UN Condemns 21-Year Imprisonment of Abu Zubaydah as Arbitrary Detention and Suggests that Guantánamo’s Detention System “May Constitute Crimes Against Humanity”

30.4.23

Share

An image using a photo of Abu Zubaydah at Guantánamo, created by Brigid Barrett for an article in Wired in July 2013.

Please support my work as a reader-funded journalist! I’m currently trying to raise $2500 (£2000) to support my writing and campaigning on Guantánamo and related issues over the next three months. If you can help, please click on the button below to donate via PayPal.





 

In what strikes me as the single most devastating condemnation by an international body that has ever been issued with regard to the US’s detention policies in the “war on terror” — both in CIA “black sites” and at Guantánamo — the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has declared that the 21-year imprisonment of Zain al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn, better known as Abu Zubaydah, constitutes arbitrary detention, via the flagrant abuse of the relevant articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and has expressed “grave concern” that the very basis of the detention system at Guantanamo — involving “widespread or systematic imprisonment or other severe deprivation of liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law” — “may constitute crimes against humanity.”

The UN also condemned other countries for their involvement in Abu Zubaydah’s arbitrary detention — specifically, Pakistan, where he was first seized, Thailand, Poland, Morocco, Lithuania and Afghanistan, where he was held and tortured in CIA ”black sites”, and the UK as “a State complicit in the extraordinary rendition programme that knowingly took advantage of it” (as discussed in a secret detention report by the UN in 2010, on which I was the lead author).

As the Working Group also explains, with reference to the British government, “The Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament (United Kingdom) found, in 2018, that the Government had sent questions to interrogators and received intelligence obtained from detainees who the authorities knew or should have known had been mistreated. The parliamentary inquiry found that the United Kingdom had been directly aware of Mr. Zubaydah’s ‘extreme mistreatment,’ yet its intelligence agencies had provided questions for his interrogation.”

However, while it is to be hoped that this condemnation will have a serious impact in these countries, it is the Working Group’s analysis of Abu Zubaydah’s treatment by the US that is uniquely devastating, and that should, very clearly, not only lead to Abu Zubaydah’s release, as called for by the Working Group (along with reparations), but also to the release of other men still held at Guantánamo, and the implementation of a process, within the US, to hold accountable all those involved in his torture and the fundamental lawlessness of his treatment over the last 21 years.

What is particularly noticeable about the Working Group’s opinion — and where it breaks new ground in the most significant manner — is not primarily through its forensic analysis of his torture in the “black sites,” which is well-documented, but how its equally forensic analysis of his treatment at Guantánamo, where he has been held without charge or trial since September 2006, demonstrates conclusively that he has been fundamentally deprived of any means to challenge the basis of his open-ended imprisonment without charge or trial, especially since the US government conceded, back in 2008, that it had no actual evidence to justify his continued imprisonment.

Abu Zubaydah’s torture, and cruelty and injustice at Guantánamo

In the opening paragraphs of the opinion, the Working Group runs through his capture, the allegations regarding his significance and the way that evidence to the contrary was ignored, the key CIA request, before his torture began, that he “would remain in isolation and incommunicado for the remainder of his life,” his torture in various “black sites,” including, in Thailand, in August 2002, when he “was subjected to combined enhanced interrogation techniques almost 24 hours a day,”  including ”266 hours in a coffin-size confinement box and 29 hours in a small confinement box,” being “threatened with death and waterboarded at least 83 times, on one occasion having to be resuscitated.”

The Working Group also highlights the inconvenient truths that, “In February 2008, the Government of the United States conceded that Mr. Zubaydah was not a member of Al-Qaida,” that, “In 2017, he was removed from the Al-Qaida sanctions list,” and that, “Despite the basis for his detention having been discredited, the Government continues to assert its right to detain him indefinitely.”

