Archive for June, 2025
Did a Leak Stop Trump From Sending 9,000 Migrants to Guantánamo, Including 800 Europeans?
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Yesterday, marking UN Torture Day, I posted my latest article on Close Guantánamo, which I’m cross-posting here, with reflections on torture past and present at the prison, Donald Trump’s shameful and lawless decision to co-opt Guantánamo for his deeply racist “war on migrants” — and the latest news involving Haitian migrants. I also publicized a recent letter to Kristi Noem and Pete Hegseth calling for the closure of Guantánamo by Rep. Rashida Tlaib and 14 of her Congressional colleagues, which was, in particular, prompted by alarming reports two weeks ago that the Trump administration was intending to send 9,000 new migrants to Guantanamo, including 800 Europeans. The story was decried as “fake news” by the White House, but I suggested that it was in fact a plan, and that it was leaked by officials within the administration to get it dropped, which seems to have quietly happened after numerous foreign governments expressed outrage about the proposals.
Yesterday, June 26, was the UN International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, first marked in 1998 to commemorate the historic day in 1987 when the UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment came into effect, and also to mark the historic day in 1945 when the United Nations Charter, the founding document of the UN, was signed in San Francisco by 50 countries.
Despite the best intentions of those who worked assiduously to create the Torture Convention over many decades, many of its signatories have — either openly or covertly — failed to fulfill their obligations to prevent the use of torture.
Particularly prominent amongst the violators of the Torture Convention is the United States, which, following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, outsourced torture to a number of notorious right-abusing regimes in the Middle East, and also implemented a covert global torture program via a number of CIA “black site” torture prisons scattered around the world. I covered much of this story as the lead writer of a UN report about secret detention in 2010, and the CIA’s role was scrutinized and condemned in a torture report undertaken by the Senate Intelligence Committee, whose 500-page unclassified summary was published in December 2014.
Israel Cries “War Crimes” as a Hospital is Hit by Iran, While Sickeningly Ignoring its Genocidal 20-Month “War” on Gaza’s Hospitals
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In Iranian attacks on Israel yesterday, as part of its ongoing retaliation for Israel’s initial unprovoked attacks a week ago and its repeatedly ongoing aggression, an Iranian missile reportedly struck the Soroka Hospital in Beersheba, the largest hospital in southern Israel.
Iranian sources claimed that, rather than striking the hospital, they had struck two military targets nearby, “the Israeli Defense Forces’ Command and Intelligence (IDF C4I) headquarters, as well as a military intelligence facility located in the Gav-Yam Technology Park.” The hospital is located between the two sites, and, according to Iran, “sustained minor damage from the blast shockwave.”
Israel disputed this, claiming that it was a direct attack, and footage showing a plume of smoke rising from the caved-in top of the building would seem to vindicate their analysis.
However, even if the hospital was directly hit, a third possibility has not been addressed. According to reports, a barrage of 20 to 30 Iranian missiles were aimed at the Beersheba area and other targets, so it may be that, while targeting and hitting the military targets, another missile inadvertently fell on the hospital.
Israel’s Attack on Iran Marks the Pinnacle of Netanyahu’s Long and Deranged Obsession with Seeking Israeli Security Through Endless War
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In the last week, Benjamin Netanyahu has opened up a fifth front in his claimed efforts to ensure the safety of Israel, launching an unprovoked attack on Iran on the basis of claims — which he has been making for the last 30 years — that Iran was close to establishing a viable nuclear weapons program.
No evidence exists to suggest that Netanyahu is correct. Just three months ago, in testimony to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Donald Trump’s Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, confirmed that the United States intelligence community “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.”
In addition, US negotiators were engaged in active discussions with the Iranians regarding their nuclear program when Israel launched its unprovoked attack. These had been taking place since April 12, with a sixth round of talks scheduled for Sunday June 15, but these talks were, of course, scuppered by Israel’s actions.
