Radio: Andy Worthington and Debra Sweet of the World Can’t Wait Discuss Shaker Aamer and Closing Guantánamo with Cat Watters

Below is an interview I undertook with the New York-based activist Cat Watters, on her show Organic News, on Awake Radio, which took place just after the release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, who was released and returned to the UK on October 30. Also on the show was my friend Debra Sweet, of the World Can’t Wait, who, every January, gets me over to the US for tours calling for the closure of Guantánamo, timed to coincide with the anniversary of the prison’s opening (see my last three visits here, here and here).

The main topic of discussion  of course, was Shaker’s release after a long, long campaign to secure his freedom, in which I played a part through the We Stand With Shaker campaign that I launched a year ago with the activist Joanne MacInnes.

Debra also spoke — about the prison-wide hunger strike in 2013 that did so much to remind the world of the prisoners’ plight, in which, of course, Shaker played a part, as I explained at the time — see here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

The show is below, via YouTube (audio only):

We also spoke about the hypocrisy and stupidity of the “war on terror” — and of Western foreign policy in general — and then moved on to Shaker’s health, which, in turn, led to a discussion of how Guantánamo has been used by the authorities as a place of human experimentation, via extensive and well-chronicled medical and psychological abuse.

Cat also mentioned Shaker’s connection to Roger Waters, who became involved in Shaker’s case after his lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, sent him a letter from Guantánamo stating how much he liked the Pink Floyd song, “Hey You,” which Roger wrote, and I explained how supportive Roger has been of my work and of We Stand With Shaker.

We also spoke about Roger’s commendable involvement with the BDS movement (Boycott Divestment and Sanctions), described by Roger as “a non violent movement to oppose Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, and violations of international law and Palestinian human rights,” and has repeatedly tried to get significant figures in the music industry not to play in Israel, and Debra then made a point of mentioning how Quentin Tarantino has received significant and unacceptable criticism and threats — from the police — after showing his support for the Black Lives Matter movement.

There was much more in the show, and I hope you have time to listen to it, and to share it 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.