After three and a half years in the five different torture sites, Abu Zubaydah was flown to Guantánamo, held in Camp 7, “the most secretive and highest security camp within Guantánamo,” where “[c]ommunication between inmates was prohibited, causing serious psychological effects,” where “[m]edical care was grossly deficient,” and where “Mr. Zubaydah’s serious health conditions, including from injuries sustained during torture, were exacerbated by the denial of medical attention.”

The Working Group also notes that he “has been repeatedly denied access to his records and to an independent medical evaluation and treatment, despite a United States court ruling to that effect in June 2020,” and that he is subjected to “extreme secrecy measures.” Elaborating, the Working Group explains that “[a]ny communication to or from Mr. Zubaydah must be declassified before being release” (as is the case with all Guantánamo prisoners, but especially so with all the so-called “high-value detainees,” like Abu Zubaydah).

What I didn’t know, however, is that he “is not allowed telecommunication with family and has extremely limited access to the outside world,”and that he “suffers distress due to his failing memories of his family,” and it seems to me that this refusal to allow him to talk to his family can only be connected to the CIA’s requirement for him to “remain in isolation and incommunicado for the remainder of his life.”

In addition, “Lawyer-client communication has been seriously impeded. Use of listening devices prompted the counsel of some other detainees to resign, but a judicial order prohibited them from explaining to their clients why. Privileged material has also been seized by the detaining authority, in a system in which lawyer-client privilege is not adequately respected.”

No legal basis for Abu Zubaydah’s detention

At the heart of the Working Group’s findings is the stark fact that, in 21 years of imprisonment, Abu Zubaydah has never been “provided with a legal basis for his detention.” The Working Group also states that “Mr. Zubaydah has always been detained without charge,” and that “[t]he failure to lodge criminal charges, or to release him, amounts to arbitrariness,” notes that his long years in the extraordinary rendition program “constituted enforced disappearance,” and also notes that, “In the extreme circumstances of his indefinite detention without charge or trial, and with no apparent prospect of release,” Abu Zubaydah’s right to life is being violated. As the Human Rights Committee has stated, ”extreme forms of arbitrary detention [are] incompatible with the right to life. There is a right to life with dignity. The lack of agency and autonomy, and his inability to seek to influence his fate, embody the hopelessness of his situation.”

As the Working Group explains, the US government “asserts its right to detain Mr. Zubaydah pursuant to the ‘law of war’ authority, under the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (2001) and the National Defense Authorization Act,” and “continues to allege this ‘law of war’ authority to detain Mr. Zubaydah until the cessation of hostilities, on the basis that the non-international armed conflict continues.”

However, this justification “has no basis in international humanitarian law,” because the US government “has not demonstrated the existence of an armed conflict or that Mr. Zubaydah was taking an active part in hostilities,” and, “Even if international humanitarian law were applicable, it could never justify indefinite detention during an endless war on an indeterminate enemy on the basis of ill-defined ‘threats,’ or for interrogation.”

As the Working Group proceeds to explain, “If security detention can be justified outside an armed conflict, it is only under exceptional circumstances that require a present, direct and imperative threat, which has not been shown.” Instead, “The indefinite detention of Mr. Zubaydah is indicative of arbitrariness”, and “The true basis for the detention of Mr. Zubaydah is unknown.”

In a particularly devastating paragraph, the Working Group notes that “[t]he Government of the United States has not shown that Mr. Zubaydah constitutes a security threat for which there is no option other than keeping him in detention for more than two decades without charges,” referring to the US government’s arguments as “speculative and unsubstantiated,” and concluding that he “has been held in prolonged and indefinite detention for more than 20 years, without a legal basis, in violation of article 9 (1) of the [International] Covenant [on Civil and Political Rights],” which states, “Everyone has the right to liberty and security of person. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest or detention. No one shall be deprived of his liberty except on such grounds and in accordance with such procedure as are established by law.”

