WikiLeaks Reveals Secret Guantánamo Files, Exposes Detention Policy as a Construct of Lies
25.4.11
Well, the cat is now out of the bag, and Guantánamo will, hopefully, be closer to closure — and the lies that powerful Americans tell about it will, hopefully, be closer to silence — as a result. For the last few weeks, I’ve been working as a media partner with WikiLeaks, along with the Washington Post, McClatchy Newspapers, El Pais, the Daily Telegraph, Der Spiegel, Le Monde, Aftonbladet, La Repubblica and L’Espresso, navigating thousands of previously unseen documents about Guantánamo that were made available to the whistleblowing website last year, allegedly by Pfc Bradley Manning, who has been imprisoned for nearly a year by the US government, awaiting a trial.
With the release date of the project brought forward unexpectedly, the files — profiles of nearly all of the 779 prisoners who have been held at Guantánamo, compiled by the Joint Task Force responsible for running the prison and known as Detainee Assessment Briefs (DABs) — have begun to be made available on WikiLeaks’ website, accompanied by an article that I wrote introducing them, and offering a first attempt to indicate their importance — both in what they hide and what they reveal — along with a guide to how to read them.
Needless to say, there will be much more analysis in the days and weeks to come, but for now I hope you enjoy my explanation, cross-posted below, which is borne of five years of research and writing about Guantánamo, filtered through a careful analysis of JTF-GTMO’s compromised and compromising cache of documents, which, as I explain, constitutes “the anatomy of a colossal crime perpetrated by the US government on 779 prisoners who, for the most part, are not and never have been the terrorists the government would like us to believe they are.”
WikiLeaks Reveals Secret Files on All Guantánamo Prisoners
By Andy Worthington, WikiLeaks, April 24, 2011
In its latest release of classified US documents, WikiLeaks is shining the light of truth on a notorious icon of the Bush administration’s “War on Terror” — the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, which opened on January 11, 2002, and remains open under President Obama, despite his promise to close the much-criticized facility within a year of taking office.
In thousands of pages of documents dating from 2002 to 2008 and never seen before by members of the public or the media, the cases of the majority of the prisoners held at Guantánamo — 765 out of 779 in total — are described in detail in memoranda from JTF-GTMO, the Joint Task Force at Guantánamo Bay, to US Southern Command in Miami, Florida, known as Detainee Assessment Briefs (DABs).
These memoranda, which contain JTF-GTMO’s recommendations about whether the prisoners in question should continue to be held, or should be released (transferred to their home governments, or to other governments) contain a wealth of important and previously undisclosed information, including health assessments, for example, and, in the cases of the majority of the 172 prisoners who are still held, photos (mostly for the first time ever).
They also include information on the first 201 prisoners released from the prison, between 2002 and 2004, which, unlike information on the rest of the prisoners (summaries of evidence and tribunal transcripts, released as the result of a lawsuit filed by media groups in 2006), has never been made public before. Most of these documents reveal accounts of incompetence familiar to those who have studied Guantánamo closely, with innocent men detained by mistake (or because the US was offering substantial bounties to its allies for al-Qaeda or Taliban suspects), and numerous insignificant Taliban conscripts from Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Beyond these previously unknown cases, the documents also reveal stories of the 399 other prisoners released from September 2004 to the present day, and of the seven men who have died at the prison.
The memos are signed by the commander of Guantánamo at the time, and describe whether the prisoners in question are regarded as low, medium or high risk. Although they were obviously not conclusive in and of themselves, as final decisions about the disposition of prisoners were taken at a higher level, they represent not only the opinions of JTF-GTMO, but also the Criminal Investigation Task Force, created by the Department of Defense to conduct interrogations in the “War on Terror,” and the BSCTs, the behavioral science teams consisting of psychologists who had a major say in the “exploitation” of prisoners in interrogation.
Crucially, the files also contain detailed explanations of the supposed intelligence used to justify the prisoners’ detention. For many readers, these will be the most fascinating sections of the documents, as they seem to offer an extraordinary insight into the workings of US intelligence, but although many of the documents appear to promise proof of prisoners’ association with al-Qaeda or other terrorist organizations, extreme caution is required.
