Guantanamo media

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.

Events taking place to mark the 20th anniversary of the opening of the prison at Guantánamo Bay on Jan. 11, 2022, featuring myself and Tom Wilner, with whom I co-founded the Close Guantánamo campaign in 2012. Some of these events are in the US, some are in the UK, and they are mostly online but with a few carefully managed Iive events.

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.

The video of “Life After Guantánamo,” an online discussion between myself and former prisoner Mansoor Adayfi, hosted by the Justice for Muslims Collective, which took place last week, and was intended primarily as a fundraiser for Mansoor. We discussed resistance at Guantánamo, the deaths of prisoners, art classes, and how the “taint” of Guantánamo haunts former prisoners, and is an ongoing part of the dehumanization process established at the prison nearly 20 years ago. It is also an injustice that I hope to address through establishing a new organization aimed at removing the “enemy combatant” stigma, and, ultimately, holding the US to account for the fundamental lawlessness of Guantánamo.

My report about last week’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, “Closing Guantánamo: Ending 20 Years of Injustice,” chaired by Sen. Dick Durbin, including the video of the entire hearing, which featured expert witnesses explaining why the prison must be closed.

Promoting my live interview, this Thursday, Dec. 9, on Zoom, with former Guantánamo prisoner and author Mansoor Adayfi, whose compelling memoir “Don’t Forget Us Here: Lost and Found at Guantánamo” was published in August.

My transcript of a speech in the Senate, urging the closure of Guantánamo, which was made by Sen. Dick Durbin, a longtime opponent of the prison’s existence, as he introduced an amendment to the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), seeking to close the prison once and for all.

My report about the seemingly unending ordeal of former Guantánamo prisoner Abdulqadir al-Madhfari. Held at Guantánamo for 14 years, and then for another five years in the UAE (where he was supposed to be freed, but where his imprisonment continued), he was recently forcibly repatriated to Yemen, with eleven of his compatriots, but after just one week reunited with his family, who were alarmed at the decline in his mental health, he was seized by Houthi militia at a checkpoint in Sana’a, and is now being held incommunicado in an undisclosed location.

My report about ‘Guantánamo: 20 Years After’, the successful two-day international online conference hosted by the University of Brighton, which took place on November 12-13, 2021, and which I helped to organize with law lecturer and activist Sara Birch.

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.