Habeas corpus thwarted

While the spurious detention authority under the AUMF applies to all the men held at Guantánamo, in June 2004, in Rasul v. Bush, the Supreme Court recognized that the men held at Guantánamo had no way of challenging the basis of their detention, and granted them habeas corpus rights — the right to ask a judge to impartially assess the basis of their imprisonment. Congress then sought to take those rights away, but in June 2008, in Boumediene v. Bush, the Supreme Court reasserted those rights.

Over the following two years, 38 prisoners had their habeas petitions granted, on the basis that the government had failed to establish that they were involved in any meaningful way with Al-Qaeda, the Taliban or other associated forces. in 2010 and 2011, however, politically-motivated appeals court judges passed a number of rulings that curtailed the prisoners’ habeas rights, reversing or vacating six those rulings, and ensuring that, since 2010, as the Working Group describes it, “no petition has been granted” (except one ruling in 2021).

In Abu Zubaydah’s case, as the Working Group explains, “On 6 August 2008, Mr. Zubaydah filed a habeas corpus petition with the United States District Court of Columbia. Years passed with motion after motion remaining undecided. A motion to recuse the judge for nonfeasance was mooted by reassignment.”

“On 14 September 2009,” the Working Group adds, “Mr. Zubaydah filed a motion for discovery and memorandum of law in support, but comprehensive discovery has still not been provided” — nearly 14 years later. In addition, “On 5 October 2018, he filed a notice to alert the Court that all pending motions were fully briefed and awaited action by the Court. A petition for a writ of mandamus in the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit seeking an order to attend to the case was rejected.”

“On 11 January 2018,” the Working Group also explains, “a collective habeas petition was lodged by 11 detainees, including Mr. Zubaydah. The Government responded that detention was not indefinite but indeterminate. The collective petition has been rejected, although Mr. Zubaydah’s portion has to be ruled upon.”

The inadequacy of the Combatant Status Review Tribunals and the Periodic Review Boards

The Working Group proceeds to explain how, shorn of habeas corpus rights, every other review of Abu Zubaydah’s case has been inadequate. The first review process, the Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRTs), which ran from 2004-05, and were followed, until the end of the Bush presidency, by similar Administrative Review Boards (ARBs), “could not review the lawfulness of detention and, as the Supreme Court of the United States acknowledged [in Boumediene], were an inadequate substitute for habeas corpus.”

Abu Zubaydah’s CSRT took place on 27 March 2007. As the Working Group explains, “He was not provided a lawyer, but a one-time ‘personal representative’ — a military officer without legal training and with access only to unclassified evidence,” while the government “relied on inculpatory evidence that had been recanted.”

Under President Obama, prisoners’ cases were first reviewed, in 2009, by the Guantánamo Review Task Force, which is not mentioned by the Working Group, but was an administrative process in which officials from relevant government departments and the intelligence agencies recommended prisoners for release, prosecution or ongoing imprisonment without charge or trial. Abu Zubaydah was recommended for prosecution, but none of the prisoners were involved in the deliberations in any way, and nor could they challenge the findings against them.

Obama’s second review process, the Periodic Review Boards, was established in 2011, and began its deliberations in 2013, when Abu Zubaydah, and other prisoners recommended for prosecution by the task force, were shunted into the “ongoing imprisonment without charge or trial” category, largely because of the collapsing viability of the military commission trial system. As the Working Group explains, however, the PRB process “does not review the lawfulness of detention but a detainee’s ‘threat level,’ which is a non-legal standard.”

As the Working Group adds, “Detainees have counsel and can present evidence, but, as Mr. Zubaydah’s hearings show, the process contributes to arbitrariness. Mr. Zubaydah’s first Periodic Review Board hearing was scheduled for 23 August 2016. Four attorneys with top-secret clearance represented him, but only one was allowed to appear. The lawyer’s request for a short adjournment or alternative counsel due to a relative dying was refused. The hearing proceeded with a personal representative, who was not a lawyer and was unfamiliar with the case. The Periodic Review Board declined to consider a report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which contained key information, such as the false nature of the allegations against Mr. Zubaydah. He was prevented from speaking during the 15-minute session. The Periodic Review Board found against him.”

