark Denbeaux and his son Josh last February, and the Denbeauxs took the case to the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, an initial flurry of interest rapidly waned, and Teresa McHenry, the head of the Criminal Division’s Domestic Security Section, who took charge of the investigation, notified Mark Denbeaux on November 2, 2009 that the investigation was being closed. Scott Horton described Denbeaux’s reaction as follows:

“It was a strange conversation,” Denbeaux recalled. McHenry explained that “the gist of Sergeant Hickman’s information could not be confirmed.” But when Denbeaux asked what that “gist” actually was, McHenry declined to say. She just reiterated that Hickman’s conclusions “appeared” to be unsupported. Denbeaux asked what conclusions exactly were unsupported. McHenry refused to say.

As Horton also noted, McHenry “ha[d] firsthand knowledge of the Justice Department’s role in auditing such techniques, having served at the Justice Department under Bush and having participated in the preparation of” at least one of a number of memoranda “approving and setting the conditions for the use of torture techniques” — commonly known as the “torture memos” — which “CIA agents and others could use to defend themselves against any subsequent criminal prosecution.”

Today, as we pause to remember the three men who died at Guantánamo four years ago, we should also reflect that, as with the two other supposed suicides at Guantánamo — of Abdul Rahman al-Amri, a Saudi, on May 30, 2007, and of Mohammed al-Hanashi, a Yemeni, on June 1, 2009 — nothing resembling an adequate explanation has yet been provided for their deaths, and Sgt. Joe Hickman, the man who has done the most to try to expose the truth about the deaths in June 2006, has apparently put his career on the line for nothing, sidelined for doing what was right. “Under the Constitution I swore to defend, we don’t do this,” he told me when we spoke a few months ago.

Why an independent inquiry is needed – and a call for Shaker Aamer to be released

Calls for a full investigation into all the deaths at Guantánamo may come to nothing, but they must be made, or we will demonstrate to those who hold the reins of accountability that the darker the allegations, the easier they are to hide.

In addition, the fallout from that horrendous night in Guantánamo is still affecting one other man, who was brutally tortured that same evening, but who, unlike Salah Ahmed al-Salami, Mani Shaman al-Utaybi and Yasser Talal al-Zahrani, did not die.

That man is Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo, who is still held, despite being cleared for release by a military review board in 2007. A passionate and fearless defender of the rights of the prisoners — also like the men who died — he may still be held because of what he knows.

Describing what happened to him — which involved choking, and the kind of violent punishment for dissent that Tarek Dergoul identified in the cases of Mani Shaman al-Utaybi and Yasser Talal al-Zahrani — Shaker Aamer provided a statement to one of his lawyers, which was later filed as an affidavit with the District Court in Washington D.C.:

On June 9th, 2006, [Shaker Aamer] was beaten for two and a half hours straight. Seven naval military police participated in his beating. Mr. Aamer stated he had refused to provide a retina scan and fingerprints. He reported to me that he was strapped to a chair, fully restrained at the head, arms and legs. The MPs inflicted so much pain, Mr. Aamer said he thought he was going to die. The MPs pressed on pressure points all over his body: his temples, just under his jawline, in the hollow beneath his ears. They choked him. They bent his nose repeatedly so hard to the side he thought it would break. They pinched his thighs and feet constantly. They gouged his eyes. They held his eyes open and shined a mag-lite in them for minutes on end, generating intense heat. They bent his fingers until he screamed. When he screamed, they cut off his airway, then put a mask on him so he could not cry out.

Note: To take action for Shaker Aamer, please feel free to cut and paste a letter to foreign secretary William Hague, available here, asking him to do all in his power to secure his return from Guantánamo to the UK, to be reunited with his family.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook 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, currently on tour in the UK, and available on DVD here), and my definitive Guantánamo habeas list, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

As published exclusively on Cageprisoners. Cross-posted on Common Dreams, Global Research, Eurasia Review, The World Can’t Wait, Uruknet, The Public Record and Later On (Leisure Guy).

