Close Guantánamo: Andy Worthington’s US Tour Dates, January 8-15, 2015

To contact Andy for interviews, or to arrange events, please send an email or phone 347-272-3576.

January 11, 2015 is the 13th anniversary of the opening of the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba for prisoners seized in the brutal and fundamentally lawless “war on terror” that the Bush administration declared after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

779 men have been held at the prison — plus at least one other, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, in the “black site” that the CIA ran briefly at Guantánamo. Over the years, that population has been reduced significantly. 532 men and boys were released by President Bush, and 110 have been released by President Obama. Nine others died at the prison, and one was transferred to the US mainland to face a trial, leaving 127 men still held.

This is still 127 men too many, because everything about Guantánamo is fundamentally unjust, and has been since the day the prison opened, and although President Obama has released 28 men in the last year, 59 of the 127 men still held have been approved for release (all but four by the Guantánamo Review Task Force that President Obama established shortly after taking office in 2009), and the other 68 men must either be tried or released.

For the fifth year running, Andy Worthington is traveling to the US to take part in events to mark the anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo (on January 11), in a tour organised by the World Can’t Wait, with support from No More Guantánamos and Witness Against Torture. The tour takes in New York City, Washington D.C. (for the anniversary), Boston and other locations in Massachusetts, and Chicago. Andy will be representing the Close Guantánamo campaign and the We Stand With Shaker campaign he founded in November with activist Joanne MacInnes. Please note that all events are free.

POSTSCRIPT: See videos of the New York event here, of Andy speaking outside the White House here, and of the New America panel discussion here. Also see this post for links to various radio interviews with Andy.

Andy Worthington’s “Close Guantánamo” US tour, January 2015

Thursday January 8, 2014, 6.30pm: Close the US Torture Camp at Guantánamo NOW: Stand with Shaker Aamer, Fahd Ghazy & all the Prisoners Unjustly Held, with Andy Worthington, Ramzi Kassem, Omar Farah, and Debra Sweet
Rutgers Presbyterian Church, 236 West 73rd Street, New York, NY 10023.
After flying into New York on Tuesday January 6 (and visiting the Center for Constitutional Rights’ First Wednesday event, “‘We Tortured Some Folks’ — Now What?” at the Von Bar, 3 Bleecker Street, at 6pm on Wednesday January 7), Andy Worthington takes part in this event, also featuring Debra Sweet, the national director of the World Can’t Wait, and two lawyers for men held at Guantánamo — Ramzi Kassem of City University of New York, and Omar Farah of the Center for Constitutional Rights.
As the Facebook page for the event states, “On January 11, the US torture camp at Guantanamo will have been open 13 years. More than 100 men are still held, the majority of whom were cleared for release years ago. They suffer not knowing if they will be released, held indefinitely. Some are still on protest hunger strike, and being force-fed by the US military. Shaker Aamer, the last held British subject, has been a leader among prisoners. He was cleared for release from Guantanamo in 2007 under Bush — yet remains, inexplicably, held. We will learn about a new campaign for his release, We Stand with Shaker. We will also view a new short film, ‘Waiting for Fahd,’ which tells the story of Fahd Ghazy through moving interviews with his family in Yemen. Fahd was detained at 2002 when he was only 17 years old, and despite being cleared since 2007 he remains imprisoned.”

Sunday January 11, 2014, 1:30pm: Rally to Close Guantánamo and End Torture at the White House followed by a march to the Department of Justice.
At 1.30, the annual protest calling for the closure of Guantánamo will take place outside the White House, preceded by an Interfaith Service at 1pm sponsored by the National Religious Coalition Against Torture, and followed by a march to the Department of Justice. See the Facebook page here.
Co-sponsored by Amnesty International USA, the Blue Lantern Project, the Center for Constitutional Rights, CloseGitmo.net, CloseGuantánamo.org, Code Pink, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the National Religious Coalition Against Torture, Reprieve, September 11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, the Torture Abolition and Survivor and Support Coalition, Veterans for Peace, We Stand with Shaker, Witness Against Torture, World Can’t Wait, and other organizations.

Monday January 12, 2014, 12.15-1.45pm: Leaving the Dark Side? Emptying Guantánamo and the CIA Torture Report, with Andy Worthington, Tom Wilner and Col. Morris Davis. Moderated by Peter Bergen.
New America, 1899 L Street NW, Washington, DC, 20036.
Andy and attorney Tom Wilner, who represented the Guantánamo prisoners before the Supreme Court in their habeas corpus cases in 2004 and 2008, co-founded the Close Guantánamo campaign in January 2012, on the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo. For this event, they are joined at New America (formerly the New America Foundation) by Col. Morris Davis, the former chief prosecutor of the military commissions at Guantánamo, who resigned in 2007, in protest at the use of torture, and has since become an outspoken critic of the prison and the “war on terror.” The moderator is journalist and author Peter Bergen, the Director of the International Security, Future of War, and Fellows Programs at New America.

Monday January 12, 2014, 6.30pm: Closing Guantánamo and Seeking Accountability for Torture, with Andy Worthington
Gordon Chapel, Old South Church, 645 Boylston Street, Boston, MA 02116.
This event  — Andy’s first ever in Massachusetts — is organized by the Northeast Regional Office of Amnesty International USA with No More Guantánamos, the World Can’t Wait and Close Guantánamo.

Tuesday January 13, 2014, 12.30pm: Closing Guantánamo and Seeking Accountability for Torture, with Andy Worthington
Wasserstein 1015, Harvard Law School, 1563 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138.
This event is sponsored by Harvard Law ACLU chapter with No More Guantánamos, the World Can’t Wait and Close Guantánamo. See the Facebook page here.

Wednesday, January 14, 12 noon: Closing Guantánamo and Seeking Accountability for Torture, with Andy Worthington
The Commons, Western New England University School of Law, 1215 Wilbraham Road, Springfield, MA 01119.
Lunch program sponsored by National Lawyers Guild WNEU Law chapter with No More Guantánamos, the World Can’t Wait and Close Guantánamo. See the Facebook page here.

Wednesday, January 14, 7pm: Guantánamo at 13: How Obama Can Close the Illegal Prison, with Andy Worthington, Buz Eisenberg and Debra Sweet
Northampton Friends Meeting House, 43 Center Street, 2nd floor, Northampton, MA 01060.
For this event, Andy is joined by Guantánamo lawyer Buz Eisenberg and Debra Sweet, the national director of the World Can’t Wait.
This event is sponsored by Pioneer Valley No More Guantánamos, with co-sponsors including the World Can’t Wait and Close Guantánamo. See the Facebook page here.

Thursday January 15, 7pm: Close Guantánamo – End Torture, with Andy Worthington, Candace Gorman and Debra Sweet
Grace Place, 637 S. Dearborn, Chicago, Illinois 60605.
For this event in Chicago, Andy is joined by Guantánamo lawyer Candace Gorman and Debra Sweet, the national director of the World Can’t Wait.
See the Facebook page here. This event is organized by Chicago World Can’t Wait. If you can, please also join the Rally to protest a 14th year of Guantanamo, torture and indefinite detention at 4.30pm at the Art Institute of Chicago, 111 S. Michigan Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 60603.

Andy then flies back to New York City on January 16, returning to the UK on January 17.

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer and film-maker. He is the co-founder of the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, the director of “We Stand With Shaker,” calling for the immediate release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, and 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. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here — or here for the US).

To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Also see the six-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, and “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” an ongoing, 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011. Also see the definitive Guantánamo habeas list, the full military commissions list, and the chronological list of all Andy’s articles.

Please also consider joining the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, and, if you appreciate Andy’s work, feel free to make a donation.