Extraordinary rendition and secret prisons

My detailed analysis of the stories of the five men who have recently been approved for release from Guantánamo by Periodic Review Boards (a review process set up under President Obama), which reveals, on the part of the US government, a total lack of justification for depriving them of their liberty for 20 years, without charge or trial, and, in some cases, makes it clear that they should never have been held by the US or brought to Guantánamo in the first place.

Linking to, and discussing my recent interview with Chris Cook on his ‘Gorilla Radio’ show in Victoria, British Columbia, in which we spoke about the case of torture victim Abu Zubaydah, the 20th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, and the latest dispiriting ruling in the extradition case of Wikileaks’ founder Julian Assange.

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.

Publicizing the new documentary film by Alex Gibney about Abu Zubaydah, for whom the CIA’s post-9/11 torture program was developed. He spent four and a half years in CIA torture prisons, and has been held at Guantánamo for over 15 years without charge or trial, with no sign of when, if ever, he might be released.

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.

A transcript of the first part of Majid Khan’s statement at his recent sentencing hearing at Guantánamo, in which he recounted his early life, how he was preyed on by al-Qaeda supporters following the death of his mother, and the horrendous torture to which he was subjected in a number of CIA “black sites”, despite having made it clear from the time of his capture that he intended to be as cooperative as possible.

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.

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.

In the long quest to hold accountable the US officials responsible for the rendition and torture of prisoners in the “war on terror”, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights recently delivered a historic ruling, agreeing to investigate the cases of four of these men, including two British nationals, Binyam Mohamed and Bisher al-Rawi, who, as well as being held in CIA “black sites”, were also held at Guantánamo.

My report on today’s great news that the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Court (ICC) has approved an investigation into war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Afghanistan since May 2003 by US armed forces and members of the CIA, the Taliban and affiliated armed groups, and Afghan government forces, reversing a decision last year not to proceed with the investigation, which was widely perceived to have come about in response to pressure exerted by the Trump administration. Interestingly, although the US is not a party to the ICC Statute, the Court has jurisdiction over crimes committed by US actors in the territories of other State Parties to the ICC, and the investigation is, therefore, also empowered to look at crimes committed since July 2002 outside Afghanistan – at, for example, “black sites” in Poland, Romania and Lithuania.