The documents draw on the testimony of witnesses — in most cases, the prisoners’ fellow prisoners — whose words are unreliable, either because they were subjected to torture or other forms of coercion (sometimes not in Guantánamo, but in secret prisons run by the CIA), or because they provided false statements to secure better treatment in Guantánamo.
Regular appearances throughout these documents by witnesses whose words should be regarded as untrustworthy include the following “high-value detainees” or “ghost prisoners.” Please note that “ISN” and the numbers in brackets following the prisoners’ names refer to the short “Internment Serial Numbers” by which the prisoners are identified in US custody:
Abu Zubaydah (ISN 10016), the supposed “high-value detainee” seized in Pakistan in March 2002, who spent four and a half years in secret CIA prisons, including facilities in Thailand and Poland. Subjected to waterboarding, a form of controlled drowning, on 83 occasions in CIA custody in August 2002, Abu Zubaydah was moved to Guantánamo with 13 other “high-value detainees” in September 2006.
Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi (ISN 212), the emir of a military training camp for which Abu Zubaydah was the gatekeeper, who, despite having his camp closed by the Taliban in 2000, because he refused to allow it to be taken over by al-Qaeda, is described in these documents as Osama bin Laden’s military commander in Tora Bora. Soon after his capture in December 2001, al-Libi was rendered by the CIA to Egypt, where, under torture, he falsely confessed that al-Qaeda operatives had been meeting with Saddam Hussein to discuss obtaining chemical and biological weapons. Al-Libi recanted this particular lie, but it was nevertheless used by the Bush administration to justify the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Al-Libi was never sent to Guantánamo, although at some point, probably in 2006, the CIA sent him back to Libya, where he was imprisoned, and where he died, allegedly by committing suicide, in May 2009.
Sharqawi Abdu Ali al-Hajj (ISN 1457), a Yemeni, also known as Riyadh the Facilitator, who was seized in a house raid in Pakistan in February 2002, and is described as “an al-Qaeda facilitator.” After his capture, he was transferred to a torture prison in Jordan run on behalf of the CIA, where he was held for nearly two years, and was then held for six months in US facilities in Afghanistan. He was flown to Guantánamo in September 2004.
Sanad Yislam al-Kazimi (ISN 1453), a Yemeni, who was seized in the UAE in January 2003, and then held in three secret prisons, including the “Dark Prison” near Kabul and a secret facility within the US prison at Bagram airbase. In February 2010, in the District Court in Washington D.C., Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. granted the habeas corpus petition of a Yemeni prisoner, Uthman Abdul Rahim Mohammed Uthman, largely because he refused to accept testimony produced by either Sharqawi al-Hajj or Sanad al-Kazimi. As he stated, “The Court will not rely on the statements of Hajj or Kazimi becasue there is unrebutted evidence in the record that, at the time of the interrogations at which they made the statements, both men had recently been tortured.”
Others include Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani (ISN 10012) and Walid bin Attash (ISN 10014), two more of the “high-value detainees” transferred into Guantánamo in September 2006, after being held in secret CIA prisons.
Other unreliable witnesses, held at Guantánamo throughout their detention, include:
Yasim Basardah (ISN 252), a Yemeni known as a notorious liar. As the Washington Post reported in February 2009, he was given preferential treatment in Guantánamo after becoming what some officials regarded as a significant informant, although there were many reasons to be doubtful. As the Post noted, “military officials … expressed reservations about the credibility of their star witness since 2004,” and in 2006, in an article for the National Journal, Corine Hegland described how, after a Combatant Status Review Tribunal at which a prisoner had taken exception to information provided by Basardah, placing him at a training camp before he had even arrived in Afghanistan, his personal representative (a military official assigned instead of a lawyer) investigated Basardah’s file, and found that he had made similar claims against 60 other prisoners. In January 2009, in the District Court in Washington D.C., Judge Richard Leon (an appointee of George W. Bush) excluded Basardah’s statements while granting the habeas corpus petition of Mohammed El-Gharani, a Chadian national who was just 14 years old when he was seized in a raid on a mosque in Pakistan. Judge Leon noted that the government had “specifically cautioned against relying on his statements without independent corroboration,” and in other habeas cases that followed, other judges relied on this precedent, discrediting the “star witness” stlll further.
