Archive for December, 2024
The “Ghost” of Guantánamo is Freed; Ridah Al-Yazidi, Never Charged, Held Since Day One, and Approved for Release 15 Years Ago
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In welcome news, the Pentagon has announced that it has repatriated from Guantánamo Ridah Al-Yazidi, 59, a Tunisian prisoner held without charge or trial since the very first day of the prison’s operations nearly 23 years ago, on January 11, 2002.
Although almost completely unknown to the outside world, because of the mainstream media’s persistent lack of interest in investigating the mundane lawlessness of so much of the prison’s operations, Al-Yazidi’s case is one of the most outstanding cases of casual injustice at Guantánamo.
Along with two other men who are still held, he was approved for release 15 years ago, through the deliberations of the high-profile Guantánamo Review Task Force, comprising officials drawn from various government departments and the intelligence agencies, who met once a week throughout 2009 to administratively decide the fate of the 240 prisoners that President Obama had inherited from George W. Bush.
Plumbing the Depths of Human Depravity: 450 Days of Extermination in Gaza
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For 450 days, the State of Israel has been engaged in a sustained policy of vengeance and extermination against the trapped civilian population of the Gaza Strip, a “Holy War” driven by a vile supremacist settler colonial mentality masquerading as the fulfilment of an invented religious entitlement to the Palestinians’ land, involving a giddy and unfettered hatred of the Palestinians as sub-human, and specific revenge for the assault on Israel, on October 7, 2023, in which armed militants who had broken out of the “open-air prison” in which they had been confined for 16 years, went on a killing spree that left 1,068 Israelis and 71 foreign nationals dead, and also kidnapped 251 others.
At the barest minimum, over the last 450 days, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians — mostly civilians — have been killed, or will die, as a result of relentless bombing raids, in which block after block of residential housing, containing almost a quarter of a million homes, has been completely destroyed or damaged, mostly without warning, using bombs of such devastating ferocity that those killed have been torn apart, decapitated, crushed, hurled through the air like broken dolls, or buried alive.
Survivors, meanwhile, have been picked off by snipers, or by armed drones and quadcopters, or have died — and will continue to die — because of a “complete siege” imposed two days after the October 7 attacks, cutting off supplies of food and water, of fuel and of vital medical equipment and supplies. This, accompanied by the almost unimaginably cynical destruction of most of Gaza’s hospitals and health centres, has sentenced to death as yet untold numbers of the elderly, pregnant women, babies and children, those with existing medical conditions, and those with diseases created by the siege, as well as the complete destruction of Gaza’s water and sewage systems.
Podcast: I Discuss the Shameful State of the World, and Resistance and Hope in 2025 with Andy Bungay for Riverside Radio
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If you have the time and the inclination, please check out my latest interview with my colleague Andy Bungay, posted below as a YouTube podcast, and originally broadcast, as the latest in an ongoing series of monthly interviews, during Andy’s shows last Saturday and Sunday on Riverside Radio, a community radio station in Wandsworth, in south west London, and subsequently made available on his Mixcloud page here and here. I’m pleased to note that Andy also played the latest live recordings by my band The Four Fathers, as well as ‘They Don’t Care’, the latest online single by my son Tyler, the beatboxer and singer known as The Wiz-RD.
In a freewheeling 80-minute discussion, we focused on some of the many profoundly dispiriting events dominating our lives as 2024 draws to a close — the imminent return as the US president of Donald Trump, the ongoing genocidal carnage being inflicted by Israel on the trapped Palestinian civilian population of the Gaza Strip, and the growing menace of catastrophic climate change.
All are thoroughly depressing topics, of course, but unlike last month, when my discussion with Andy, available here as ‘World on Fire: Gaza, Climate Collapse and the Collective Derangement of Western Politicians’, was rather dark (almost certainly because of the intensity of Israel’s “genocide within a genocide” in northern Gaza), this month’s conversation was threaded through with resistance and hope.
Guantánamo: Two Malaysians Convicted of Terrorism Repatriated to Serve Out the Rest of Their Sentences; 18 Men Never Charged Are Still Held
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After 20 intensely irritating months of inaction, the Biden administration is — finally, belatedly — making up for lost time, releasing prisoners from Guantánamo, ending the second longest period in the prisons’s long and sordid history that no prisoners have been freed.
The good news began yesterday, when the Pentagon announced that Mohammed Abdul Malik Bajabu, the prison’s sole Kenyan prisoner, and one of 16 men long approved for release by high-level US government review processes, had been repatriated, as I reported here. Bajabu arrived at Guantánamo nearly 18 years ago, in March 2007, after brief and brutal stays in secret US prisons in Djibouti and at Bagram airbase, and had been held without charge or trial at Guantánamo ever since.
