Guantanamo global vigils 2023-26

21 photos from, and my report about the 42nd “First Wednesday” monthly global vigils for the closure of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay, which took place across the US and around the world on and around Wednesday July 1, 2026. In the text accompanying the article, I discuss the proximity of this month’s vigils to July 4, and, this year, the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, which was meant to bring to an end the 13 colonies’ subjection to the executive tyranny of the British government and King George III. As I explain, however, 250 years later, the continuing existence of Guantánamo makes a mockery of those claims, as it is, fundamentally, a place where the law has rarely applied, and where the 15 men still held — and all those held previously — owe their detention to the same exercise of executive tyranny that the Founding Fathers sought to overthrow in 1776, but this time around implemented by the US government under four successive presidents — George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

Photos from, and my report about the 41st monthly global vigils for the closure of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay, which took place across the US and around the world on and around June 3, 2026. In the text accompanying the article, I discuss the importance of remembering Guantánamo (which is so largely forgotten) via my interpretation of a well-known quote — “In a time of universal deceit, even the act of remembering is a revolutionary act.” I also discuss how the original quote — “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act” — is more significant than at any other time in most of our lifetimes, with a US president who dismisses the truth as “fake news”, and with western governments and mainstream media outlets insisting that a genocide is “self-defense” and that those undertaking it are the “children of light” fighting the “children of darkness.”

Photos from, and my report about the 40th monthly global vigils for the closure of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay, which took place across the US and around the world on and around May 6. In the article, I also provide a rationale for the vigils’ continued presence, despite the indifference of the Trump administration, and provide a summary of the current circumstances of the 15 men still held in varying states of fundamental lawlessness.

26 photos from, and my report about the 39th monthly global vigils for the closure of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay, which took place across the US and around the world on and around April 1. In the article, I also provide a detailed analysis of how and why the great crimes of Guantánamo and the “war on terror” — imprisonment without charge or trial, including torture and other forms of abuse, and illegal wars in pursuit of regime change — have, through not being adequately challenged and repudiated, fed directly into the horrific atrocities of the last 30 months. The first of these is Israel’s ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip, and the torture, rape and murder in Israel’s prisons for Palestinians, while, over the last six weeks, the US, the staunchest supporter of Israel’s genocide, has become directly involved in the Israeli model of devastating, lawless warfare, focused on as much arbitrary civilian death and destruction as possible, via its joint war with Israel on Iran, while Israel also repeats its Gaza playbook in Lebanon.

25 photos from, and my report about the 38th monthly global vigils for the closure of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay, in which I also explain why the vigils remain important: firstly, because Guantánamo enshrined indefinite imprisonment without charge or trial, the hallmark of dictatorships, as US policy, echoing and drawing inspiration from Israel’s brutal, lawless prisons for Palestinians, and inspiring Donald Trump and Stephen Miller’s ever-expanding ICE detention facilities for US immigrants; and secondly, because, as the last bastion of the “war on terror”, it is also a powerful reminder of how that “war” led not only to the establishment of horrific, lawless prisons, but also, via the invasion of Iraq in particular, to the notion that the US could invade a sovereign nation based on lies, and, via Obama’s drone assassination program, to the notion that the US could extrajudicially murder anyone alleged to be a “combatant” without any form of due process, both of which helped Israel to seek to justify its genocide in Gaza, and are now being used by Trump to seek to justify his joint “war” with Israel on Iran.

Photos from, and my report about the “First Wednesday” monthly global vigils for the closure of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay on February 4, 2026, marking the third anniversary of the vigils, and a return to the regular “First Wednesday” slot after last month, when the vigils were moved to Sunday January 11 to mark the 24th anniversary of the opening of the prison. Nine vigils took place across the US and around the world, including at the White House, outside the Houses of Parliament in London, and outside the European Parliament in Brussels, and after the London vigil campaigners also delivered a letter to 10 Downing Street, urging the UK government to continue to call for Guantánamo’s closure, and to repudiate its recent claim that it is solely the business of the US government.

