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.

This month’s vigils were hugely significant, as they represented the last opportunity to try and impress on President Biden the urgency of finalizing resettlement plans for 16 of the 30 men still held, who have long been unanimously approved for release by high-level US government review processes — for between two and four years, and in three outlying cases for nearly 15 years.

The reason these men are still held, despite having been unanimously approved for release, is because the review processes were purely administrative, meaning that no legal mechanism exists to compel the government to free them if, as has become all too apparent since the last prisoner release in April 2023, senior officials have no real interest in doing so.

That, to be blunt, is a morally repugnant position for the government to take, nearly 23 years into the sordid history of Guantánamo, and with Donald Trump poised to take power once more, when he will, it can confidently be asserted, seal the prison shut as thoroughly as he did in his first term in office. Over the course of his four dispiriting years in power from 2017 to 2020, Trump only reluctantly released one prisoner, essentially entombing the rest of the men alive.

To his credit, Joe Biden released ten men between July 2021 and April 2023, out of the 40 men he inherited from Trump, but his failure to do anything for the last 20 months is completely unacceptable. This is, in particular, because, shorn of any legally enforceable context, the administrative recommendations to release these 16 men have left them as, fundamentally, the personal prisoners of the executive branch, their release dependent not on the law, but on the “discretion and grace” of those holding them, as the Center for Constitutional Rights memorably described it in 2022.

For balance, it should be noted that the situation is complicated by the fact that third countries must be found that are prepared to offer new homes to most of these men, because provisions inserted every year by Republicans into the National Defense Authorization Act prohibit the repatriation of Guantánamo prisoners to a number of proscribed countries, including Yemen, where most of these men are from.

The Biden administration had taken steps to address this particular problem by appointing a former ambassador, Tina Kaidanow, as the Special Representative for Guantánamo Affairs, who was “responsible for all matters pertaining to the transfer of detainees from the Guantánamo Bay facility to third countries.” By October 2023, Ms. Kaidanow had secured a resettlement deal for some of these men with Oman, but when the October 7 attacks took place in southern Israel, the administration called off the resettlement, while a plane was on the runway at Guantánamo, claiming that the “political optics” had shifted, and that it was no longer appropriate for the resettlement to go ahead.

No new date for the resettlement was proposed, and, instead, for the last 14 months, the Biden administration has allowed itself to become so consumed with supporting Israel in its extermination of the Palestinian people — and so blithely confident that the Democrats would win the election last month — that they completely forgot about the men still languishing at Guantánamo, still awaiting the “discretion and grace” of President Biden and Antony Blinken. In the meantime, Tine Kaidanow, who had worked so hard to free them, passed away on October 16 without having managed to achieve what she had been appointed to do, as political maneuvering was once more allowed to derail efforts to deliver some belated justice to Guantánamo’s long-suffering prisoners, still, after nearly 23 years, collateral damage in the “war on the law” that the Bush administration initiated after the 9/11 attacks.

We must hope that senior administration officials are now aware that time is running out, and that the resettlement plan needs to be urgently revived to demonstrate to the world some recognition that consigning men long approved for release to another four years of Donald Trump — men held, in quite a fundamental manner, as the personal prisoners of the executive — would be a PR disaster that should be avoided to secure at least one positive outcome for Joe Biden’s legacy.

Meanwhile, the clock ticks ever faster. Because of another cynical and obstructive intervention by Republican lawmakers, Congress must be given 30 days’ notice before any prisoners are released from Guantánamo, meaning that the administration only has until December 20 to finalize any resettlement plans, allowing them to free the men on January 19, the day before Trump’s inauguration.

The next vigils have been moved from the first Wednesday of the month to Saturday January 11, the 23rd anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, when many other groups will be joining us. Events marking the anniversary have, historically, been the most prominent annual opportunity to highlight the shame of Guantánamo’s continued existence, and I hope that will again be the case.

However, for the 16 men approved for release, the reality is that, by then, their fate will already have been decided. Either President Biden will have taken decisive action, and their freedom will be guaranteed, or he will have failed to do so, consigning them to, at the very least, another four years in Guantánamo, to add to the 17 to 22 years that they have already spent without charge to trial in the last broken and intolerable manifestation of the brutal and lawless excesses of the “war on terror.”

A tenth vigil took place in Los Angeles, although, as is often the case, Jon Krampner, who bravely maintains a solo vigil every month, was unable to get anyone to take a photo of him. He wrote, “This afternoon I took my stand at the Westwood Federal Building on the west side of Los Angeles instead of the Downtown Federal Building. This is because ICUJP (Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace) will be doing its annual ‘Close Guantánamo Now’ protest rally on January 11 at the Westwood Fed and I wanted to scope out the new location. Not much to report beyond the fact that I stood there from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. I usually try to make lunchtime, but I was slow getting off the mark, plus there was the crosstown drive. Two or three cars honked in what I perceived as a gesture of solidarity, although, being LA drivers, they might just have been mad at the person in front of them. One person grumbled some obscenities, but they went by so fast I couldn’t determine if they were the vehicular equivalent of counter-protestors or just unhappy with their lot in life. No one offered to take my photo. Next month we’ll have the actual annual ICUJP protest with speakers, a tableau of detainees and a musician or two, then in February I’ll resume my lonely vigil.”

Amnesty in Minneapolis also called off their vigil because of the darkness of winter, although they’ll be back on January 11, but two other supporters also sent in photos, as shown below.

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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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