Almost exactly three years ago, in December 2021, he was approved for release by a Periodic Review Board, a parole-type process introduced by President Obama in 2013, but like the 15 other men long approved for release, that decision had not led to any enthusiasm on the part of the authorities to actually free him, in large part because the review processes were and are purely administrative, meaning that no legal mechanism exists to compel the government to release these men if they find it complicated or inconvenient to do so.
Guantánamo’s Sole Kenyan Prisoner Is Freed; 15 Other Men Long Approved for Release Must Now Be Freed Too
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Wonderful news from Guantánamo, as Mohammed Abdul Malik Bajabu, the prison’s sole Kenyan prisoner, and one of 16 men who had long been approved for release, has been repatriated and reunited with his family, leaving 29 men in total still held at the prison.
The release confirms that, behind the scenes, the Biden administration has taken seriously the scandal of holding 16 men unanimously approved for release by high-level US government review processes — decisions that were taken between two and four years ago, and in three outlying cases, nearly 15 years ago.
Bajabu, with two other men, was approved for release by a Periodic Review Board, a parole-type process established by President Obama in 2013, almost three years ago, on December 27, 2021, but had not been freed in part because the review process is purely administrative, meaning that no legal mechanism exists to compel the government to free any of these men if they cannot be bothered or find it politically inconvenient.
Guantánamo Art Exhibition in London Humanizes Men Maligned as the “Worst of the Worst”, Shows How Artwork Gave Them Hope
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Last Thursday, a powerful and historically significant event took place in London, when an exhibition of Guantánamo prisoners’ artwork was launched at Rich Mix, a cultural and community space at 35-47 Bethnal Green Road in Shoreditch, London E1 6LA. The exhibition was supported by the UK Guantánamo Network (an umbrella group of organizations calling for Guantánamo’s closure), in collaboration with Amnesty International UK, and was curated by Lise Rossi and Dominique O’Neil, core team members of the UK Guantánamo Network, and Amnesty International members.
The exhibition, “Don’t Forget Us Here”, named after the compelling 2021 memoir of former prisoner Mansoor Adayfi, runs until January 5, and the launch was, genuinely, historically significant because it is the first exhibition of Guantánamo prisoners’ artwork in the UK, and because Mansoor himself attended, and gave a profoundly moving speech about the significance of art for the men held at Guantánamo.
If we lived in a world that cared about the continued existence of the prison at Guantánamo Bay, and the power of artwork to break through the sweeping isolation and dehumanization to which the men held there were subjected throughout the seven years that they were held under George W. Bush, until an easing of conditions under President Biden allowed “compliant” prisoners to take classes, including art classes, on a communal basis, Mansoor would have been featured on mainstream news channels, but, shamefully the world doesn’t care.
Since the prison at Guantánamo Bay opened nearly 23 years ago, holding Muslim men (and boys) for the most part indefinitely without charge or trial, most of the western mainstream media — and particular the US media — turned a blind eye to the dehumanization and brutalization of Muslims held there, and also held elsewhere in the US’s global network of “war on terror” prisons.
They also stayed largely silent as the west’s ruinous warmongering policies in Muslim countries created a global wave of refugees in 2015, which, in turn, exacerbated anti-refugee and anti-immigrant sentiment to such an extent that the UK left the EU via Brexit, Donald Trump was elected in the US, and racism and Islamophobia are now so deeply entrenched that western governments, and most of the western media, have failed to recognize Israel’s relentless 14-month long assault on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip as genocide, even though, if it involved anyone but Muslims, they would have fallen over themselves to condemn it.
In this fundamentally racist media landscape, the only news channel that was present at the launch was the Turkish news channel TRT World. They interviewed Mansoor and produced the short feature below, which included footage from the launch. I hope that you have time to watch it, but I also hope that further footage eventually surfaces — perhaps of my introductory speech, providing a summary of the situation at Guantánamo now, of the urgent need for 16 men approved for release (including two artists) to be freed before President Biden leaves office, but especially of Mansoor’s charming, eloquent and heartfelt discussion of the meaning of the art.
For anyone wanting to know more, I urge you, if you haven’t done so already, to read Mansoor’s memoir, which contains a truly inspiring chapter on the liberating effects of creativity on the men deprived of free expression for so long.
One of these men is Moath al-Alwi, the only one of the six artists whose work is featured in the exhibition who is still held, even though he was unanimously approved for release by a high-level US government review process nearly three years ago. Moath’s speciality is making three-dimensional sculptures of sailing ships, which he creates, with extraordinary inventiveness, using recycled materials. As Mansoor explains in his memoir, “Moath could make anything once he set his mind to it.”
On display as part of the exhibition is a beautiful video of Moath’s ship-building techniques, made many years ago for the New York Times, and now available on the video creators’ YouTube channel, and posted below. It features an actor speaking Moath’s own words, and vividly brings to life his inventiveness.
