Andy Worthington is Keynote Speaker on Guantánamo at Amnesty International South East Regional Conference, Woking, January 22, 2011

On Saturday January 22, Amnesty International UK is holding its South East Regional Conference at The Vyne Centre, Broadway, Knaphill, Woking, GU21 2SP, from 10.30 am to 4.30 pm (map here). Entrance is free with a contribution requested towards lunch and refreshments, and the event opens for registration and coffee at 10 am.

I’ve been invited along as the keynote speaker, following my appearances at two Amnesty events in December at the Human Rights Action Centre in London — the Amnesty International Student Conference on November 13 (where, with Gareth Peirce, I spoke about Guantánamo and the need for action to secure the release of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison (and the subject of an ongoing Amnesty International campaign in the UK and the US), and “The Rights Time,” a regional conference on December 4, where I delivered a presentation entitled, “Nine Years of Guantánamo: What Now?”

On Saturday, I’ll be stressing the need to continue campaigning for Shaker Aamer, whose continued detention is inexplicable, given that, in November, he was included in a financial settlement reached by the British government with 15 former Guantánamo prisoners, and his presence is needed in the UK to conclude this settlement, to enable the Metropolitan Police to conclude an investigation into his claims that British agents were present in the room when he was tortured in US custody in Afghanistan, and to enable Prime Minister David Cameron to proceed with his planned judicial inquiry into British complicity in torture abroad.

I will also be discussing the distressing inertia on the part of the Obama administration regarding the closure of Guantánamo, and the fair and just treatment of the 173 men still held, as discussed in my recent articles, Guantánamo Forever? and The Political Prisoners of Guantánamo, in which I explained how 89 men cleared for release are still being held indefinitely, 33 others recommended for trials are not being charged or tried, and 48 others are deliberately being held indefinitely without charge or trial, even though this is exactly what the Bush administration established in the first place, when it turned its back on domestic and international laws and treaties in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

Also speaking will be Linda Ramsden from the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, and there will also be workshops on Communities at Risk, Amnesty at 50 and Marvelous Meetings.

For further information, please email Lizann Peppard.

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 July 2010, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here), my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.