Videos: Andy Worthington and Sara Birch at the London Rally for the Closure of Guantánamo, Jan. 14, 2023

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On Jan.14, as I explained in a recent article, Photos and Report: The Inspiring Close Guantánamo March and Rally in London, Jan. 14, 2023, the UK Guantánamo Network, which includes members of various Amnesty International groups, the Close Guantánamo campaign and the Guantánamo Justice Campaign, held a march and rally for the closure of the prison at Guantánamo Bay, marking the 21st anniversary of its opening three days earlier.

The rally in Trafalgar Square, which featured a number of speakers, followed a march from the Houses of Parliament, up Whitehall and past 10 Downing Street to Trafalgar Square, in which dozens of campaigners marched in silence, in single file, wearing orange jumpsuits and hoods, and holding placards showing the 35 men still held.

Speakers at the rally included myself and Sara Birch, the convenor of the UK Guantánamo Network, who read out a statement by former prisoner Omar Deghayes, and I’m delighted to post videos of both these speeches, on my YouTube channel (which you’re welcome to subscribe to!), as recorded by Sinai Noor.

Others who spoke were Ann Garrett of the Guantánamo Justice Campaign, who read out a poem, Sara’s 16-year old daughter Aisha, who made her first ever public speech, Imam Suliman Gani, a longtime supporter of efforts to close Guantánamo, Dr. Deepa Govindarajan Driver, academic and trade unionist, and Lise Rossi of Amnesty International.

Of the 35 men still held at the prison, 20 have been approved for release by high-level US government review processes, and one other man is awaiting release after completing a sentence which came to an end on March 1 last year, and in my speech I particularly focused on the plight of these 20 men, because the decisions to release them, being purely administrative, have no legal weight, and there is nothing the men can do if, as seems to be the case, the Biden administration is not sufficiently prioritizing their release, either to their home countries, or, in some cases, when they cannot be safely repatriated, to third countries that must be found that are prepared to offer them new homes.

As I pointed out, the situation these men are in is as fundamentally lawless as it was when Guantánamo was first established 21 years ago, when they were first designated as “enemy combatants”, who could be held without any rights whatsoever as human beings.

The UK Guantánamo Network holds monthly vigils for the closure of Guantánamo in Parliament Square, taking place on Wednesdays from 1-3pm, and the next vigils are on Feb. 15, Mar. 8 and Apr. 15, when we will continue to highlight the cases of the men approved for release but still held, and to point out how shameful it is to approve men for release but then not to actually free them. Do get in touch if you’d like to be involved.

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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 (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.