This period in Guantánamo’s long history, when creativity was tolerated, or even encouraged, is referred to by Mansoor, in his memoir, as “the golden age”, and the following passage demonstrates wonderfully how Moath was able to liberate not only himself, but also his fellow prisoners, and even some of the guards, through his three-dimensional creations.
We were at the peak of the golden age when Moath made his own windows. One opened east to Makkah and the sun rising over a vast blue sea dotted with ships and palm trees swaying gently in the morning light. The other window opened west to the most beautiful sunset, palm trees so close you could touch them, birds flying freely, and the sea a deep and mysterious blue. People came from all over to enjoy those windows and his other work. No one was jealous, except maybe some of the guards. The camp admin didn’t know how to feel about them.
While the other five artists — Sabri Al-Qurashi, Muhammad Ansi, Ahmed Rabbani, Abdualmalik Abud (aka Abd Almalik) and Mansoor himself — have been released from Guantánamo, it would be unwise to conclude that their release has, necessarily, meant freedom. This is because many prisoners released from Guantánamo, and, in particular, many of those resettled in third countries because it was regarded as unsafe for them to be sent home, continue to suffer from the stigma of having been held at Guantánamo — regarded with suspicion, denied travel documents, unable to work, and prevented from being reunited with their families, to name just a few examples of the ways in which they remain marginalized and without fundamental rights — even though they were never charged with a crime.
As I explained when I posted an article about the art exhibition a few weeks ago, “For the men released from Guantánamo, life has not necessarily improved. While Mansoor, released in Serbia in 2016, has, in recent years, finally been allowed to travel freely, and Abd Almalik lives in Montenegro, and has a website making his artwork available to interested parties, Sabri Al-Qurashi, released in Kazakhstan in 2014, lives fundamentally without any basic rights, and Muhammad Ansi, resettled in Oman in 2017, was, recently, forcibly repatriated to his home country of Yemen, where his status in unknown. Ahmed Rabbani, meanwhile, who was returned to his home country of Pakistan in February 2023, has found no support on his return, and recently suffered the loss of his brother, Abdul Rahim, also held with him in Guantánamo, and, previously, in CIA ‘black sites’, because of this lack of care.”
One other artist, not featured in the exhibition, also deserves mention, as he is also still held at Guantánamo, despite having been unanimously approved for release in July 2022. Khaled Qassim (aka Khalid Qassim, or Khalid Qasim), celebrated by Mansoor as a kind and caring person, a cellblock leader, a singer, a poet and a footballer, made sculptural paintings using the fabric of Guantánamo itself — the gravel on the ground — mixed with glue and then painted, as well as heavily lacquered allegorical paintings, and, along with Moath, the quality of his work is worthy of international attention.
As for the exhibition itself, its opening in the UK is in itself something of minor miracle. As Mansoor explains in his memoir, “the golden age” at Guantánamo didn’t last forever. Within just a few years, as the military leadership rotated and changed, another violent clampdown occurred, and by early 2013 the prisoners had embarked on a prison-wide hunger strike, which, after years of global media indifference, suddenly reawakened them to the prison’s ongoing existence, and finally prompted Obama to resume the release of prisoners, which had largely ground to a halt after Republicans had raised repeated obstacles to delay or prevent the ability of the administration to free anyone.
Despite this renewed clampdown, during the period when a certain openness held sway, the prisoners had been allowed to give their art to their lawyers, and, via them, to their families, and, as a result, in October 2017, the very first exhibition of prisoners’ artwork — including some of Moath’s sailing ships — opened at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. Versions of it have since taken place in other locations in the US, as well as in Berlin and the European Parliament, and, most recently, with Mansoor’s involvement, in Belgrade, although that first exhibition prompted a horrible backlash from the Pentagon that had a profound impact on the artists still held.
As I explained in my recent article, “the existing arrangements — in which prisoners were allowed to give their art to their lawyers, and, via them, to their families — were abruptly cancelled, and the Pentagon claimed ownership of all the men’s art, the right to destroy it, if they wished, and the right to prevent any prisoner from leaving the prison with any of the work they had created. Prisoners were also — at least in some cases — prevented or restricted from making any new artwork.”
As I proceeded to explain, “These various threats and bans stayed in place until February 2023, when, finally, in response to a submission by two UN Special Mandates holders — the Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights, and the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism — they were lifted.”
The lifting of the ban allowed Ahmed Rabbani to return with his artwork to Pakistan, where he subsequently held an exhibition. However, although it must also have improved the mental health of Moath and Khaled, for both of whom art has become a part of themselves, it means nothing when they can still see no end to their imprisonment, because, as has been commonplace throughout Guantánamo’s history, despite them having been approved for release, they are still held by a captor — the US government — that has little or no interest in prioritizing the release of men it should never have held in the first place.