Seeking Your Support in My 20th Year as an Independent Truth-Telling Human Rights Journalist
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2025 marks the 20th year of my full-time work as a tenacious independent journalist and activist focused on issues of dehumanization, militarism, prisons, social justice and the many overlapping evils of 21st century capitalism.
Relentlessly focused on endless war and the ever-increasing extraction and use of fossil fuels, 21st century capitalism threatens our very existence on this miraculous planet, and yet its supporters, in governments, in business and in the mainstream media have conspired to hide, minimize or discredit the truth through distractions, distortions and, increasingly, direct suppression.
The main focus of my work since 2006 has been the US prison at Guantánamo Bay, where, for over 23 years, the US has, outrageously, been holding men either indefinitely without charge or trial, or, in a handful of cases, facing charges in a broken trial system, the military commissions. My focus on Guantánamo began with 14 months of relentless research and writing, for my book The Guantánamo Files, and has continued ever since with over 2,600 articles about Guantánamo that I have written and published here on my website. Since 2012, I’ve also been running the Close Guantánamo website, and I continue to spearhead monthly global vigils for Guantánamo’s closure, and a photo campaign every 100 days.
Grenfell to Gaza: Deadly Hierarchies of Race and Class on the 8th Anniversary of the Grenfell Tower Fire
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Eight years ago today, the world awoke to a vision of horror — an inferno of flame engulfing a residential tower block of social housing in North Kensington in west London.
72 people died in the fire, by far the largest loss of life in any housing fire in modern British history.
From the beginning, for those paying attention, it was clear that this was a disaster that should never have happened, brought about through the persistent neglect of the block, and, in particular, through its recent refurbishment, which had involved it being “prettified” with insanely flammable cladding, a deranged situation that had been facilitated and allowed through the homicidal greed of the international manufacturing companies involved, and the shameful deregulation of safety standards by central and local government.
Eight years on, however, despite a long and expensive public inquiry, no one has been held accountable for the failures and omissions that led to the fire.
The Alarming Kafkaesque Basis of Trump’s “War on Migrants”
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NOTE: On June 18, I was interviewed by Chris Cook for his weekly, hour-long Gorilla Radio show about this article. You can find the show here, and I’m in the second half, after Dan Kovalik talking about Israel’s war on Iran in the first half.
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On June 4, in a memorable, 69-page memorandum opinion, Judge James Boasberg, the Chief Judge of the District Court in Washington, D.C., began a ruling relating to Venezuelan migrants deported by the Trump administration to a mega-prison for alleged terrorists in El Salvador by quoting from Franz Kafka’s “The Trial,” in which the protagonist, Josef K., “awakens to encounter two strange men outside his room,” and “realizes that he is under arrest.” However, “When he asks the strangers why, he receives no answer. ‘We weren’t sent to tell you that,’ one says. ‘Proceedings are under way and you’ll learn everything in due course.’”
As Judge Boasberg added, “Bewildered by these men and distressed by their message, K. tries to comfort himself that he lives in ‘a state governed by law,’ one where ‘all statutes [are] in force.’ He therefore demands again, ‘How can I be under arrest? And in this manner?’ ‘Now there you go again,’ the guard replies. ‘We don’t answer such questions.’ Undeterred, K. offers his ‘papers’ and demands their arrest warrant. ‘Good heavens!’ the man scolds. ‘There’s been no mistake.’ ‘[O]ur department,’ he assures K., is only ‘attracted by guilt’; it ‘doesn’t seek [it] out . . . That’s the Law.’ ‘I don’t know that law,’ K. responds. ‘You’ll feel it eventually,’ the guard says.”
As Judge Boasberg proceeded to explain, “Such was the situation into which Frengel Reyes Mota, Andry Jose Hernandez Romero, and scores of other Venezuelan noncitizens say they were plunged on March 15, 2025. In the early morning hours, Venezuelans held by the Department of Homeland Security at El Valle Detention Facility in Texas were awakened from their cells, taken to a separate room, shackled, and informed that they were being transferred. To where? That they were not told. When asked, some guards reportedly laughed and said that they did not know; others told the detainees, incorrectly, that they were being transferred to another immigration facility or to Mexico or Venezuela.”
