Archive for May, 2021
How China Uses Guantánamo’s Former Uyghur Prisoners to Justify the Mass Imprisonment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang Province
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CNN is to be congratulated for recently publishing a detailed article about one of lingering injustices of the prison at Guantánamo Bay, involving the Uyghurs, a predominantly Turkic-speaking ethnic group from Xinjiang province, in the north west of China, whose cases I have reported on ever since I first began researching and writing about Guantánamo in 2006.
22 Uyghurs, captured crossing from Afghanistan to Pakistan in December 2001, ended up at Guantánamo, where the Bush administration, seeking cooperation from the Chinese authorities in the global “war on terror” that the US declared after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, obligingly designated the Uyghur prisoners as members of a largely non-existent terrorist organization, the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM).
This decision not only continues to blight the lives of the former Guantánamo prisoners, who were all resettled in third countries between 2006 and 2013, having been cleared of all wrongdoing by the US, but has also been used by the Chinese government to justify its ruthless imprisonment, since 2017, of at least a million Uyghurs in “re-education” camps, where credible allegations have been repeatedly made about how, as well as attempting to eradicate Uyghur culture, religion and identity through “re-education,” the camps also involve the forced sterilisation of Uyghur women, and the forced separation of children from their parents. There have also been numerous credible reports about Uyghur women being subjected to rape and torture.
Great News from Guantánamo As Three “Forever Prisoners,” Including 73-Year Old Saifullah Paracha, Are Approved for Release
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In extremely encouraging news from Guantánamo, three men have been approved for release from the prison by Periodic Review Boards, the high-level government review process established under President Obama.
The three men are: 73-year old Pakistani citizen Saifullah Paracha, Guantánamo’s oldest prisoner; Abdul Rahim Ghulam Rabbani, another Pakistani citizen who is 54 years old; and Uthman Abd al-Rahim Uthman, a 41-year old Yemeni. All have been held without charge or trial at Guantánamo for between 17 and 19 years.
Between November 2013 and January 2017, when President Obama left office, the Periodic Review Boards — consisting of representatives of the Departments of State, Defense, Justice and Homeland Security, as well as the office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — reviewed the cases of 64 prisoners, to ascertain whether or not they should still be regarded as a threat to the US, and, in 38 cases, recommended the prisoners for release. All but two of these men were released before the end of Obama’s presidency.
Lee Wolosky, Former Envoy for Guantánamo Closure, Calls on President Biden to Close the Prison
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I wrote the following article for the “Close Guantánamo” website, which I established in January 2012, on the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, with the 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.
It’s now two weeks since the end of the first 100 days of the Biden presidency, when there was a short flurry of mainstream media interest in the prison at Guantánamo Bay, which has been largely ignored by the Biden administration since taking office, except for brief mentions of embarking on a “robust” review of the prison’s operations, and an “intention” to secure its closure.
To mark Biden’s first 100 days, I cross-posted an op-ed written for The Hill by Anthony Lake, national security adviser to President Clinton from 1993 to 1997, and Tom Wilner, who represented the Guantánamo prisoners in their Supreme Court cases in 2004 and 2008, and with whom I co-founded the Close Guantánamo campaign in 2012.
Fundraiser Marking the 9th Anniversary of My Photo-Journalism Project ‘The State of London’
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Dear friends and supporters of ‘The State of London’,
Today marks the ninth anniversary of when I first set out consciously on my bike, armed with a small Canon compact camera, to take photos on a daily basis of the changing face of London throughout the 241 square miles of the capital’s 120 postcodes, and the fourth anniversary of when I began posting a photo a day on ‘The State of London’ Facebook page, where I also post an essay to accompany each photo. I also post the daily photos on Twitter.
I’ve now posted 1,431 photos on Facebook, where I now have nearly 4,500 followers, as well as the many other people who keep up with the project on my personal Facebook page, and, as the project has evolved, so too have my abilities as a photographer, especially over the last two years and three months since I upgraded to my current camera, the wonderful Canon PowerShot G7X Mk. II.