* * * * *
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.
To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s new Substack account, set up in November 2024, where he’ll be sending out a weekly newsletter, or his 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.
Is Hope Still Alive on the Anniversaries of the Genocide and Torture Conventions, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?
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For anyone concerned with human rights and international humanitarian law, two dates in 1948 — December 9 and December 10 — are of crucial importance, as these are the dates when the recently-formed United Nations, via its General Assembly, idealistically and optimistically adopted, on December 9, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the Genocide Convention), and, the day after, adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which established, for the first time, fundamental human rights to be universally protected, and which, as the UN explains, “inspired, and paved the way for, the adoption of more than seventy human rights treaties.” Ever since, December 10 — today — has been known and celebrated as Human Rights Day, while December 9 is marked as the International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide and of the Prevention of this Crime.
One of those subsequent treaties is the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (the Torture Convention), which, after decades of wrangling, was finally adopted by the General Assembly on December 10, 1984, the 36th anniversary of the UDHR, expanding on Article 5 of the Declaration, which states, unequivocally, “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”
The Genocide Convention, and the long quest for accountability
The Genocide Convention, drawing on the work of the Polish Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin, who first coined the term during the Second World War, defines genocide as “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” — “killing members of the group”, “causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group”, “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”, “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group”, and “forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
Please Support My Guantánamo Work With a Donation, or Subscribe to My New Substack Newsletter
Please click on the ‘Donate’ button below to make a donation towards the $2,500 (£2,000) I’m trying to raise to support my work on Guantánamo over the next three months.
Dear friends, fans, followers and supporters,
For nearly two decades, I’ve devoted most of my working life — and much of my waking, non-working life — to the largely thankless task of exposing the truth about the prison at Guantánamo Bay, telling the stories of the men and boys held there, revealing how most of them were not “the worst of the worst”, and had nothing to do with Al-Qaeda or terrorism, railing against the abhorrent lawlessness and brutality of the prison, and campaigning assiduously to try and get it closed.
Throughout this time, I have been reliant on you, my readers, to support me in my work as the prison’s foremost independent opponent, a reader-funded independent journalist and activist, free of the lamentable indifference or amnesia of most of the mainstream media, and able to articulate freely and persistently why it is so important not to allow the victims of Guantánamo to be dehumanized, and why the prison is, and has been consistently, a legal, moral and ethical abomination.
As a result of my regular quarterly appeals for support, many of you have, over the years, made one-off donations, or, in some cases, have becoming subscribers, donating a regular amount every month — all of which is essential to allow me to continue to work towards Guantánamo’s eventual closure.
Photos and Report: The Crucial “Free the Guantánamo 16” Monthly Global Vigils on Dec. 4, 2024
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On Wednesday, December 4, campaigners across the US and around the world held the latest coordinated monthly vigils for the closure of the prison at Guantánamo Bay. The vigils began in February 2023, taking place on the first Wednesday of every month, and, as a result, they have become known, amongst some of the organizers, as the “First Wednesday vigils.”
Photos from the vigils are posted below, as is a detailed description of why this month’s vigils, in particular, were so important.
Free the Guantánamo 16! Two Letters to President Biden; Signatories Include Former Prisoners, Ex-US Government Officials, UK Parliamentarians
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100 Former Guantánamo Prisoners, Ex-US Government Officials, Lawyers, Academics, Psychologists, Public Figures and Rights Organizations Send Letter to President Biden Urging Him to Free the 16 Men Still Held at Guantánamo Who Have Long Been Approved for Release; Second Letter is Sent by 40 British MPs and Peers, Academics and CEOs of UK Rights Organizations
Today, December 6, 2024, 100 individuals and organizations — including 36 former Guantánamo prisoners, 36 ex-US government officials, lawyers, academics, psychologists and public figures, and 28 rights organizations — have written to President Biden, with a second letter sent simultaneously by 40 British MPs and peers, academics and the CEOs of UK rights organizations, to urge him to take urgent action to free 16 men still held in the prison at Guantánamo Bay (out of 30 in total) who have long been approved for release.
These decisions, which were unanimously agreed through robust, high-level US government review processes, took place many years ago — between two and four years ago, and in three outlying cases nearly 15 years ago.
The former prisoners signing the US and international letter include the authors Mansoor Adayfi and Mohamedou Ould Slahi, and the supporters include Larry Wilkerson, the former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, and the musician and activist Roger Waters.
The UK letter includes 20 Parliamentarians, the Chief Executive of Amnesty International UK, and the film director Kevin Macdonald (‘The Mauritanian’).
Who's still at Guantánamo?
