European complicity in torture

My report about the important news that the British government has reached a “substantial” out-of court financial settlement with Guantánamo prisoner and CIA torture victim Abu Zubaydah, to prevent further public disclosure of their complicity in his torture in CIA “black sites” from 2002 to 2006, prior to his transfer to Guantánamo, where he has been held ever since without charge or trial. The settlement relates to information first disclosed in a rare and frank Parliamentary investigation into British complicity in 2018, when it was revealed that the UK intelligence services had fed questions for Abu Zubaydah to US interrogators, even though they knew that he was being tortured. The payout was made to prevent full disclosure of the details after the Supreme Court ruled in Abu Zubaydah’s favor in a case decided in December 2023. Unfortunately, the settlement will do nothing to secure Abu Zubaydah’s release from Guantánamo. Although the US authorities long ago walked back from claims that he was a significant member of Al-Qaeda, which they made after his capture, and has never charged him with a crime, he continues to be held at Guantánamo, one of three “forever prisoners” detained indefinitely. This is in spite of two European Court of Human Rights rulings, in 2014 and 2018, condemning his torture in “black sites” in Poland and Romania, which also led to significant financial settlements, and a devastating opinion issued by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention in 2023, which called for his release and reparations for his suffering during his long and arbitrary imprisonment. Under Donald Trump, however, when an unarmed 37-year old mother and US citizen murdered by an ICE agent is described as a “domestic terrorist” by senior administration officials, there can be no real likelihood that a torture victim slandered as a terrorist for years, and still routinely referred to as a “terror suspect”, will be freed. As his ordeal continues, we must all reflect on how, while three governments have paid him significant amounts of money for their complicity in his torture, no mechanism exists that can compel his actual torturers to free him.

My report about what I describe as “the single most devastating condemnation by an international body that has ever been issued with regard to the US’s detention policies in the ‘war on terror’, both in CIA ‘black sites’ and at Guantánamo” — an opinion issued by the the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention about Abu Zubaydah, the first victim of the CIA’s post-9/11 torture program. The condemnation is not only of the US government, but also the governments of Pakistan, Thailand, Poland, Morocco, Lithuania, Afghanistan and the UK, although the most severe criticisms are directed at the US government, which is ordered to release him and to pay him compensation. The Working Group also expresses “grave concern” that the very basis of the detention system at Guantánamo — involving “widespread or systematic imprisonment or other severe deprivation of liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law” — “may constitute crimes against humanity.”

News of an important complaint filed with the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, on behalf of Abu Zubaydah, held in CIA “black sites” for four and a half years, and at Guantánamo since September 2006, without ever being charged. The complaint is not only against the US, but also against Thailand, Poland, Morocco, Lithuania and Afghanistan (the five countries in which he was held in “black sites”), as well as the UK, which is regarded as complicit in his torture.

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 of the Trump administration.   In two devastating rulings on May 31, the European Court of Human Rights found that the actions of the […]

Please support my work! I’m currently trying to raise $2500 (£2000) to support my writing and campaigning on Guantánamo and related issues — including the US torture program — over the next three months of the Trump administration. Today is the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, which commemorates the entry into force, on June […]

It’s been some time since I wrote about Abu Zubaydah (Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn), one of 14 “high-value detainees” transferred from secret CIA prisons to Guantánamo in September 2006, beyond discussions of his important case against the Polish government, where he was held in a secret CIA torture prison in 2002 and 2003. This led to […]

I’m just catching up on a story from two weeks ago that I was unable to post at the time because I was busy with another couple of stories — the dismissal of David Hicks’ Guantánamo conviction, and the ongoing campaign to free Shaker Aamer. The story I didn’t have time to report involved the […]

Last week there was some extremely important news for those of us who have spent many long years hoping to hold senior US officials — up to and including former President George W. Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney — accountable for approving and implementing a torture program in the “war on terror,” when […]

In the long search for accountability for the torturers of the Bush administration, which has largely been shut down by President Obama, lawyers and human rights activists have either had to try shaming the US through the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, or have had to focus on other countries, particularly those that hosted secret […]

On Monday and Tuesday, as I explained in a subsequent article, “an important step took place in the quest for those who ordered and undertook torture in the Bush administration’s ‘war on terror’ to be held accountable for their actions,” when a ground-breaking hearing took place in Strasbourg. For the first time since the start […]