Guantanamo media

My report about this week’s Supreme Court hearing in the case of torture victim and Guantánamo prisoner Abu Zubaydah, involving efforts by his lawyers to secure testimony from his torturers regarding what happened to him Poland. In oral argument, however, what emerged most forcefully was the Justices’ surprise that Abu Zubaydah himself has not been allowed to testify about what happened to him, and that he has had a habeas corpus petition pending for 14 years, as well as their concern that he is still being held at all, given the end of the war in Afghanistan.

My review of “Don’t Forget Us Here: Lost and Found at Guantánamo,” former prisoner Mansoor Adayfi’s riveting account of his 14 years in the prison, much of which was spent in fierce resistance to the injustice and brutality of everyday life in this fundamentally lawless facility. While the subject matter is bleak, Mansoor somehow never loses touch with his hope, his sense of humor and his humanity.

Video of my interview with Scottie Nell Hughes on RT America, discussing the possible closure of the prison at Guantánamo Bay, following the first prisoner release under President Biden — of Abdul Latif Nasser, a Moroccan who was repatriated on Monday July 19.

A cross-post, with my own introduction, of a detailed article for the Atlantic about the failure of the law at Guantánamo by Benjamin Farley, an attorney with the defense team for Ammar al Baluchi, one of the five men accused of involvement in the 9/11 attacks, who was also an adviser to the Special Envoy for Guantánamo Closure from 2013 to 2017.

A cross-post, with my own introduction, of an op-ed in the Washington Post, calling for the closure of Guantánamo, written by Omar Ashmawy, a prosecutor in the only two military commission cases that proceeded to full trials — back in 2008. Ashmawy is hugely critical of the entire military commission process, and of Guantánamo as a whole, and calls for everyone who has not been charged to be freed, and for the handful of men facing trials to have those trials moved to federal courts on the US mainland.

A cross-post, with my own introduction and detailed analysis, of an op-ed for the Nation by retired Rear Admirals Donald J. Guter and John Hutson, calling for the prisoners still held at Guantánamo who have not been charged with crimes to be freed — 28 men in total out of the 40 still held; eleven already approved for release (two just today), and 17 others, aptly described as “forever prisoners.”

My analysis of an NBC article last week that suggested that President Biden is “quietly” moving to “start closing Guantánamo ahead of the 20th anniversary of 9/11,” but that doesn’t live up to its promise, not least in its suggestion that Biden wants to begin releasing prisoners, but doesn’t yet want to re-establish the role of the Special Envoy for Guantánamo Closure, even though it is impossible to work out how prisoners might be freed without the envoy’s assistance.

A cross-post, with my own introduction, of a recent op-ed calling on President Biden to close Guantánamo, which was published in The Hill, and written by Anthony Lake, national security adviser to President Clinton from 1993 to 1997, and the attorney Tom Wilner, with whom I co-founded the Close Guantánamo campaign in 2012.

Recalling the significance of the release of “The Guantánamo Files” by WikiLeaks, ten years ago today, on which I worked as media partner, and calling for the release of Julian Assange, who is still imprisoned in Belmarsh, despite a judge refusing to allow his extradition to the US in January.

An important letter from 24 Democratic Senators to President Biden, urging him to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay, including, most significantly, a call to release all the prisoners who are not going to be charged with crimes. The signatories include Dick Durbin, Patrick Leahy, Dianne Feinstein, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.