Conditions at Guantanamo

Videos from ‘Guantánamo: 20 Years After’, the online conference, hosted by the University of Brighton, which took place on Nov. 12-13, 2021, and which I helped to organize. I was also a keynote speaker, along with former prisoner Shaker Aamer. Included here are videos of the keynote speeches, a presentation by Jeremy Varon of Witness Against Torture, and the conference’s three panel discussions.

The second part of my transcript of the powerful statement that Guantánamo prisoner and CIA “black site” torture victim Majid Khan read out at his sentencing hearing, with its powerful combination of contrition, on the one hand, and the brutality of his torture on the other, which seemed to be undertaken with no regard for discovering the truth, as he had persistently showed a willingness to cooperate with his interrogators.

My review of “Don’t Forget Us Here: Lost and Found at Guantánamo,” former prisoner Mansoor Adayfi’s riveting account of his 14 years in the prison, much of which was spent in fierce resistance to the injustice and brutality of everyday life in this fundamentally lawless facility. While the subject matter is bleak, Mansoor somehow never loses touch with his hope, his sense of humor and his humanity.

On the UN International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, marking the day, in 1987, when the UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment came into effect, I ask you to remember the 40 torture victims still held at Guantánamo. 24 of them were specifically held and tortured in CIA “black sites,” but all 40 have, at Guantánamo, been held in what, in January, the UN described as “a place of arbitrariness and abuse, a site where torture and ill-treatment was rampant and remains institutionalized, where the rule of law is effectively suspended, and where justice is denied.”

Here’s my report on the US military’s announcement that it has closed the secretive Camp 7 at Guantánamo, where the so-called “high-value detainees” were held, and has moved them to Camp 5 instead. Camp 7 had been falling apart for years, but moving these men is no solution to Guantánamo’s larger problems: that the men held there should either be tried via a functional judicial system, or released.

A letter to President Biden, urging him to close Guantánamo, and to end indefinite detention without charge or trial, signed by 111 organizations, including Close Guantanamo, which I co-founded nine years ago with the US attorney Tom Wilner.

A cross-post, with my own introduction, of an open letter to President Biden, urging him to close Guantánamo, which was written by seven former prisoners who are also authors: Mansoor Adayfi, Moazzam Begg, Lakhdar Boumediene, Sami Al Hajj, Ahmed Errachidi, Mohamedou Ould Slahi and Moussa Zemmouri.

The video of an online event about Guantánamo at Revolution Books in New York on Jan. 17, in which I appeared with attorney Shelby Sullivan-Bennis. It may have been online, rather than in the bookstore as in previous years, but it was, nevertheless, a powerful and emotional occasion.

My assessment of two recent articles, in the New York Times and the Observer, about Joe Biden and Guantánamo, and what we might expect from the new administration regarding the decrepit state of Camp 7, reserved for the “high-value detainees”, the broken nature of the military commissions, and the need for action on releasing six men already approved for release, and the inappropriate imprisonment, without charge or trial, and with no end in sight, of numerous “low-value detainees.”

Reprieve has just launched a website counting, in real time, how long their client Ahmed Rabbani has been on a hunger strike — 2,846 days, as of Nov. 17, 2020. This is a shocking amount of time, as is Ahmed’s skeletal state — he weighs just 39 kilos, or 6 stone 2 pounds. I argue that it is time for Ahmed, like other “forever prisoners,” who genuinely don’t pose a threat to the US, to be released.