Four years later, in February 2020, Abu Zubaydah had a second PRB hearing, before a Board that “included a member of the Central Intelligence Agency and a member of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence,” who duly decided that he “continued to pose a threat to the United States, based on unsubstantiated claims that could not be contested.” Noticeably, in their analysis of why there is “[n]o legal basis for detention” in Abu Zubaydah’s case, the Working Group explains that he “had no opportunity to refute the presumptions of fact upon which the Periodic Review Board reached the conclusion that his detention was justified on security grounds,” and elsewhere in the opinion the Working Group describes the CSRT and PRBs processes as a form of administrative detention, adding that “[a]dministrative detention to address a security threat will normally amount to arbitrary detention when other effective measures, such as the criminal justice system, are not utilized.”

Not mentioned by the Working Group is the fact that, in August 2021, he had a third PRB, but that, 17 months later, that Board has failed to issue a “Final Determination” in his case.

In addition, Abu Zubaydah has never been put forward for a trial. As the Working Group explains, he “has reportedly implored the Convening Authority of the Military Commissions and the Chief Prosecutor of the Military Commission to commence proceedings against him, but to no avail.” As a result, he “is effectively a ‘forever prisoner’ with no forum to challenge, and seek to end, his arbitrary detention.”

The cumulative effect of all of the above suggests that the CIA’s insistence that Abu Zubaydah must “remain in isolation and incommunicado for the remainder of his life” continues to have a particular impact on his case (via the obstruction of his habeas case, the refusal to let him communicate with his family, and the delay in his recent PRB decision), but what particularly interests me is how the markers of arbitrary detention in Abu Zubaydah’s case are replicated in the cases of 18 other prisoners out of the 29 other men still held at Guantánamo.

18 other cases of arbitrary detention at Guantánamo?

While there are severe problems with the cases of the other eleven men — all are “black site” torture victims; nine are in seemingly endless pre-trial hearings; one, Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, who has agreed to a plea deal is the subject of a separate UN opinion regarding his profound and life-threatening medical neglect; and the other, Ali Hamza al-Bahlul, convicted in a one-sided trial in 2008, is serving a life sentence in unintended but clearly barbarous solitary confinement — the cases of the other 18 all seem to demonstrate that they too are the victims of arbitrary detention.

Two of the 18 — Abu Faraj al-Libi and Muhammed Rahim, who were also tortured in ”black sites” — also continue to be held as “forever prisoners,” their ongoing imprisonment without charge or trial repeatedly approved by Periodic Review Boards, while the other 16, although approved for release by PRBs (or in three cases by the Guantánamo Review Task Force) have been subjected to the same catalog of lawlessness as Abu Zubaydah — determined to be “enemy combatants” through the “inadequate” CSRTs, denied habeas corpus by the appeals courts judges who shut habeas corpus down in 2010, and, with the exception of the three men approved for release by the Guantánamo Review Task Force, but still held 13 years later, deprived of any legally binding process via the PRBs, even though all were eventually approved for release.

As noted above, the Working Group stated, in Abu Zubaydah’s case, that “[t]he failure to lodge criminal charges, or to release him, amounts to arbitrariness” —and the same must therefore be true of all the other men still held who have never been charged. As is also stated in the opinion, “Since the terrorist attacks upon the United States on 11 September 2001, the Working Group has developed a body of legal analysis and jurisprudence reaffirming that the prohibition of arbitrary detention is a peremptory norm (jus cogens) of international law from which no derogation is permitted and that the prolonged and indefinite detention of individuals at Guantánamo violates that prohibition.”

In addition — and in conclusion — what particularly intrigues me is the paragraph in the Working Group’s opinion regarding other prisoners at Guantánamo, and its observation about ”crimes against humanity.”