Mohammed al-Qahtani (ISN 063), a Saudi regarded as the planned 20th hijacker for the 9/11 attacks, was subjected to a specific torture program at Guantánamo, approved by defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld. This consisted of 20-hour interrogations every day, over a period of several months, and various other “enhanced interrogation techniques,” which severely endangered his health. Variations of these techniques then migrated to other prisoners in Guantánamo (and to Abu Ghraib), and in January 2009, just before George W. Bush left office, Susan Crawford, a retired judge and a close friend of Dick Cheney and David Addington, who was appointed to oversee the military commissions at Guantánamo as the convening authority, told Bob Woodward that she had refused to press charges against al-Qahtani, because, as she said, “We tortured Qahtani. His treatment met the legal definition of torture.” As a result, his numerous statements about other prisoners must be regarded as worthless.
Abd al-Hakim Bukhari (ISN 493), a Saudi imprisoned by al-Qaeda as a spy, who was liberated by US forces from a Taliban jail before being sent, inexplicably, to Guantánamo (along with four other men liberated from the jail) is regarded in the files as a member of al-Qaeda, and a trustworthy witness.
Abd al-Rahim Janko (ISN 489), a Syrian Kurd, tortured by al-Qaeda as a spy and then imprisoned by the Taliban along with Abd al-Hakim Bukhari, above, is also used as a witness, even though he was mentally unstable. As his assessment in June 2008 stated, “Detainee is on a list of high-risk detainees from a health perspective … He has several chronic medical problems. He has a psychiatric history of substance abuse, depression, borderline personality disorder, and prior suicide attempt for which he is followed by behavioral health for treatment.”
These are just some of the most obvious cases, but alert readers will notice that they are cited repeatedly in what purports to be the government’s evidence, and it should, as a result, be difficult not to conclude that the entire edifice constructed by the government is fundamentally unsound, and that what the Guantánamo Files reveal, primarily, is that only a few dozen prisoners are genuinely accused of involvement in terrorism.
The rest, these documents reveal on close inspection, were either innocent men and boys, seized by mistake, or Taliban foot soldiers, unconnected to terrorism. Moreover, many of these prisoners were actually sold to US forces, who were offering bounty payments for al-Qaeda and Taliban suspects, by their Afghan and Pakistani allies — a policy that led ex-President Musharraf to state, in his 2006 memoir, In the Line of Fire, that, in return for handing over 369 terror suspects to the US, the Pakistani government “earned bounty payments totaling millions of dollars.”
Uncomfortable facts like these are not revealed in the deliberations of the Joint Task Force, but they are crucial to understanding why what can appear to be a collection of documents confirming the government’s scaremongering rhetoric about Guantánamo — the same rhetoric that has paralyzed President Obama, and revived the politics of fear in Congress — is actually the opposite: the anatomy of a colossal crime perpetrated by the US government on 779 prisoners who, for the most part, are not and never have been the terrorists the government would like us to believe they are.
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, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). 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, on tour in the UK throughout 2011, and available on DVD here — or here for the US), 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.
Who's still at Guantánamo?
70 Responses
Jeffrey Kaye says...
Great work, Andy. I’m sorry the story got broken early, and the New York Times with their lousy coverage. Though I imagine Wikileaks is angry at the Guardian, too, their coverage seems pretty good.
My first take on the material has taken off on the work Jason and I have done on the totality of the “exploitation” program at Guantanamo, and can be viewed here:
http://www.truthout.org/guantanamo-detainee-reports-hint-psychological-research/1303743823
I look forward to reading more of your analysis. Best, Jeff
...on April 25th, 2011 at 9:34 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks, Jeff. I saw that you’d got in there already with an article. Great work — although I still don’t know how you do it. Do you have a clone?
...on April 25th, 2011 at 9:53 pm
Andy Worthington says...
On Facebook, Ann Alexander wrote:
I thought of you when I heard this news last night, Andy. I knew it would be keeping you busy. Hope you’re recovering.
