Guantanamo media

Linking to and dicussing my recent half-hour radio interview with Chris Cook on Gorilla Radio in Victoria, Canada, in which we discussed the eighth anniversary of the release of classified military files relating to the Guantánamo prisoners by WikiLeaks, and also discussed the situation faced by Julian Assange since he was arrested in the UK after Ecuador withdrew the asylum it granted him nearly seven years ago.

I follow up on a recent New York Times article by Carol Rosenberg about the US military’s problems with aging prisoners at Guantánamo, looking in particular at how these problems have arisen because, after 9/11, the US embraced torture (whch is incompatible with justice) and indefinite detention without charge or trial, which is also fundamentally unacceptable — and, of course, continues to be supported by Donald Trump.

A cross-post, with my own introduction, of a compelling and very detailed New Yorker article by Ben Taub about former Guantánamo prisoner, torture victim and best-selling author Mohamedou Ould Salahi and his guard Steve Wood.

A cross-post, with my own detailed introduction, of an article for the Atlantic by Richard Bernstein about the Uighurs, an oppressed minority in China, and how the Bush administration sided with the Chinese government to falsely assess 22 Uighurs who ended up at Guantánamo as terrorists.

A cross-post of an article in The Intercept drawing on letters sent by “forever prisoner” Ghassan al-Sharbi to his lawyers, criticising the Saudi royal family. The article also features my own detailed introduction, telling al-Sharbi’s story, his role as a respected prisoner amongst his fellow prisoners, the military commission charges against him (which were dropped), and his Obama-era reviews.

Linking to – and discussing – my detailed half-hour interview about Guantánamo with Chris Hedges on his show ‘On Contact’ on RT America. Shamefully, although the continued existence of Guantánamo ought to be a source of shame for all decent people, over 17 years since the prison first opened, it has almost disappeared from the mainstream media.

A cross-post, with my introduction, of a detailed and important article by investigative journalist Jeffrey Kaye about the death at Guantánamo, in 2011, of Haji Naseem, a mentally troubled Afghan national, who was one of the last prisoners to arrive at Guantánamo, in 2007.

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.

Promoting the launch of ‘Guantánamo Kid’, the English translation of the powerful graphic novel by Jérôme Tubiana and Alexandre Franc about the experiences of Mohammed El-Gharani, a former child prisoner in Guantánamo.

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.