For a sequence of articles dealing with the hunger strikes and deaths at Guantánamo, see Suicide at Guantánamo: the story of Abdul Rahman al-Amri (May 2007), Suicide at Guantánamo: a response to the US military’s allegations that Abdul Rahman al-Amri was a member of al-Qaeda (May 2007), Shaker Aamer, A South London Man in Guantánamo: The Children Speak (July 2007), Guantánamo: al-Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Haj fears that he will die (September 2007), The long suffering of Mohammed al-Amin, a Mauritanian teenager sent home from Guantánamo (October 2007), Guantánamo suicides: so who’s telling the truth? (October 2007), Innocents and Foot Soldiers: The Stories of the 14 Saudis Just Released From Guantánamo (Yousef al-Shehri and Murtadha Makram) (November 2007), A letter from Guantánamo (by Al-Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Haj) (January 2008), A Chinese Muslim’s desperate plea from Guantánamo (March 2008), Sami al-Haj: the banned torture pictures of a journalist in Guantánamo (April 2008), The forgotten anniversary of a Guantánamo suicide (May 2008), Binyam Mohamed embarks on hunger strike to protest Guantánamo charges (June 2008), Second anniversary of triple suicide at Guantánamo (June 2008), Guantánamo Suicide Report: Truth or Travesty? (August 2008), The Pentagon Can’t Count: 22 Juveniles Held at Guantánamo (November 2008), Seven Years Of Guantánamo, And A Call For Justice At Bagram (January 2009), British torture victim Binyam Mohamed to be released from Guantánamo (January 2009), Don’t Forget Guantánamo (February 2009), Who’s Running Guantánamo? (February 2009), Obama’s “Humane” Guantánamo Is A Bitter Joke (February 2009), Forgotten in Guantánamo: British resident Shaker Aamer (March 2009), Guantánamo’s Long-Term Hunger Striker Should Be Sent Home (March 2009), Guantánamo, Bagram and the “Dark Prison”: Binyam Mohamed talks to Moazzam Begg (March 2009), Forgotten: The Second Anniversary Of A Guantánamo Suicide (May 2009), Yemeni Prisoner Muhammad Salih Dies At Guantánamo (June 2009), Death At Guantánamo Hovers Over Obama’s Middle East Visit (June 2009), Guantánamo’s Hidden History: Shocking Statistics of Starvation (June 2009), Binyam Mohamed: Was Muhammad Salih’s Death In Guantánamo Suicide? (June 2009), Torture In Guantánamo: The Force-feeding Of Hunger Strikers (for ACLU, June 2009), Murders at Guantánamo: Scott Horton of Harper’s Exposes the Truth about the 2006 “Suicides” (January 2010), Torture in Afghanistan and Guantánamo: Shaker Aamer’s Lawyers Speak (February 2010), The Third Anniversary of a Death in Guantánamo (May 2010), Omar Deghayes and Terry Holdbrooks Discuss Guantánamo (Part Three): Deaths at the Prison (June 2010), Suicide or Murder at Guantánamo? (1st anniversary of Mohammed al-Hanashi’s death, June 2010).

Also see the following online chapters of The Guantánamo Files: Website Extras 2 (Ahmed Kuman, Mohammed Haidel), Website Extras 3 (Abdullah al-Yafi, Abdul Rahman Shalabi), Website Extras 4 (Bakri al-Samiri, Murtadha Makram), Website Extras 5 (Ali Mohsen Salih, Ali Yahya al-Raimi, Abu Bakr Alahdal, Tarek Baada, Abdul al-Razzaq Salih).

17 Responses

  1. The Gitmo “Suicides” – The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan « Firesaw says...

    […] 11, 2010 · Leave a Comment Four years later, Andy Worthington compiles a useful primer on the mounting evidence that they were not suicides at all. via […]

  2. Bagram: Gitmo 2.0? | The Country Estate says...

    […] even more frightening when you consider Guantanamo expert Andy Worthington’s piece today [Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan] about suicides at Gitmo maybe really having been deaths from torture. My […]

  3. The Death Of Three Detainees « Around The Sphere says...

    […] #11:Andy Worthington Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)Four US soldiers cast doubt on Gitmo […]

  4. Murders at Guantánamo: The Cover-Up Continues « Later On says...

    […] he continues to protect the murderers and torturers in his administration. Andy Worthington has a long post on the topic: Sometimes the truth is so sickening that no one in a position of authority — senior […]

  5. Leisureguy says...

    Thank you for this report. President Obama deliberate decision not to seek justice nor to obey the requirements of the Convention Against Torture puts him in the docket as well. He’s certainly guilty of being an accessory after the fact, and his position that he “will look to the future, not the past” is undercut his vengeful and heavy handed prosecution of whistleblowers who expose government scandals that he obviously would rather be secret. I think this qualifies as another. “Transparency” applies only in certain restricted areas, where it does no harm. When laws are broken, Obama’s rule is to cover it up.