...on April 25th, 2011 at 9:55 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Emma Allan wrote:
shared
...on April 25th, 2011 at 9:56 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Amir Khan wrote:
Thank you Andyworth! Dad has been asking about you and wishes you well…..
Shared.
...on April 25th, 2011 at 9:56 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Ciudadano Kane Kane wrote:
I also thought of you, Andy!…it looks like you might be closing this topic soon!, hope so!
...on April 25th, 2011 at 9:56 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Ann Alexander wrote:
So you have been involved with Wikileaks going through these documents. Gosh Andy. I’m glad to know that they had the good sense to ask the expert. I wonder what you thought when you trawled through this. Vindication surely must have been part of it. Also despair that it has taken so long to be revealed.
...on April 25th, 2011 at 9:57 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Carol Anne Grayson wrote:
Thanks Andy for all you have done for years to highlight injustice… I too thought that Andy will be snowed under with these latest releases…but if anyone can dissect and analyse this information you can.. I empathise having gone through thousands of blood documents in the past spanning 30 years… it can be overwhelming…
...on April 25th, 2011 at 9:57 pm
Andy Worthington says...
George Kenneth Berger wrote:
Extraordinary Andy. Good work. I’m sharing and Digging now.
...on April 25th, 2011 at 9:58 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Deborah Emin wrote:
Excellent Andy. The hospital must have been a great place to do your work from. You never fail to impress with your wonderful work. Let’s close the damn place already. Put up a sign that says “never again.”
...on April 25th, 2011 at 9:58 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Terry Sully wrote:
work pays off!! glad the truth is revealed
...on April 25th, 2011 at 9:59 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Berkeley Copwatch wrote:
rad
...on April 25th, 2011 at 9:59 pm
Andy Worthington says...
David Barrett wrote:
Good stuff, Andy. Glad you’re involved in this analysis.
...on April 25th, 2011 at 10:00 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Ghaliyaa Haq wrote:
Andy – you never, ever fail to AMAZE at how quickly you get these out! You are like a writing machine!! GREAT JOB!
...on April 25th, 2011 at 10:06 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks, my friends, for the support. This has been an extremely intense 24 hours. I had about two hours’ sleep, and have been on the go all day — with three radio interviews, one TV appearance, a conference call, and endless phone calls. I’m trying to complete what needs to be done today before collapsing!
Fortunately, my foot is now so close to being well (even if normal toes don’t have dried black skin on them!) that I was able to move about freely for the first time for at least two months today — walking, cycling and without any bandages whatsoever!
...on April 25th, 2011 at 10:07 pm
Andy Worthington says...
George Kenneth Berger wrote:
Good to hear that you are pretty well recovered, Andy. I too have asked myself how you manage to keep going so intensely and quickly. And now more so than ever.
...on April 25th, 2011 at 11:26 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Ghaliyaa Haq wrote:
Wow!! Good going, Andy – but please take care of yourself! You are way too valuable – and too good a person – no one wants to see you ill.. 🙂 I’m praying for ya! I hope you can get some rest soon! I need to email you about something – which is better, here, or email? I will wait until you rest though. 🙂
...on April 25th, 2011 at 11:26 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Willy Bach wrote:
Thanks again Andy. Re-posting!
...on April 25th, 2011 at 11:27 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Allie Mcneil wrote:
thank you for this, reposting/sharing…grateful that you have covered this so long and so well
...on April 25th, 2011 at 11:27 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Iman El-Maghribi wrote:
great job!
...on April 25th, 2011 at 11:28 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Lisa Barr wrote:
great job. sharing.
reads like a stieg larsson novel in some parts. is this the stuff npr and the ny times refused to touch?
...on April 25th, 2011 at 11:29 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks again, my friends, for the latest wave of supportive words. They are very much appreciated!
Ghaliyaa, next week might work — either here or by email, and Lisa, this is the material that was leaked to the New York Times, the Guardian and NPR, hence the rush release of documents on Sunday night.
...on April 25th, 2011 at 11:32 pm
Guantánamo leaks links « zunguzungu says...
