Guantanamo lawyers

On the 18th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, one of the bitterest legacies of the “war on terror” that the Bush administration declared in response is Guantánamo, where the men held are sinking into despair under Donald Trump, including one man, Sharqawi Al Hajj, who, just last month, attempted suicide, cutting his wrists with a piece of glass while on a phone call with his lawyer. How long can this injustice continue?

I report on disturbing news from the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), who explain that one of their Guantánamo clients, Sharqawi al-Hajj, a torture victim, “forever prisoner” and long-term hunger striker, “stated on a recent call with his attorney that he wanted to take his own life.”

Following up on an ABC News feature about Guantánamo – a rarity for the US mainstream media, with the exception of Carol Rosenberg at the New York Times – about the case of Abdul Latif Nasser, a Moroccan prisoner who was approved for release from Guantánamo three years ago, but is still held because the necessary procedures weren’t completed by the time President Obama left office, and Donald Trump, of course, has no intention of releasing anyone from Guantánamo under any circumstances.

I report on an important case, argued by Tom Wilner, with whom I co-founded the ‘Close Guantánamo’ campaign in 2012, in which appeals court judges “reversed an eight-year rule that has prevented Guantánamo detainees from seeing and rebutting the evidence purportedly justifying their detention.” As Tom says, “This decision tears down the major barrier that has prevented the Guantánamo detainees from receiving a fair hearing.”

Following up on a recent Canadian news report about three former Guantánamo prisoners — Uighurs (from China’s oppressed Xinjiang province), who were resettled in Albania and Bermuda. They are seeking permission from the Canadian government to join their wives and children, who are all Canadian nationals, but are finding that discredited allegations from Guantánamo continue to haunt them.

Some rare good news regarding Guantánamo, as a senior Canadian judge has ruled that former child prisoner Omar Khadr’s Guantánamo-related sentence is finally over, five months after it was supposed to have come to an end. Unfortunately, as I also note, former prisoners who never went through any sort of legal process still remain fundamentally without any rights whatsoever.

As Mohamedou Ould Slahi, former Guantánamo prisoner, torture victim and best-selling author, is denied a passport by his home government in Mauritania, I look at how all former prisoners — “enemy combatants” — are fundamentally deprived of rights as “un-people” by the US, and call for this situation to change.

A link to, and my discussion of ‘The Trial’, a film by Johanna Hamilton about the lawyers representing Ammar al-Baluchi, one of five men at Guantánamo accused of involvement in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, who are extremely critical of the inadequacies of the military commission trial system.

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. If you can help, please click on the button below to donate via PayPal.   Canada, contrasting itself with its […]

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. If you can help, please click on the button below to donate via PayPal.   Anyone paying close attention to […]