The paragraph in question states that, “While the Working Group has specifically addressed Mr. Zubadyah’s circumstances in this opinion, the conclusions reached here also apply to other detainees in similar situations at Guantánamo. Over the past 15 years, the Working Group has addressed several cases of detention at Guantánamo. The Working Group expresses grave concern about the pattern that all these cases follow and recalls that, under certain circumstances, widespread or systematic imprisonment or other severe deprivation of liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law may constitute crimes against humanity.”

Crimes against humanity. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time — in an opinion full of firsts — that these grave crimes have been described as taking place at Guantánamo, involving, I presume, “imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law.”

Campaigners for the closure of Guantánamo have long regarded what has taken place there over the last 21 years as extraordinarily grave crimes, and in some ways it can only be wondered why it has taken so long for the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention to reach its conclusion. Now that it has, however, the Biden administration needs to feel the full heat of international condemnation, although sadly the mainstream media don’t seem to be interested in helping out. Although Twitter was buzzing when the Working Group’s opinion was published, no mainstream US media outlet has reported the story, and only the Guardian has acknowledged it.

I hope my contribution helps to address this shameful and unforgiveable lack of media interest. Please share it widely if you think it deserves to be better known.

* * * * *

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.

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, The Complete Guantánamo Files, 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.


Share

21 Responses

  1. Andy Worthington says...

    When I posted this on Facebook, I wrote:

    Here’s my report about what I describe as “the single most devastating condemnation by an international body that has ever been issued with regard to the US’s detention policies in the ‘war on terror’, both in CIA ‘black sites’ and at Guantanamo” — an opinion issued by the the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention about Abu Zubaydah, the first victim of the CIA’s post-9/11 torture program and a “forever prisoner” at Guantanamo, declaring that he is a victim of arbitrary detention for a variety of reasons, including the fact that he has never been charged with a crime.

    The condemnation is not only of the US government, but also the governments of Pakistan, Thailand, Poland, Morocco, Lithuania, Afghanistan and the UK, although the most severe criticisms are directed at the US government, which is ordered to release him and to pay him compensation.

    The Working Group also expresses “grave concern” that the very basis of the detention system at Guantanamo — involving “widespread or systematic imprisonment or other severe deprivation of liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law” — “may constitute crimes against humanity.”

    I also suggest that it seems to me that the Working Group’s opinion also indicates that the other 18 men still held at Guantanamo who have never been charged with a crime are also victims of arbitrary detention — the 16 men approved for release, and the two other “forever prisoners.”

  2. Andy Worthington says...

    Kevin Hester wrote:

    Nelson Mandela’s thoughts on Prison would qualify the US as a fascist state.
    “No one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens but its lowest ones.”
    The same state that colluded with Madiba’s incarceration are torturing these individuals in Guantanamo and Julian Assange in Britain’s Guantanamo, Belmarsh Prison. They tortured Chelsea Manning in a cage, in a tent in Kuwait. When I met her, she implied she was also raped in that tent.

  3. Andy Worthington says...

    Thanks for your thoughts, Kevin, and for that powerful quote from Nelson Mandela, which reminds me of Tony Benn’s quote about refugees: “The way a government treats refugees is very instructive because it shows you how they would treat the rest of us if they thought they could get away with it.”

  4. Anna says...

    Hi Andy, great work – yours & the Working Group’s.
    In addition to the general horror there always is the hypocrisy, the whitewashing of what is evidently pitch black, like these disgusting semantic acrobatics : [the detention being] ‘not indefinite but indeterminate’.

    And this incidentally also applies to Israel’s often years long ‘administrative detention’ without charge or trial of Palestinians …:
    “[a]dministrative detention to address a security threat will normally amount to arbitrary detention when other effective measures, such as the criminal justice system, are not utilized.”
    Of course any sane person knows that is the case, but with their ‘ironclad’ US backing will it ever be held to account ?