[…] Andy Worthington’s list of untrustworthy witnesses […]
...on April 25th, 2011 at 11:43 pm
WikiLeaks Reveals Secret Guantánamo Files, Exposes Detention Policy as a Construct of Lies « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] Andy Worthington Featured Writer Dandelion Salad http://www.andyworthington.co.uk 25 April, 2011 Image by Truthout.org via […]
...on April 25th, 2011 at 11:48 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Lance Ciepiela wrote:
Bush Jr remains unaccountable to the law even though serious violations of laws are a matter of public record..read more
http://tinyurl.com/6yhg2lp
...on April 26th, 2011 at 11:29 am
Andy Worthington says...
Mui J. Steph wrote:
What I’ve read so far, including a few of the pdfs, makes me think the government had no interest in learning the truth. They rely on torture, forced confessions, Chinese mainland propaganda and known liars for “evidence.” I can’t believe they’re that stupid. I can’t help but think our government has done a con job. First bounty, numbers important, quotas, fill prisons, then establish reasons for holding. Make plenty of justifications like using creepy compromisd psychologists to establish a “psychological profile” that will justify the decisions they have already made from the very start.
...on April 26th, 2011 at 11:29 am
Andy Worthington says...
Mui J. Steph wrote:
“Psychological constructs” from compromised creepy shrinks:
http://truthout.org/guantanamo-detainee-reports-hint-psychological-research/1303743823
...on April 26th, 2011 at 11:29 am
Andy Worthington says...
Lisa Barr wrote:
and they ignored it, right?
...on April 26th, 2011 at 11:30 am
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks, Mui. Great analysis.
Lisa, I’m not sure what you’re getting at. Sorry. The New York Times, the Guardian and NPR all got hold of the documents from another source and rushed articles out on Sunday evening. I’m not sure they’ve ignored anything in particular — although the Times’ coverage has left a lot to be desired — but they did start a kind of unprincipled race to get information out there. For the record, the Telegraph, one of WikiLeaks’ media partners, got the first story out after a tip-off about the leak, at 1 am on Monday morning.
...on April 26th, 2011 at 11:36 am
Andy Worthington says...
Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin wrote:
One, two, a million WikiLeaks, exposing all the govt’s and corporate crimes.
...on April 26th, 2011 at 11:37 am
Andy Worthington says...
Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin wrote:
Andy, just keep putting stuff out, don’t be dissuaded by anybody or anything. It’s matter of life and death to expose gov’t and corporate wrongdoing, crimes, and subversion of the masses of people.
...on April 26th, 2011 at 12:41 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Tamzin Jans wrote:
Andy, you’ve been reporting the same since a long time and now it is a little more public, but do you think this will finally bring Guantanamo to a closure? Obama and many leaders knew what was going on, but they still imprisoned Bradley Manning, even after knowing the truth about Guantanamo. How does one put an end to all this injustice?
...on April 26th, 2011 at 12:42 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks, Lorenzo, for the great encouragement.
And Tamsin, the administration will change if there’s enough external pressure. Personally, I think it’s time for the international community — including the UN — to start complaining loudly, as they did back in 2005 and 2006 in particular.
...on April 26th, 2011 at 1:00 pm
CommonDreams.org | The Hidden Horrors of WikiLeaks’ Guantánamo Files | Anti-War Committee says...
[…] an illusion is all it is. On close inspection, the files are full of lies and distortions, with certain figures appearing over and over again. They include “high-value detainees” like Abu Zubaydah, waterboarded 83 times and held for […]
...on April 27th, 2011 at 1:21 pm
The Hidden Horrors of WikiLeaks’ Guantánamo Files | Common Dreams « 2012 Indy Info says...
[…] an illusion is all it is. On close inspection, the files are full of lies and distortions, with certain figures appearing over and over again. They include “high-value detainees” like Abu Zubaydah,waterboarded 83 times and held for […]
...on April 27th, 2011 at 9:36 pm
Andy Worthington « Antiwar Radio with Scott Horton and Charles Goyette says...
