Photos and Report: Guantánamo in the UK – A New Parliamentary Group Meets, and Mohamedou Ould Slahi Visits

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Last week was a big week for Guantánamo activism in the UK, as the inaugural meeting of the brand-new All-Party Parliamentary Group for Closing the Guantánamo Detention Facility took place in the Houses of Parliament, attended by former prisoner and best-selling author Mohamedou Ould Slahi and his former guard Steve Wood, who then, in the following days, attended three screenings of ‘The Mauritanian’, Kevin Macdonald’s feature film about Mohamedou, followed by Q&A sessions in which I was also involved.

The inaugural meeting of the APPG was attended by six MPs and peers — Chris Law (SNP), who chaired the meeting, and is the co-chair of the APPG, John McDonnell (Lab.), Baroness Helena Kennedy (Lab.), Sir Peter Bottomley (Con.), Richard Burgon (Lab.) and Rachael Maskell (Lab.).

Layla Moran (Lib Dem) is the other co-chair of the APPG, but was unable to attend because of other pressing commitments, although her assistant Emilia Harvey was there to represent her. All were voted in as officers of the APPG.

Apsana Begum (Lab.), who was also unable to attend, agreed to be an officer, and other MPs and peers who have agreed to be members but were unable to attend are Caroline Lucas (Green), Andy Slaughter (Lab.), Baroness Shami Chakrabarti (Lab.), Baroness Sayeeda Warsi (Con.) and Lord John Hendy (Lab.)

At the meeting, Mohamedou and Steve spoke about their experiences and the unlikely friendship that developed between them at Guantánamo, when Steve, a member of the National Guard in Oregon, had been unexpectedly drafted to be one of six guards responsible for guarding him in the months after his horrendous torture came to an end in 2003. Mohamedou told the Parliamentarians how he had been kidnapped by his own government’s representatives on the orders of the US, contrasting the situation in Mauritania with the checks and balances and respect for the law that citizens are supposed to be able take for granted in the West, and proceeded to explain how he subsequently lost 15 years of his life in a regime of torture and/or profound isolation in a “black site” in Jordan, in Afghanistan and in Guantánamo.

The two men, united by their friendship, forged in the depths of Guantánamo, are, on the face of it, an odd couple — Mohamedou a slight, animated figure, whose charming manner and flashes of wit almost, but not entirely, hide the trauma that still haunts him, while Steve, muscular and tall, speaks quietly and nervously about how he came to understand that his country had lied to him. His own trauma is perhaps even more evident that Mohamedou’s, but both men embody the damage caused by America’s flight from the law, and descent into the barbarity of torture prisons and the systemic abuse of prisoners after 9/11, and hearing from them together was a powerful experience for everyone there: the MPs and peers, as well as the campaigners, even — or perhaps especially — those who work on Guantánamo persistently.

I also provided an update about the current situation at Guantánamo, particularly urging the APPG to advocate for the resettlement in the UK of one or two of the men unanimously approved for release from Guantánamo by high-level US government review processes, who cannot be sent home, or resettled in the US, because of provisions, inserted by Republicans and renewed annually, in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). As a result, third countries must be found that are prepared to offer these men new homes. 16 of the 30 men still held at Guantánamo have been approved for release, and 13 of these men cannot be repatriated.

It is inspiring, given the number of pressing political demands on MPs and peers right now, that 13 MPs and peers have already joined the APPG, and it was particularly encouraging that Helena Kennedy, who has a long history of opposing Guantánamo’s existence, and John McDonnell, who chaired the APPG for the release of Shaker Aamer in 2014-15, were not only able to attend the meeting, but also spoke about their experiences, and provided helpful comments. Thanks are also due to Chris Law for chairing the meeting so well. It was particularly reassuring to hear from some of those present that the energy at the inaugural meeting, and the numbers of those present (Parliamentarians as well as campaigners), was in marked contrast to some other APPGs.

Thanks are also due to the many campaigners who worked so hard to establish the APPG, in particular members of the UK Guantánamo Network, including Sara Birch, the Network’s Convenor, Hugh Sandeman, Dominique O’Neill, Lise Rossi, Bernie Sullivan and Khandan Lolaki-Noble.

The UK Guantánamo Network includes members of various Amnesty groups, Close Guantánamo and other groups, who have also been holding monthly vigils for the closure of Guantánamo outside Parliament on the first Wednesday of every month, and I’ve also recently expanded the scope of the vigils, successfully persuading other campaigners across the US, in Mexico and in various EU countries, to join us in creating a rolling program of coordinated monthly vigils for the prison’s closure.

Inspiring though this inaugural meeting was, the hard work of the APPG must now begin in earnest, focusing in particular on resettlement proposals that also involve a number of EU countries, lawyers for the men approved for release, and the State Department.