Over 50 photos from the 19 global vigils for the closure of the prison at Guantánamo Bay that took place across the US and around the world marking the shameful and unforgivable 24th anniversary of the opening of the prison on January 11. The article also includes my report about the significance of the vigils, because of the fundamental and unending lawlessness of the prison, and also because of Donald Trump’s cynical co-opting of it over the last year as a venue for performative cruelty in his vile, racist “war on migrants.” 15 men are still held at Guantánamo, although none under circumstances that are acceptable in a country that claims to respect the law. Six are held indefinitely without charge or trial, while the nine others are caught up, in various ways, in a trial system, the military commissions, that is haunted by the US’s use of torture and is fundamentally incapable of delivering justice. I’m grateful to everyone who took part in the vigils, both for cutting through the fog of lamentable amnesia that engulfs Guantánamo, and for remembering that it’s a monstrous place where, after 9/11, the law was sent to die, and also for their dedication when so many other horrors are vying for campaigners’ attention; most noticeably, in the US, Trump’s aggression towards Venezuela and the monstrous abuses being committed in Minneapolis by ICE agents.

Promoting the global vigils this weekend, on Saturday January 10 and Sunday January 11, marking the unforgivable 24th anniversary of the opening of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay on January 11, where 15 men are still held, although none are detained on anything resembling a legally sound basis. Six are held without charge or trial, six face charges in a broken trial system, the military commissions, that are incapable of delivering justice, one is in legal limbo after being judged mentally unfit to stand trial, another, severely disabled, agreed to a plea deal, and another is serving a life sentence in solitary confinement after a one-sided trial 17 years ago in which he refused to mount a defense. Please join us if you find this ongoing but largely forgotten injustice intolerable, and if you can’t be present in person, feel free to join us by sending in a photo with the Close Guantánamo campaign’s poster marking how long Guantánamo will have been open on January 11 — 8,767 days — as part of an ongoing photo campaign we’ve been running every 100 days, and on the anniversaries of the prison’s opening, since 2018.

Photos from, and my report about the 35th consecutive coordinated monthly global vigils for the closure of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay, which took place across the US, in Washington, D.C., New York, Detroit, Los Angeles and Portland, OR, and in London and Brussels on December 3, 2025, with former prisoner Mansoor Adayfi also holding a solo vigil in Belgrade, and with Cobleskill, NY joining on December 6, and San Francisco on December 7. These were the last vigils of 2025, and the last before next month’s vigils marking the 24th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo on January 11, 2026.

Photos from, and my report about the 34th consecutive coordinated monthly global vigils for the closure of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay, which took place across the US, in Washington, D.C., New York, Detroit, Los Angeles and Portland, and in London and Brussels on November 5, 2025, with San Francisco joining on November 6, and Cobleskill, NY on November 8. Former prisoner Mansoor Adayfi also sent a photo from an exhibition of prisoners’ art in Giessen, Germany. This month’s “First Wednesday” vigils also coincided with 8,700 days of Guantánamo’s existence, marked with the latest poster in an ongoing photo initiative by the Close Guantánamo campaign, and they also coincided with the first anniversary of Donald Trump’s re-election as president, although that was wonderfully overshadowed by the Mayoral Election victory, in New York, of Zohran Mamdani, a Muslim socialist immigrant — and, undoubtedly, an opponent of the continued existence of Guantánamo. The vigils also coincided with the death, at the age of 84, of former Vice President Dick Cheney, the primary architect of the Bush administration’s “war on terror”, including the CIA’s repulsive torture program, as well as the main driver, using false information derived from the use of torture, of the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003. Shamefully, as I note, “while Cheney passed away peacefully surrounded by his family, his victims continue to languish in Guantánamo, with no sign of when, if ever, any of them will either be released, or delivered anything resembling justice.”