[…] discusses the WikiLeaks Guantanamo documents that provide a window into the inner workings of US detention policy; unreliable witnesses who gave evidence against a great many innocent prisoners; the lack of a […]
...on April 29th, 2011 at 7:34 am
Andy Worthington | ANOMALY RADIO says...
[…] discusses the WikiLeaks Guantanamo documents that provide a window into the inner workings of US detention policy; unreliable witnesses who gave evidence against a great many innocent prisoners; the lack of a […]
...on April 29th, 2011 at 1:17 pm
USA: Und jetzt… Guantanamo? « Ticker says...
[…] developed (leading to his torture by waterboarding on 83 occasions in August 2002), and other notorious informants who, in exchange for preferential treatment, told lies about their fellow […]
...on May 5th, 2011 at 3:46 pm
The Unjustifiable Defense of Torture and Gitmo by Andy Worthington « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] in 2007, at Guantánamo, by Abu Faraj al-Libi (as revealed in his Detainee Assessment Brief, released by Wikileaks last week). Even then, it took another two years until US officials were able to identify where […]
...on May 11th, 2011 at 10:11 am
Guantanamo: Jemeniten schon bis zu 7 Jahre eingekerkert « Ticker says...
[…] extracted through torture. And this, indeed, is what has become apparent in the DABs released by WikiLeaks, which have demonstrated that much of the government's supposed evidence – against […]
...on May 13th, 2011 at 10:45 am
No End to the “War on Terror,” No End to Guantánamo « Piazza della Carina says...
[…] as the recent release by WikiLeaks of classified military documents relating to the prisoners has shown, when, in fact, the prison has never held more than a few dozen prisoners genuinely accused of […]
...on May 14th, 2011 at 1:09 pm
No End To 'War On Terror,' No End To Guantánamo - OpEd says...
[…] “enemy combatants” and easily dressed up as terrorists, as the recent release by WikiLeaks of classified military documents relating to the prisoners has shown, when, in fact, the prison has never held more than a few dozen […]
...on May 15th, 2011 at 10:45 am
No End to the “War on Terror,” No End to Guantánamo | colareboenglish says...
[…] combatants” and easily dressed up as terrorists, as the recent release by WikiLeaks of classified military documents relating to the prisoners has shown, when, in fact, the prison has never held more than a few […]
...on May 17th, 2011 at 11:07 pm
WikiLeaks: The Unknown Prisoners Of Guantánamo - OpEd says...
[…] = 'wpp-256'; var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true};In WikiLeaks’ recent release of classified military documents relating to the majority of the 779 prisoners held at Guantánamo, one of the great publicity coups […]
...on May 18th, 2011 at 9:13 pm
FFF – Commentaries – No End to the “War on Terror,” No End to Guantánamo « Translations says...
[…] as the recent release by WikiLeaks of classified military documents relating to the prisoners has shown, when, in fact, the prison has never held more than a few dozen prisoners genuinely accused of […]
...on May 19th, 2011 at 12:13 am
Andy Worthington Discusses WikiLeaks and Guantánamo with Linda … » WeNewsIt says...
[…] Obama’s failure to close the prison as promised, and my role in helping WikiLeaks release classified military documents relating to the Guantánamo prisoners, with Linda Olson-Osterlund of KBOO FM in Portland, Oregon, […]
...on May 30th, 2011 at 1:53 am
Dr. M says...
Obama should have stuck to his guns and brought these prisoners to a maximum security prison in the U.S. All prosecutions in federal courts have been well done and many have been given their full civil rights and information to conduct a proper defense. I am surprised the U.S. Military hasn’t captured a few goats and sheep for some carnal fun and games.
...on June 4th, 2011 at 1:36 am
WikiLeaks: The Unknown Prisoners Of Guantánamo - OpEd says...
[…] = {"data_track_clickback":true};One of the great publicity coups in WikiLeaks’ recent release of classified military documents relating to the majority of the 779 prisoners held at Guantánamo, as I explained in the first part […]
...on June 10th, 2011 at 4:17 am
WikiLeaks and the 22 Children of Guantánamo by Andy Worthington « Dandelion Salad says...