  5. Andy Worthington says...

    Thanks, Anna. Yes, that claimed distinction between “indefinite” and “indeterminate” is particularly sinister, isn’t it? Just one of the many examples of bureaucrats justifying the horrors of Guantanamo and the “war on terror.” And thanks also for mentioning Israel’s use of ‘arbitrary detention’, which, I suspect, many people don’t know about (or, indeed, about other countries that use administrative detention widely, like Jordan).

  6. Andy Worthington says...

    Pat Sheerin wrote:

    Thanks, Andy. I’m surprised but delighted that there are people in the UN who are actually doing what I thought the UN was set up to do. Other countries, including the UK, are rightly condemned for their part in the torture and rendition of these men. The UN works in mysterious ways – let’s hope that something positive comes out of the investigation by this working group. A timely report for us in the campaign, given the return of the APPG.

  7. Andy Worthington says...

    Thanks for your thoughts, Pat. The UN has certainly not been shy of criticising the US over the years with regard to Guantanamo and the “black sites” (as seen in part by the report in 2010 on secret detention for which I was the lead researcher), but the arbitrary detention angle certainly seems to have been overdue now that this opinion has been issued.

    It may be that there was an unwillingness to be too hard on Obama when he had promised to close Guantanamo, but I’d say that the time for a damning verdict would have been some time a few years into his presidency, when that dream was already dashed, and he spent three years in which he didn’t voluntarily release anyone, because of Republican pushbacks.

    And as you say, with the new APPG just launched, the Working Group’s assessment of the UK’s role in Abu Zubaydah’s arbitrary detention is very much deserving of scrutiny.

  8. Andy Worthington says...

    William Hudon wrote:

    I first saw notice of this in The Guardian on the 30th, thanks to my friend Mike Hickey. This UN group, like the UN Special Rapporteur who recently issued a similar finding after visiting the prison early this year, got it right.

  9. Andy Worthington says...

    Yes, it’s a devastating opinion, William, and it’s been reassuring to see the UN so focused on Guantanamo this year, with the recent visit to the prison by Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism and the call for the prisoners to be allowed to leave the prison with their artwork, which I wrote about here – https://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2023/02/14/un-finally-gets-to-visit-guantanamo-also-secures-end-to-trump-era-ban-on-prisoners-leaving-with-their-artwork/ – and the devastating report about the treatment of Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, which I haven’t yet had the chance to write about: https://spcommreports.ohchr.org/TMResultsBase/DownLoadPublicCommunicationFile?gId=27797

  10. After Years Of Refusing To Comment, State Department Backs Assange Prosecution – 🏴 Anarchist Federation says...

    […] to hold detainees not charged with any crimes, and in fact, the United Nations recently condemned the US for keeping Abu Zubaydah in arbitrary detention, which “may constitute crimes against […]

  11. State Department Slams Assange On World Press Freedom Day - Todays Democrats says...

    […] continues to hold detainees not charged with any crimes, and in fact, the United Nations recently condemned the US for keeping Abu Zubaydah in arbitrary detention, which “may constitute crimes against […]

  12. Accessibility Tools says...

    […] to hold detainees not charged with any crimes, and in fact, the United Nations recently condemned the US for keeping Abu Zubaydah in arbitrary detention, which “may constitute crimes against […]

  13. The State Department criticized Assange on the occasion of World Press Freedom Day - Thats News says...

    […] continues to hold detainees not charged with any crimes, and in fact, the United Nations recently condemned the US for keeping Abu Zubaydah in arbitrary detention, which “may constitute crimes against […]

  14. State Department Slams Assange On World Press Freedom Day - Awoken American says...

    […] continues to hold detainees not charged with any crimes, and in fact, the United Nations recently condemned the US for keeping Abu Zubaydah in arbitrary detention, which “may constitute crimes against […]

  15. State Department Slams Assange On World Press Freedom Day – MS CREATOR says...

    […] continues to hold detainees not charged with any crimes, and in fact, the United Nations recently condemned the US for keeping Abu Zubaydah in arbitrary detention, which “may constitute crimes against […]

  16. Kevin Gosztola: After Years Of Refusing To Comment, State Department Backs Assange Prosecution | Natylie's Place: Understanding Russia says...

