Radio: Andy Worthington Discusses Shaker Aamer’s Release and the Future of Guantánamo with Scott Horton and Peter B. Collins

In the wake of the wonderful news that Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo, has finally been released from the prison, and returned, a free man, to his family in the UK, a couple of old friends from the US — Scott Horton and Peter B. Collins — interviewed me for their radio shows.

Scott and I have been talking — generally several times a year —  since 2007, primarily about Guantánamo, but also about torture, Bagram prison in Afghanistan, and other aspects of the “war on terror” that George W. Bush launched after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and that President Obama has failed to fully repudiate.

Our 20-minute interview is here, as an MP3. Scott’s own website has been having problems for the last week — it was down for many days, and now it’s back up, but the last few years’ interviews are still missing.

Scott asked me about Shaker and his release, of course, so I was delighted to have the opportunity to explain why the allegations against him in his classified military files are so thoroughly unreliable (see here for more), and I also explained how he was “the most prominent prisoner for resisting the injustice of the detention program introduced by the United States after the 9/11 attacks ,” who was “always standing up for the rights of his fellow prisoners,” and endlessly irritated the authorities. I also explained how it was undoubtedly his outspoken nature that delayed his release for so long.

I also discussed the role of government lawyers in advising their bosses never to accept responsibility for any mistakes — not just in Shaker’s case, but across the board — and Scott and I also talked about the failed military commissions, and the current wrangling about closing Guantánamo, which I’ll be discussing in detail here within the next couple of days.

I also spoke to Peter B. Collins for his show, “Processing Distortion,” on Boiling Frogs Post, the website established by FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds.

Our hour-long interview was entitled, “Will Obama Close Gitmo?” and it was a particularly good interview. To listen to it, however, you will have to subscribe for at least a month to Boiling Frogs Post, for $7 — although that does give you access to five different radio shows and a video round table. To whet your appetite, there’s a one-minute clip of me here expressing indignation about cynical — or scared –lawmakers and their ridiculous and insulting black propaganda about Guantánamo.

This is how Peter described the show:

As an author and journalist, Andy Worthington is an expert on America’s offshore island prison, Guantánamo. As an activist, he helped lead a year-long campaign to free Shaker Aamer, the last British prisoner who finally went home on October 30. We talk about his return and reunion with family, and the ordeal he experienced as the most high-profile inmate released so far. When he’s healthy — physically and psychologically — Aamer is expected to expose much about his detention, torture, hunger strikes, and the complicity of British officials and intelligence agents in his almost 14-year detention without trial or charge. Worthington also talks about Sen. Feinstein’s recent call to close Guantánamo, and the irrational objections expressed by many American leaders.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files and covers America’s gulag on his blog. He is also a member of The Four Fathers, a music group that updated their ‘Song for Shaker‘ after Aamer’s return to England.

I hope you have time to listen to Scott’s show, and that you’ll subscribe to BFP so you can hear my interview with Peter and many, many other interviews, and that you’ll share all this information if you find it useful.

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer, film-maker and singer-songwriter (the lead singer and main songwriter for the London-based band The Four Fathers, whose debut album, ‘Love and War,’ is available for download or on CD via Bandcamp — also see here). He is the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign, the co-director of We Stand With Shaker, which called for the release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison (finally freed on October 30, 2015), and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by the University of Chicago Press in the US, and available from Amazon, including a Kindle edition — 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.