    I wish the US had an intelligent, aggressive, and skeptical press corps instead of the weak and pathetic sycophants who cavort with the politicians they are supposed to cover.

  6. Joan says...

    This doesn’t surprise me at all given the behavior of Bush and his fearmongering and secrecy, and the fact Obama has broken quite a few promises to begin with. So it’s no surprise that since secret prisons are still in operation that something like this happened. And of course Obama is still allowing telecoms freedom from prosecution for wiretapping.

  7. Leisureguy says...

    Oops: corrections to the above:

    “President Obama’s deliberate decision…”

    “… is undercut by his vengeful…”

    “I think this [prosecution of whistleblowers] qualifies as another [effort to enable coverups].

    Sorry. Overcome by righteous indignation.

  8. Frances Madeson says...

    Transparency isn’t of much value if no one much bothers to look, or if when they do there’s little understanding of what’s before them. Or worse, if when even horrific images like the ones in the Wikileaks-released video Collateral Murder are disseminated they are immediately enfolded and massaged into brains already preconditioned by old and new media violence housed in the skulls of numbed-out spectators who perceive the murder victims as at best the “other” and worst extras in a video-game fantasy (one like Manhunt, for instance).

    That’s why the kind of analysis Andy provides–history, policy, context, with the names, bios and faces of not only the victims but also the perpetrators–is invaluable. Priceless.

    I fervently hope Julian Assange is a step or two ahead of them, ensconced somewhere safe for the duration, and further that Bernard Manning does not become the 182nd of what used to be called enemy combatants dumped in the pit of Guantanamo to be warehoused indefinitely, and down the road opportunely suicided.

    Given the above post, of course I felt sick to my toes that the Defense Department has asked Mr. Assange for his “cooperation.” If only one line of my book is ever read and absorbed, let it be the last:

    “We Will Not Cooperate.”

  9. The Answer? Grab a Ladder Smartass « The Vigilant Lens says...

    […] at Guantánamo are covered up by everyone from Colonel Mike Bumgarner to the entire Bush and Obama Administrations…yet we […]

  10. The Gitmo “Suicides” says...

    […] years later, Andy Worthington compiles a useful primer on the mounting evidence that they were not suicides at […]

  11. The Talents of Our Prisoners says...

    […] […]

  12. More Evidence of Medical Experimentation at Guantánamo « Dandelion Salad says...

    […] files for detainee 693 [Salah al-Salami], released by the Defense Department in connection with his alleged suicide at the prison facility in June 2006, contradict Shimkus’s assertions. Those records show that two […]

  13. More Evidence of Medical Experimentation at Guantánamo « Eurasia Review says...

    […] files for detainee 693 [Salah al-Salami], released by the Defense Department in connection with his alleged suicide at the prison facility in June 2006, contradict Shimkus’s assertions. Those records show that two […]

  14. Guantánamo Prisoner Dies After Being Held for Nine Years Without Charge or Trial | The Muslim Justice Initiative says...

    […] the six other deaths at Guantánamo — the three heavily disputed deaths in June 2006, which appear to have involved a secret torture team operating in a secret facility […]

  15. Activist Post: “Families say Guantanamo ‘suicides’ were killings” « Sheep Pee! says...

    […] place five years ago by former prisoners who knew the men, as I reported in an article last year, Murders at Guantánamo: The Cover-Up Continues, and the official story was challenged in the most spectacular manner last January, when law […]

  16. WikiLeaks And The 22 Children Of Guantanamo says...

    […] as Scott Horton reported last year forHarper’s Magazine (and see my report and updates here, here […]

  17. 'Ten Hours For Ten Years': Demonstration For Shaker Aamer, Last British Prisoner In Guantánamo - OpEd says...

    […] to the UK. Shaker’s health has suffered from the long years of physical and mental abuse both in Guantánamo and in […]

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Andy Worthington

Investigative journalist, author, campaigner, commentator and public speaker. Recognized as an authority on Guantánamo and the “war on terror.” Co-founder, Close Guantánamo and We Stand With Shaker. Also, photo-journalist (The State of London), and singer and songwriter (The Four Fathers).
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