    […] to hold detainees not charged with any crimes, and in fact, the United Nations recently condemned the US for keeping Abu Zubaydah in arbitrary detention, which “may constitute crimes against […]

  17. State Division Slams Assange On World Press Freedom Day - Vibity360 says...

    […] continues to hold detainees not charged with any crimes, and in fact, the United Nations recently condemned the US for keeping Abu Zubaydah in arbitrary detention, which “may constitute crimes against […]

  18. Andy Worthington says...

    For a Spanish translation, on the World Can’t Wait’s Spanish website, see ‘Las Naciones Unidas condenaron el encarcelamiento de 21 años de Abu Zubaydah como detención arbitraria y sugiere que el sistema de detención de Guantánamo “podría constituir crímenes de lesa humanidad”’: http://www.worldcantwait-la.com/worthington-onu-condenaron-encarcelamente-de-21-anos-abu-zubaydah.htm

  19. Global Vigils for the Closure of Guantánamo in London, Washington, D.C., New York, Mexico City, Copenhagen, Brussels and Detroit on May 3, 2023 – UK Guantanamo Network says...

    […] that blogger The Talking Dog spoke about recent releases from the prison, and the recent UN report about Abu Zubaydah, while Jeremy Varon of Witness Against Torture “sent us off with the morality we need.” For […]

  20. Ethan Winters says...

    As expected, the Review Committee has denied Abu Zubaydah’s request to be transferred.

    https://www.prs.mil/Portals/60/Documents/ISN10016/Subsequent%20Hearing%202/230623_ISN10016_SH2_FINAL_DETERMINATION_UPR.pdf

  21. Andy Worthington says...

    Thanks for letting me know, Ethan. It’s pretty shameful that it took the board nearly two years to reach this decision. Sadly, it’s impossible to tell whether the delay means that there was dissent amongst the board members, or whether it was, instead, merely a way of delaying, as much as possible, any eventual reckoning about how to justify holding him forever. It’s particularly dispiriting in light of the UN’s opinion about him, issued earlier this year: https://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2023/04/30/un-condemns-21-year-imprisonment-of-abu-zubaydah-as-arbitrary-detention-and-suggests-that-guantanamos-detention-system-may-constitute-crimes-against-humanity/

Leave a Reply

Back to the top

Back to home page

Andy Worthington

Investigative journalist, author, campaigner, commentator and public speaker. Recognized as an authority on Guantánamo and the “war on terror.” Co-founder, Close Guantánamo and We Stand With Shaker, singer/songwriter (The Four Fathers).
Email Andy Worthington

CD: Love and War

The Four Fathers on Bandcamp

The Guantánamo Files book cover

The Guantánamo Files

The Battle of the Beanfield book cover

The Battle of the Beanfield

Stonehenge: Celebration & Subversion book cover

Stonehenge: Celebration & Subversion

Outside The Law DVD cover

Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo

RSS

Posts & Comments

World Wide Web Consortium

XHTML & CSS

WordPress

Powered by WordPress

Designed by Josh King-Farlow

Please support Andy Worthington, independent journalist:

Archives

In Touch

Follow me on Facebook

Become a fan on Facebook

Subscribe to me on YouTubeSubscribe to me on YouTube

The State of London

The State of London. 16 photos of London

Andy's Flickr photos

Campaigns

Categories

Tag Cloud

Abu Zubaydah Al-Qaeda Andy Worthington British prisoners Center for Constitutional Rights CIA torture prisons Close Guantanamo Donald Trump Four Fathers Guantanamo Housing crisis Hunger strikes London Military Commission NHS NHS privatisation Periodic Review Boards Photos President Obama Reprieve Shaker Aamer The Four Fathers Torture UK austerity UK protest US courts Video We Stand With Shaker WikiLeaks Yemenis in Guantanamo