Abdul Rahim al-Nashiri

When something is irredeemably broken, the sensible course of action is to get rid of it. However, when it comes to military trials for terror suspects in the Bush administration’s “war on terror,” however broken the system is, government officials and lawmakers have repeatedly gathered round to put it back together again, and continue to […]

Those of us who have been studying Guantánamo closely were not surprised when, on March 7, President Obama announced that he was lifting a ban on trials by Military Commission at Guantánamo, which he imposed on his first day in office in January 2009, and also issued an executive order establishing a periodic review of […]

Just two weeks ago, as former US President George W. Bush was preparing to make his first visit to Europe since the publication, last November, of his biography Decision Points, the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, and the Berlin-based European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, with support from the International Federation for […]

Last week I returned from Poland, where I had been touring the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (which I co-directed with filmmaker Polly Nash), and discussing the importance of an ongoing investigation into the complicity of the Polish government in the establishment of a secret CIA torture prison in Poland in the […]

Last Monday, Moazzam Begg (former Guantánamo prisoner and the director of the NGO Cageprisoners) and I flew out to Poland to take part in a week-long tour of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (which I co-directed with filmmaker Polly Nash) to raise awareness of the plight of the remaining 172 prisoners […]

Last Friday, Ken Ota of the newspaper Revolution asked me to do a phone interview to discuss the recent announcement that President Obama was planning a new series of trials by Military Commission at Guantánamo, to explain the significance of this announcement, and to run through the largely shambolic history of the Commissions since their […]

Event: Press conference with Moazzam Begg, Andy Worthington and Bartlomiej Jankowski, lawyer for CIA “ghost prisoner” Abu Zubaydah. Time: Tuesday February 1, 15:00 hrs. Venue: Kino Muranów, ul. Gen. Andersa 1 (Plac Bankowy, metro “Ratusz”), 00-147, Warszawa. Last week, it was announced that, from February 1 to 5, 2011, Moazzam Begg, former Guantánamo prisoner and […]

For T. S. Eliot, April was the cruelest month, but for the prisoners at Guantánamo it is January — from the dashed hopes of January 2009, when President Obama swept into office issuing an executive order in which he promised to close the prison within a year, to January 2010, when, having failed to do […]

From February 1 to 5, 2011, Moazzam Begg, former Guantánamo prisoner and director of the NGO Cageprisoners, and Andy Worthington, investigative journalist and author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison, will be visiting Poland for a tour of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo,” […]

For those seeking accountabiity for the senior Bush administration officials and lawyers who established a global torture program in the “War on Terror,” involving extraordinary rendition and torture in a variety of secret prisons, the news that the Polish Prosecutor has today accepted the claims of Abu Zubaydah, a former CIA “ghost prisoner,” that he […]