Sadly, I’m currently unable to celebrate this particular milestone on my bike, as I have strained a muscle in my right leg and am encouraging myself to remain largely immobile until it has healed, but in general I’ve been out and about most days over the last nine years, and since I began posting daily photos on Facebook, the demands of the project mean that, in addition to the time spent cycling, I also spend one or two hours researching the photo of the day and writing the text to accompany it, posting the photos and responding to comments.
Abu Zubaydah Files Complaint About Torture and Ongoing Imprisonment at Guantánamo with UN Arbitrary Detention Experts
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On Friday, Abu Zubaydah (Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn), a notorious victim of torture in the CIA’s “black site” program, who has been held without charge or trial at Guantánamo since September 2006, submitted a complaint to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, regarding the lawless nature of his imprisonment and treatment since he was first seized in a house raid in Pakistan in March 2002.
The case has been submitted by Helen Duffy, Abu Zubaydah’s international legal representative since 2010, who represented him in his successful cases before the European Court of Human Rights regarding his “black site” detention in Poland and Lithuania, and the complaint accuses seven countries of having responsibility for his long imprisonment and mistreatment — not only (and primarily) the US, but also Thailand, Poland, Morocco, Lithuania and Afghanistan, the five countries in which he was held in “black sites” over a period of four and a half years, and the UK, which is accused of having “participated in other ways in the ‘global spider’s web’ of complicity in rendition,” primarily via “estimates that UK personnel were involved in approximately 2,000-3,000 interviews of CIA detainees in the aftermath of 9/11”, as indicated by the findings of the UK Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) in 2019.
In a press release, Duffy explains that this is “the first international case brought by Zubaydah against the United States,” and is also “the first time that international legal action is taken against the UK, Afghanistan, Morocco and Thailand for their complicity in the US rendition and secret detention program.” In addition it is “the first time that a case has been brought against all states participating in an individual’s rendition and torture and ongoing unlawful detention at Guantánamo.”
Radio: I Discuss the Prospects for Guantánamo’s Closure Under Joe Biden with Scott Horton
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On Friday, I was delighted to discuss the prospects for the closure of the prison at Guantánamo Bay under Joe Biden with the indefatigable Scott Horton, who always, flatteringly, refers to me as “the heroic Andy Worthington.” Scott and I have spoken on many dozens of occasions since 2007, and you can find our latest interview here as an MP3 or below via YouTube.
“Indefatigable” has to be the most apt description of Horton, who has conducted over 5,500 interviews since 2003, and has also found the time to write two books, 2017’s “Fools Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan,” and the recently published “Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism.”
Nearly 20 years into Guantánamo’s existence, we ran briefly through the failures of George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump to close the prison — with several minutes spent discussing the Obama years — before bringing the story up to date with Joe Biden, the fourth president to be in charge of the prison.
Clinton Advisor Anthony Lake and Close Guantánamo Co-Founder Tom Wilner Call on President Biden to Close the Prison
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I wrote the following article for the “Close Guantánamo” website, which I established in January 2012, on the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, with the 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.
In a recent op-ed for The Hill, Anthony Lake, national security adviser to President Clinton from 1993 to 1997, and Close Guantánamo co-founder Tom Wilner, who was counsel of record to Guantánamo detainees in the two Supreme Court cases establishing their right to habeas corpus and in the case establishing their right to legal counsel, made a powerful case for the closure of the prison at Guantánamo Bay, which we’re pleased to be cross-posting below.
Thursday marked the end of the first 100 days of Joe Biden’s presidency, and while we’re aware that the new administration has had a huge workload to deal with after four ruinous years of the Trump presidency, and with the unprecedented challenge of dealing with Covid-19, it remains imperative that the scandal of the prison at Guantánamo is dealt with sooner rather than later, because its continued existence is an affront to all of the US’s cherished notions of itself as a country that respects the rule of law.
Using, as a springboard, the recent release of the movie “The Mauritanian,” which tells the story of former Guantánamo prisoner, torture victim and best-selling author Mohamedou Ould Slahi, Lake and Wilner run through the reasons why Guantánamo’s continued existence is so shameful and counter-productive — a hugely expensive offshore prison where the US “detains men indefinitely, without charge or trial or the basic protections of due process of law,” whose continued existence also damages US national security by inflaming tensions within the Muslim world.
Who's still at Guantánamo?
