Archive for September, 2012

Note: This image was produced by Amnesty International as part of their letter-writing campaign for this December, featuring Adnan Latif (on the left), a Yemeni prisoner who died at Guantánamo last weekend, and Hussein Almerfedi, another Yemeni who, like Latif, won his habeas corpus petition, but then had it reversed by the malignant rightwing ideologues of the D.C. Circuit Court. Amnesty made the image available to Latif’s attorneys, so please feel free to circulate it widely.

The news cycle is such that we are all trapped like hamsters on a fast-moving wheel, and even when something terrible happens, the media tends to move on after a couple of days — even when that terrible event is the death of a man at Guantánamo who had mental health problems, who was cleared for release in 2006 by a military review board under George W. Bush, and in 2009 by Barack Obama’s interagency Guantánamo Review Task Force, and who had his habeas corpus petition granted by a federal judge in July 2010.

Instead of being released, Latif had his successful habeas petition thrown out by the D.C. Circuit Court last October, not on any factual basis, but because of the application of a twisted ideology, and in June this year the Supreme Court also failed him, refusing to get involved when he — and six others — appealed for them to restore justice to the habeas process. Read the rest of this entry »

Last month — although it now seems like an eternity ago, and a distant dream — I visited Italy for a two-week holiday, spending the first week in Rome and the second in Abruzzo, a mountainous region to the east. I posted photos from Rome in five sets, available here as a collection on Flickr, or here, and I still have two sets to post, but until now I hadn’t posted any photos from the second week, in Abruzzo, where we were based in a small village called Torre dei Nolfi, near the city of Sulmona, famous as the birthplace of the Roman poet Ovid.

Our journey to Abruzzo — to the city of Sulmona — involved a two and a half hour journey by train from Tiburtina station in Rome, on a wonderful trip through the mountains in which, for added atmosphere, the lights in our carriage didn’t work, so that we were plunged into darkness every time the train passed through a tunnel. To be fair, the lights did work in the rest of the carriages, although I really did enjoy the darkness, and I wasn’t looking to complain, given that our three return tickets cost just 25 Euros, the price of three One Day Travelcards in London. Read the rest of this entry »

This article was published simultaneously here, and on the “Close Guantánamo” website, which I established in January with US attorney Tom Wilner. Please join us — just an email address is required to be counted amongst those opposed to the ongoing existence of Guantánamo, and to receive updates of our activities by email.

Over the weekend, Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif, a Yemeni, became the ninth prisoner to die in Guantánamo. Adnan had been repeatedly cleared for release — under President Bush and President Obama, and by a US court — but had never been freed, like so many others in that disgraceful prison, which remains an insult to the rule of law ten years and eight months since it first opened.

Adnan was one of the prisoners profiled in the major report I wrote in June, Guantánamo Scandal: The 40 Prisoners Still Held But Cleared for Release At Least Five Years Ago, and the overturning of his successful habeas corpus petition by politically motivated judges in the D.C. Circuit Court in October last year — and the refusal of the Supreme Court to rebuke the court, just three months ago — was notorious amongst attorneys for the prisoners and those interested in justice and the law, even though — sadly and shockingly — it had not awakened appropriate outrage in the mainstream media.

Last May, when the eighth prisoner died at Guantánamo — a man named Hajji Nassim, known to the US authorities as Inayatullah, who had serious mental health problems — I wrote an article entitled, The Only Way Out of Guantánamo Is In a Coffin, which was horribly accurate, as the last two prisoners to leave Guantánamo had left in coffins. The other, Awal Gul, had died in February. Read the rest of this entry »

I wrote the following article for the “Close Guantánamo” website, which I established in January with US attorney Tom Wilner. Please join us — just an email address is required to be counted amongst those opposed to the ongoing existence of Guantánamo, and to receive updates of our activities by email.

Eleven years after the terrible terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, 167 men are still held in the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, following the death of one prisoner on the eve of the anniversary, the Yemeni Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif, who had long-standing mental health issues. They include five men allegedly responsible for the attacks, who still await justice, and the story of these men — who include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the supposed mastermind of 9/11 — is a reminder of why it is important to adhere to existing laws and treaties.