Taking Guantánamo to Buckinghamshire and Brighton

On Tuesday, the day after the APPG, I joined Mohamedou and Steve in Buckinghamshire, for a screening of ‘The Mauritanian’ at the Royal Grammar School in High Wycombe followed by another screening on the Wednesday at the National Film and Television School in Beaconsfield.

These events were organised by Khandan Lolaki-Noble, with the help of her daughter Yasmin, 18, and her son Cameron, 15, who had all been inspired by seeing ‘The Mauritanian’ last year, followed by a Q&A session with Mohamedou, Kevin Macdonald and myself, during Mohamedou’s first UK speaking tour. Cameron had contacted Mohamedou on Instagram after the screening, and the two had struck up a friendship, and Khandan had arranged Mohamedou’s visit, from the Netherlands, where he is living and working as a writer, as well as, at the last minute, setting up a fundraiser to fly Steve over from Oregon.

Khandan and her family (Yasmin, Cameron and her husband Scott) put us up, and made us all feel incredibly welcome, and both the events — largely attended by secondary school students — were a great success, with Mohamedou charming the audiences as always, with Steve quietly explaining how he came to know Mohamedou and to recognise his own government as the enemy of law and justice, and with me providing details about who is still held at Guantánamo, and why we in the UK should take in one or two of these men.

We also showed videos that Kevin Macdonald, and Mohamedou’s lawyer, Nancy Hollander, had made for the students, and, at the end of the first screening, we also showed the moving short film made for the New York Times about the amazing sailing ships that Moath al-Alwi makes at Guantánamo from recycled materials, and I had the opportunity to let the audience know that he is still held, and is one of the 16 men awaiting release, and one of the 13 in need of a third country to offer him a new home.

Afterwards, Mohamedou signed copies of his memoir, Guantánamo Diary, and those attending the events engaged us all in lively conversation, with, hopefully, some of them inspired to make human rights part of their lives.

On Friday, after a day off, in which Mohamedou finally got to meet with Moazzam Begg — the two men having never met before, even though they were, at one time, both held in isolation in Guantánamo just a short distance from each other — we reconvened at the University of Brighton for the final screening of the mini-tour, initiated by Sara Birch and organised by two of her students.

It was, yet again, a great success, and with hundreds of people — mostly young people — having attended the three screenings and having responded so enthusiastically to the gravity of the US crimes exposed in ‘The Mauritanian’, it felt like the start of a movement. That’s probably a fanciful notion, but it was noticeable, at the last two screenings, when I asked audience members if they would support the resettlement in the UK of one or two of the Guantánamo prisoners who can’t be repatriated, a significant number of hands shot up enthusiastically.

With Suella Braverman as home secretary, seeking to make the very notion of being a refugee illegal, and clamping down, in an unprecedented manner, on the right to protest, the political situation in the UK isn’t conducive to humanitarian appeals on behalf of men trapped at Guantánamo, but the British people have refused to be cowed by official indifference or obstruction before — in the cases of the British citizens and residents released from Guantánamo between 2004 and 2009, and, particularly noticeably, in the case of Shaker Aamer, who was eventually freed after over 120,000 people signed a petition calling for his release (which involved Muslim communities collecting signatures in the street in numerous locations over many months), after years of campaigning by activists, after 100 MPs and celebrities stood with a giant inflatable figure of him, calling for his release, after pressure was exerted by MPs (four of whom visited Washington, D.C. in May 2015 to urge his release), and by the mainstream media, with the Daily Mail in particular unexpectedly taking up his cause.

As Mohamedou was fond of telling the audiences, the British people have done more to protest about Guantánamo than anyone else in the world. We’re currently having to endure a chilling increase in authoritarianism and intolerance from our government, but the majority of the British people don’t share those views, and are far more in tune with the kind of principles and values that, in the post-war years, saw representatives of the UK (including high-profile Conservatives) lead the way in establishing human rights, and rights for refugees.

The refugees of Guantánamo need our support. Let’s remember our values, and raise our voices and demand that the UK reaches out to the Biden administration to help these men, and to support the closure, once and for all, of the Guantánamo prison, whose lawlessness and cruelty should shame us all.

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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 (see the ongoing 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, in 2018, he was part of the occupation of the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden in Deptford, to try to prevent its destruction — and that of 16 structurally sound council flats next door — by Lewisham Council and Peabody.

Since 2019, Andy has become increasingly involved in environmental activism, recognizing that climate change poses an unprecedented threat to life on earth, and that the window for change — requiring a severe reduction in the emission of all greenhouse gases, and the dismantling of our suicidal global capitalist system — is rapidly shrinking, as tipping points are reached that are occurring much quicker than even pessimistic climate scientists expected. You can read his articles about the climate crisis here.

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