Photos and Report: The 29th Monthly Global Vigils for Guantánamo’s Closure, June 4, 2025
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On Wednesday June 4, campaigners across the US — in Washington, D.C., New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Detroit — and in London, Brussels and Mexico City, held the latest “First Wednesday” coordinated vigils calling for the closure of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay. In Belgrade, former prisoner Mansoor Adayfi held a solo vigil, and on Saturday June 7, campaigners in Cobleskill, NY rounded off the week of actions with a defiant protest in the rain.
I can’t express sufficiently my admiration for the small but big-hearted global family of activists who come out together once a month to defy the collective amnesia that, for the most part, has engulfed Guantánamo throughout most of the 23 wretched years of its existence. Many thanks to those involved, from various Amnesty International groups, Close Guantánamo, the UK Guantánamo Network, Witness Against Torture, the World Can’t Wait, the Peacemakers of Schoharie County, and various activist groups in New York City, as well as numerous other supporting groups.
Please see below for photos of the vigils, and read on for my assessment of why it remains important to campaign for Guantánamo’s closure — including the performative cruelty of Donald Trump’s use of the prison in his horrendous “war on migrants,” and how, inadvertently, he has demonstrated that the prison itself, although still holding 15 men, has become politically irrelevant, furthering arguments for its closure.
Podcast: Guantánamo’s Forgotten Prisoners, Trump’s “War on Migrants” and the Horrors of El Salvador’s CECOT Prison on Due Dissidence
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. To get links to all my work in your inbox, please also consider taking out a free or paid subscription to my new Substack newsletter.
This article was originally published on May 27 on the “Close Guantánamo” website, which I established in January 2012, on the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, with the US attorney Tom Wilner. Please join us — just an email address is required to be counted amongst those opposed to the ongoing existence of Guantánamo, and to receive updates of our activities by email.
Many thanks to Misty Winston for interviewing me two weeks ago for her show on Due Dissidence, a channel that we might call an alt-left alternative to the plague of alt-right streaming channels that dominate so much social media.
Misty and I have spoken many times before, beginning in the days when she was an indefatigable activist for Julian Assange, and, after finding a temporary home on various other platforms, it was great to catch up with her on a channel that, I hope, values her presence.
We spoke for 90 minutes, and the show was live-streamed on Rumble, and also on X, and was subsequently posted in its entirety on Substack.
Repression and Resistance: 40 Years from the Brutal Police Violence at the Battle of the Beanfield to the Suppression of Environmental Protest
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Today is the 40th anniversary of the largest and most violent peacetime assault on civilians in modern British history, when a convoy of 140 vehicles, home to around 500 individuals and families, was attacked with astonishing ferocity by around 1,400 paramilitarized police drawn from six countries and the MoD, as they tried to make their way to Stonehenge to set up what would have been the 12th annual Stonehenge Free Festival.
The festival culture of which Stonehenge was a part was largely influenced by counter-cultural ideas that had drifted across the water from the US in the late 1960s, via the hippie gatherings at Woodstock and elsewhere.
Their most famous British manifestation — the Glastonbury Festival — is still in existence today, confirming the power of the appeal of holding hedonistic music festivals outdoors that, over 50 years ago, had first been introduced by a bunch of visionary hippies, although its format today, like that of the many imitators it has spawned, is now largely dominated by the capitalistic forces that have devoured almost every aspect of the anti-materialistic impulses of its early pioneers.
Glastonbury wasn’t a free festival, as such, as it was run by Michael Eavis, once memorably described as “a Somerset farmer with crowd-gathering tendencies”, but key players in the free festival movement were intrinsically tied into its development in those years, as they and others pursued their vision of hedonistic pastoral egalitarianism.
Who's still at Guantánamo?