Had they been arrested and put on trial in federal court, their alleged victims would no longer be waiting for justice to be done, as their trials would have concluded many long years ago. However, on capture they were spirited away to secret prisons run by the CIA, where they were subjected to torture, approved at the highest levels of the Bush administration, and, since arriving at Guantánamo in September 2006, they have been allowed almost no opportunity to speak publicly about their experiences — a situation driven solely by the desire to suppress all mention of their torture by US forces.

Similarly disastrous policies were enacted at Guantánamo. Although the majority of the 779 men held in total since the prison opened were not held in “black sites” prior to their arrival at Guantánamo, all were abused in Afghanistan, where they were processed after their capture — mostly in Pakistan or Afghanistan — and many were then abused in Guantánamo, where torture techniques including prolonged isolation and sleep deprivation were introduced, and were approved by George W. Bush’s first defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. Read the rest of this entry »

This week the legacy of George W. Bush’s “war on terror” is under the spotlight, as is the response to it of his successor, Barack Obama. Tomorrow is the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks that first prompted George W. Bush and his administration to discard all domestic and international laws and treaties regarding the treatment of prisoners, and to hold those seized in its “war on terror” not as prisoners of war, according to the Geneva Conventions, nor as criminal suspects, but as “enemy combatants,” who could, the administration contended, be held without them having any rights whatsoever.

Today is also significant for the fallout from the first war on which the Bush administration embarked — the invasion of Afghanistan, which began a month after the 9/11 attacks. As has been extensively reported, this morning US officials handed over formal control of the Parwan Detention Facility, the replacement for the notorious Bagram prison, where several prisoners were killed in the early days of the “war on terror,” to Afghan control.

This morning I was delighted to be asked by the BBC World Service to comment on the Bagram handover on the “Newshour” program with Robin Lustig, which was live at 1 pm, but is repeated regularly, and is available online. Although it was announced that the US had transferred 3,082 prisoners to Afghan control since reaching an agreement in March, I was particularly interested in commenting about those still held by the US, including recently captured prisoners, who will not be handed over until the US has screened them, and, more particularly, the foreign prisoners — thought to number around 50 — who will continue to be held by the US. Read the rest of this entry »

On July 11, 2012, as part of my ongoing project to photograph the whole of London by bike (or see here), I cycled east from Greenwich, intending to travel to the Thames Barrier, on the border of Charlton and Woolwich, but then carrying on, through Woolwich to Thamesmead, the satellite town originally built in the 1960s, and used as the setting for Stanley Kubrick’s notorious film “A Clockwork Orange,” and back via Belmarsh Prison and Plumstead, before rejoining the Thames Path once more for the journey back west, and home.

I’m posting these photos in four sets, and this is the last of the four, following Chasing Clouds in Greenwich: Photos of a Journey East Along the Thames,  Industry and Decay: Photos of a Journey Along the Thames from Greenwich to Woolwich and Lost Glories: Photos of a Thames Journey from Woolwich to Thamesmead (also see here, here and here). In those, I recorded the first stage of the journey, through Greenwich under a brooding, rain-filled sky; the second stage, through New Charlton, past the Thames Barrier and into Woolwich, through industrial estates, and with a diversion to an evocative set of river stairs; and the third, through the housing developments in the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich, and then on to Thamesmead. Read the rest of this entry »

Eleven years since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the majority of the remaining 168 men in Guantánamo are not held because they constitute an active threat to the United States, but because of inertia, political opportunism and an institutional desire to hide evidence of torture by US forces, sanctioned at the highest levels of government. That they are still held, mostly without charge or trial, is a disgrace that continues to eat away at any notion that the US believes in justice.

It seems like an eternity since there was the briefest of hopes that George W. Bush’s “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo would be shut down. That was in January 2009, but although Barack Obama issued an executive order promising to close Guantánamo within a year, he soon reneged on that promise, failing to stand up to Republican critics, who seized on the fear of terrorism to attack him, and failing to stand up to members of his own party, who were also fearful of the power of black propaganda regarding Guantánamo and the alleged but unsubstantiated dangerousness of its inmates.

