Photos and Report: The Coordinated Global Vigils for the Closure of Guantánamo in the UK, the US, Mexico and Belgium on April 5, 2023

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Yesterday, Wednesday April 5, eight coordinated global vigils took place calling for the closure of the prison at Guantánamo Bay — and the release of the 17 men (out of the 31 still held) who have been approved for release.

Campaigners in the UK — with the UK Guantánamo Network, which includes various Amnesty International groups, Close Guantánamo, the Guantánamo Justice Campaign and the London Guantánamo campaign — began holding monthly vigils outside Parliament last September, and two months ago, following global actions to mark the 21st anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, I asked fellow campaigners in Washington, D.C. to join us, which they did. Last month, campaigners in New York and Mexico City also joined us, and yesterday campaigners in Brussels, Los Angeles, Raleigh, NC and Cobleskill, NY also joined in.

Those taking part included the UK Guantánamo Network, Amnesty International, Close Guantánamo, Witness Against Torture, World Can’t Wait, CAIR (the Council on American-Islamic Relations), ICUJP (Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace), NC Stop Torture Now, Schoharie Peacemakers and the Comité Free.Assange.Belgium, while supporting organizations include NRCAT (the National Religious Campaign Against Torture), September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows and NYC Veterans For Peace.

We continue to highlight the plight of the 17 men approved for release but still held, through the #FreeTheGuantanamo17 poster I made, and the shocking infographic I also made showing how long these men have been held since they were told that the US government no longer wanted to hold them — as of yesterday, between 194 and 4,821 days.

The problem, as I’ve been highlighting for some time now, is that, although these men were unanimously approved for release by US officials, those decisions were purely administrative, meaning that the men cannot appeal to a judge if, as is evidently the case, the government has failed to treat their release as an urgent priority.

It is clear, from releases over the last year, that when the courts are involved, the government can locate a sense of haste that it lacks when to comes to purely administrative decisions — as with the release of Mohammed al-Qahtani, last March, Asadullah Haroon Gul last June, and Majid Khan in February this year.

In al-Qahtani’s case, a judge had recognized that the government appeared to be unable to administer to his serious mental health needs, while Gul had his habeas corpus petition granted by a judge, the first such victory in over a decade, since politically motivated appeals court judges largely succeeded in gutting the Great Writ of all meaning for the Guantánamo prisoners in a number of decisions between 2009 and 2011.

As for Khan, who was convicted of involvement in terrorism, but was thoroughly remorseful and had become a cooperating witness, he had finished serving a sentence imposed as a result of a plea deal in his military commission trial. And yet, while his release was just and appropriate, I couldn’t help noting at the time that, until the other men approved for release are freed, “the message the US government is sending to [them], and to the world, is that it is easier to resettle from Guantánamo someone convicted of terrorism but demonstrably remorseful than it is to resettle someone never charged with a crime at all.”

Shamefully, however, as I reported exclusively just two days ago, in my article Guantánamo and the U.S. Courts: When Is A War Not Over? Apparently, When It’s the “War on Terror”, the Justice Department continues to resist efforts by lawyers for men approved for release but still held to secure court rulings ordering their release.

The focus of this latest effort is Khalid Qassim, one of the 17, whose lawyers, in December, sought to persuade a District Court judge that he must be freed because he was merely a foot soldier in Afghanistan, who had no involvement in terrorism, and the Supreme Court ruling that justifies imprisonment at Guantánamo — Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, decided in June 2004 — explicitly states that prisoners can only continue to be held “if the record establishes that United States troops are still involved in active combat in Afghanistan,” which, as of August 2021, they are not.

As I’m sure you will recognize, it is the palpable injustice of this situation that provides a righteous impetus for the vigils, and I hope that next month more of you will join in, either by joining an existing vigil, or by setting up your own. They take place on the first Wednesday of every month, so please feel free to get involved next month (on May 3), and in any of the following months — on June 7, July 5, August 2, September 6 and so on.

And finally, please see below for a video, on YouTube, of Robert McCaw of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) speaking at the vigil in Washington, D.C.

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Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer (of an ongoing photo-journalism project, ‘The State of London’), film-maker and singer-songwriter (the lead singer and main songwriter for the London-based band The Four Fathers, whose music is available via Bandcamp). He is the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign (and see the latest photo campaign here) and the successful We Stand With Shaker campaign of 2014-15, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison 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 you can watch it online here, via the production company Spectacle, for £2.50).

In 2017, Andy became very involved in housing issues. He is the narrator of the documentary film, ‘Concrete Soldiers UK’, about the destruction of council estates, and the inspiring resistance of residents, he wrote a song ‘Grenfell’, in the aftermath of the entirely preventable fire in June 2017 that killed over 70 people, and he also set up ‘No Social Cleansing in Lewisham’ as a focal point for resistance to estate destruction and the loss of community space in his home borough in south east London. For two months, from August to October 2018, he was part of the occupation of the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden in Deptford, to prevent its destruction — and that of 16 structurally sound council flats next door — by Lewisham Council and Peabody. Although the garden was violently evicted by bailiffs on October 29, 2018, and the trees were cut down on February 27, 2019, the struggle for housing justice — and against environmental destruction — continues.

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