[…] Children: The WikiLeaked Testimonies,” drawing on the recent release, by WikiLeaks, of classified military documents shedding new light on the prisoners, identifying 15 juveniles, and suggesting that six others, […]
...on June 11th, 2011 at 10:57 pm
WikiLeaks And The 22 Children Of Guantanamo says...
[…] Children: The WikiLeaked Testimonies,” drawing on the recent release, by WikiLeaks, of classified military documents shedding new light on the prisoners, identifying 15 juveniles, and suggesting that six others, born […]
...on June 22nd, 2011 at 6:17 am
Write to the Forgotten Prisoners in Guantánamo [Summer 2011 - July 24th Deadline] « aseerun says...
[…] Times‘ Guantánamo Docket, or WikiLeaks’ Guantánamo Files (the Detainee Assessment Briefs), released in April, which also contain previously unknown information about the prisoners that I am gradually […]
...on June 28th, 2011 at 10:16 am
The Unknown Prisoners of Guantanamo (Part One) | BerndPulch.org says...
[…] WikiLeaks’ recent release of classified military documents relating to the majority of the 779 prisoners held at Guantánamo, one of the great publicity coups […]
...on July 22nd, 2011 at 11:53 am
Life After Guantánamo: Kuwaitis Discuss Their Tortured Confessions - OpEd says...
[…] stories in depth, and including the information contained in the classified military assessments released by WikiLeaks in April. These demonstrate a shocking lack of intelligence when it came to rounding […]
...on November 2nd, 2011 at 12:09 am
The 22 Children of Guantanamo « Mercury Rising 鳯女 says...
[…] Children: The WikiLeaked Testimonies,” drawing on the recent release, by WikiLeaks, of classified military documents shedding new light on the prisoners, identifying 15 juveniles, and suggesting that six others, born […]
...on November 13th, 2011 at 2:02 am
The Guantánamo Files: An Archive of Articles — Part Eleven, October to December 2011 | Friction Facts says...
[…] comments from insiders with knowledge of Guantánamo, and, most recently, through an analysis of classified military documents released by WikiLeaks, that “at least 93 percent of the 779 men and boys imprisoned in total” […]
...on February 8th, 2012 at 3:20 pm
The Hidden Horrors of WikiLeaks’ Guantánamo Files | Amauta says...
[…] an illusion is all it is. On close inspection, the files are full of lies and distortions, with certain figures appearing over and over again. They include “high-value detainees” like Abu Zubaydah, waterboarded 83 times and held for four […]
...on April 13th, 2012 at 12:39 am
A Photo of Shaker Aamer After Eleven Years in Guantánamo – AlHittin.com says...
[…] since April 2011, when a photo of him was included in his classified military file, which was released by WikiLeaks. Hundreds of photos of the Guantánamo prisoners were included in the WikiLeaks files, and many […]
...on December 1st, 2012 at 8:28 am
[ACTION] Please Write to the Forgotten Prisoners in Guantánamo on the 11th Anniversary of the Opening of the Prison « freedetainees.org says...
[…] for substantial bounty payments by their Afghan and Pakistani allies. They did this through the extraction of false statements in which pliant prisoners — whether tortured or otherwise abused, or bribed or pushed until they […]
...on January 10th, 2013 at 5:56 am
The Porcupine - At Guantánamo, Another Bleak Ramadan for 87 Cleared Prisoners Who Are Still Held by Andy Worthington says...
[…] Here at “Close Guantánamo,” we are rigorously and implacably opposed to President Obama’s claim that it is acceptable to hold 46 men indefinitely without charge or trial, because it is fundamentally unjust to claim, as the administration does, that these 46 men represent a danger to the United States, even though there is insufficient evidence to put them on trial. What this means is that the so-called evidence is fatally tainted, produced through the use of torture, or other forms of coercion, and is therefore fundamentally unreliable. […]
...on February 22nd, 2013 at 11:09 am
Franklin Lamb: US Must End Gitmo Prison Horrors + A Huge Hunger Strike at Guantánamo | Dandelion Salad says...
[…] problematical, having been extracted through torture or other forms of abuse, and/or having been produced by deeply unreliable witnesses. The only concession to critics was Obama’s promise that there would be periodic reviews of the […]
...on March 17th, 2013 at 10:23 pm
WikiLeaks and Bradley Manning: Andy Worthington Speaks at a London Event with Chase Madar and Ben Griffin | SHOAH says...