The President himself also became fearful when, in January 2010, the Guantánamo Review Task Force, which he himself had appointed, and which consisted of career officials and lawyers from government departments and the intelligence agencies, issued its report based on an analysis of the cases of the 240 prisoners inherited from George W. Bush (PDF). The Task Force recommended that, of the 240 men held when he came to power, only 36 could be prosecuted, but 48 others were regarded as being too dangerous to release, even though insufficient evidence existed to put them on trial. Read the rest of this entry »

On July 11, 2012, as part of my ongoing project to photograph the whole of London by bike, I cycled east from Greenwich, intending to travel to the Thames Barrier, on the border of Charlton and Woolwich, but then carrying on, through Woolwich to Thamesmead, the satellite town originally built in the 1960s, and used as the setting for Stanley Kubrick’s notorious film “A Clockwork Orange,” and back via Belmarsh Prison and Plumstead, before rejoining the Thames Path once more for the journey back west, and home.

I’m posting these photos in four sets, and this is the third, following Chasing Clouds in Greenwich: Photos of a Journey East Along the Thames and Industry and Decay: Photos of a Journey Along the Thames from Greenwich to Woolwich (also see here and here) in which I recorded the first stage of the journey, through Greenwich under a brooding, rain-filled sky, and then through New Charlton, past the Thames Barrier and into Woolwich, through industrial estates, and with a diversion to an evocative set of river stairs. Read the rest of this entry »

On July 11, as part of my ongoing project to photograph the whole of London by bike, I cycled east from Greenwich, intending to travel to the Thames barrier, on the border of Charlton and Woolwich, but then carrying on, through Woolwich to Thamesmead, the satellite town originally built in the 1960s, and used as the setting for Stanley Kubrick’s notorious film “A Clockwork Orange,” and back via Belmarsh prison and Plumstead, before rejoining the Thames Path once more for the journey back west, and home.

I’m posting these photos in four sets, and this is the second, following Chasing Clouds in Greenwich: Photos of a Journey East Along the Thames (or see here), in which I recorded the first stage of the journey, through Greenwich under a brooding, rain-filled sky. In this second set, as the rain fell, I passed some of the surviving industrial sites alongside the river, in east Greenwich and Charlton — or, to be strictly accurate, New Charlton — and on past the Thames Barrier to Woolwich, through industrial estates, and with a diversion to an evocative set of river stairs. The rain had passed by the time I reached Woolwich, and the sun was shining once more, but the weather was so restless that there were wonderful lively skies, as captured in the next photo set, which I’ll be posting tomorrow. Read the rest of this entry »

Please sign the campaigning group 38 Degrees’ open letter to Jeremy Hunt, warning him not to mess with the NHS.

Sometimes it’s almost unspeakably depressing to be living in England, in a dystopian fantasy that no one voted for, with a useless coalition government of the Tories and the Lib Dems that required Frankenstein-like engineering just to come into being.

Yesterday was one of those particularly depressing days, as David Cameron shuffled his cabinet and lurched even further to the right. Of course, there is desperation in the Prime Minister’s manoeuvring, and we should be thankful for that. Cameron has not got rid of George Osborne, of course, as he is the prime architect of the Tories’ economic policy, which involves allowing the rich to hoover up whatever they can, including that which has been secreted offshore, while obliging the rest of us to have to try and prise five pound notes out of Osborne’s hands, who it turns out, has the tenacity of a corpse with advanced rigor mortis. However, when 48 percent of voters recently gave Osborne a vote of no confidence, it was obviously significant. Cameron may be the whey-faced buffoon who can come up with an opinion at any time of the day or night, but Osborne is the whey-faced buffoon in charge of economic policy — Gordon Brown to Cameron’s Tony Blair, if you will.

48 percent of voters recognised the toxicity of Osborne, thereby providing a stunning vote of no confidence in the government, but he remained in place in the reshuffle while other buffoons got shifted around or axed. Andrew Lansley, who trailed the Chancellor with a 37 percent disapproval rating in the Guardian/ICM poll on August 28, was shifted out of health, to be replaced by Jeremy Hunt, who had a 24 percent disapproval rating as culture secretary. Michael Gove (on 36%) keeps his job as the butcher of education, Kenneth Clarke (on 28%) was replaced at justice by the incompetent employment minister Chris Grayling, and William Hague (on 21%) kept his job as foreign secretary. Read the rest of this entry »