[…] files relating to the Guantánamo prisoners, which were released in April 2011, and on which I worked as a media partner (see here for the first 34 parts of my 70-part, million-word series analyzing the Guantánamo […]
...on May 7th, 2013 at 8:27 am
freedetainees.org – Please Write to the Hunger Striking Prisoners at Guantánamo says...
[…] what this means is that the supposed evidence is no such thing, and is, instead, a collection of extremely unreliable statements made by the prisoners themselves, and, more particularly, their fellow prisoners, as well as other […]
...on August 9th, 2013 at 7:22 am
Antiwar Radio: Andy Worthington | The Scott Horton Show says...
[…] discusses the WikiLeaks Guantanamo documents that provide a window into the inner workings of US detention policy; unreliable witnesses who gave evidence against a great many innocent prisoners; the lack of a […]
...on August 20th, 2013 at 1:13 am
No War No Torture » Blog Archive » Ridah al-Yazid says...
[…] to a McClatchy copy of the leaked cable about him, and to Worthington’s remarks about those leaked documents. There are also on the Worthington site, a number of interviews and further reports on the […]
...on August 27th, 2015 at 6:26 pm
freedetainees.org – Two Yemenis Approved for Release from Guantánamo Via Periodic Review Boards As “Highly Compliant” Afghan and Another Yemeni Also Seek Release says...
[…] to spell out why — because, of course, not having enough evidence to try someone means that the information you hold is not evidence at all, but rumors, hunches and hearsay, from frontline interrogations made shortly after capture, when […]
...on January 27th, 2016 at 5:05 pm
Guantánamo, Torture and the Trump Agenda by Andy Worthington – Dandelion Salad says...
[…] the Close Guantánamo campaign, the We Stand With Shaker campaign, work with the United Nations and WikiLeaks and other organizations — all to end up, after eight disappointing years under President Obama, […]
...on February 7th, 2018 at 8:05 pm
Judge Orders Chelsea Manning’s Release From Jail for Not Cooperating With WikiLeaks Grand Jury, Supporters Raise $256,000 Fines « The Nuclear Resister says...
[…] bare the cruelty and incompetence of the authorities at Guantánamo, providing the names of the many unreliable witnesses, who, as a result of torture or other forms of abuse, or being bribed with better living […]
...on March 16th, 2020 at 11:25 pm
Nine Years Ago: Assange And WikiLeaks Released The Guantánamo Files, Which Should Have Led To Prison’s Closure – OpEd | NOQTA says...
[…] WikiLeaks began publishing these files nine years ago today, on April 25, 2011, introduced by an article I had written about their significance, “WikiLeaks Reveals Secret Files on All Guantánamo Prisoners,” posted on my own website that same day as WikiLeaks Reveals Secret Guantánamo Files, Exposes Detention Policy as a Construct of Lies. […]
...on April 27th, 2020 at 8:39 am
The Ongoing And Unjustifiable Persecution Of Julian Assange - PopularResistance.Org says...
[…] The Guantánamo revelations were contained in classified military files relating to almost all of the 779 men held at the prison by the uS military since it opened in January 2002, which, for the first time, explicitly revealed how profoundly unreliable the supposed evidence against the prisoners was, much of it having been made by prisoners who had made numerous false statements against their fellow prisoners. I worked with WikiLeaks as a media partner for the release of the Guantánamo files, and my summary of the files’ significance can be found in the article I wrote when they were first published entitled, WikiLeaks Reveals Secret Guantánamo Files, Exposes Detention Policy as a Construct of Lies. […]
...on September 10th, 2020 at 2:59 pm
Etats-Unis contre Julian Assange : Comptes-rendus des audiences - JOUR 17 (30 septembre 2020) - Libérons Assange says...
[…] En avril 2011, Worthington a écrit WikiLeaks Reveals Secret Guantánamo Files, Exposes Detention Policy as a Construct of Lies. […]
...on February 1st, 2024 at 4:56 pm