Guantanamo

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.

My analysis of the recent, and almost entirely overlooked announcement by the Pentagon that it was turning down a plea deal negotiated in December 2024 with torture victim and Guantánamo prisoner Abd Al-Rahim Al-Nashiri, the alleged architect of the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000. The decision prioritizes vengeance, and an unwinnable trial, over the reality that successful prosecutions involving the death penalty at Guantánamo are bound to fail, because of the torture to which the defendants were subjected over many years when they were held in CIA “black sites.” In 2023, this was recognized by prosecutors in the 9/11 trial, who then negotiated plea deals taking the death penalty off the table in exchange for full confessions and life imprisonment. These were agreed in August 2024, but were then immediately challenged by then-defense secretary Lloyd Austin, who succeeded in having them overturned by the D.C. Circuit Court last June, after he had already left office. Al-Nashiri’s plea deal was publicly announced in March 2025, also taking the death penalty off the table in exchange for a full confession and life imprisonment, but it was finally turned down, just two weeks ago, not by Pete Hegseth, but by the billionaire deputy defense secretary, Steve Feinberg, bringing the Biden and Trump administrations into a rare accord, in which both, shamefully, oppose the only viable outcomes for the 9/11 trial and the trial of Al-Nashiri that can bring “closure” and some measure of justice over a quarter of a century after the USS Cole bombing took place.

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.

My reflections on the execution, by immigration enforcement officials, of two US citizens — Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti — on the streets of Minneapolis, both captured in videos recorded on cellphones, and the extraordinary and unforgivable decision by senior Trump administration officials to deny the evidence, blaming the victims, and seeking to exonerate their killers, made by Trump himself, Vice President JD Vance, Trump’s senior adviser Stephen Miller and Homeland Security director Kristi Noem. Faced with unprecedented condemnation of its actions, and of the violent impunity of ICE and Border Patrol agents, Trump has finally started to recognize that the tide is turning against him, but because his brutal, arbitrary mass deportation program is at the heart of his second presidency, it seem unlikely that he will do what is required, and shut the entire malignant operation down. I trace the history of the deportation program over the last year, including the “invasions” of major US cities, an extraordinary increase in funding for ICE’s operations, and the proliferation of new prison facilities, where torture, abuse and “disappearances” are rampant, and where, last year, 32 “detainees” were killed. At the heart of this nationwide malevolence is Miller, Trump’s Homeland Security Adviser and White House Deputy Chief of Staff, who is so obsessed with stopping and reversing immigration to the US that it is reasonable to assume that, for him, the claimed focus on deporting undocumented migrants with criminal records was only ever useful to provide cover for his real aim, which has always been to ethnically cleanse the US of as many immigrants as possible while similarly destroying all opposition to his plans; hence, his description, in August, of the entire Democratic Party as “a domestic extremist organization”, and the demonization and disposability of, essentially, anyone who opposes him; Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, for example, both of whom he described as “domestic terrorists.” In pursuing his malignant vision, Miller is clearly implementing fascism in the US. Of course, he works for Trump, who is clearly supportive of his vile racism, which reflects his own dark hatreds, but, as opposition grows, will Trump support a vision of “racially pure” America that not only requires terror on the streets and an expanding network of torture prisons, but also the ruthless and continuing suppression — up to and including executions on the streets of US cities — of everyone who dares to dissent, or will he step back from the abyss? The very future of the United States depends on his decision.

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.

My report about the important news that the British government has reached a “substantial” out-of court financial settlement with Guantánamo prisoner and CIA torture victim Abu Zubaydah, to prevent further public disclosure of their complicity in his torture in CIA “black sites” from 2002 to 2006, prior to his transfer to Guantánamo, where he has been held ever since without charge or trial. The settlement relates to information first disclosed in a rare and frank Parliamentary investigation into British complicity in 2018, when it was revealed that the UK intelligence services had fed questions for Abu Zubaydah to US interrogators, even though they knew that he was being tortured. The payout was made to prevent full disclosure of the details after the Supreme Court ruled in Abu Zubaydah’s favor in a case decided in December 2023. Unfortunately, the settlement will do nothing to secure Abu Zubaydah’s release from Guantánamo. Although the US authorities long ago walked back from claims that he was a significant member of Al-Qaeda, which they made after his capture, and has never charged him with a crime, he continues to be held at Guantánamo, one of three “forever prisoners” detained indefinitely. This is in spite of two European Court of Human Rights rulings, in 2014 and 2018, condemning his torture in “black sites” in Poland and Romania, which also led to significant financial settlements, and a devastating opinion issued by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention in 2023, which called for his release and reparations for his suffering during his long and arbitrary imprisonment. Under Donald Trump, however, when an unarmed 37-year old mother and US citizen murdered by an ICE agent is described as a “domestic terrorist” by senior administration officials, there can be no real likelihood that a torture victim slandered as a terrorist for years, and still routinely referred to as a “terror suspect”, will be freed. As his ordeal continues, we must all reflect on how, while three governments have paid him significant amounts of money for their complicity in his torture, no mechanism exists that can compel his actual torturers to free him.

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.

Celebrating a significant court ruling last week, in the District Court in Washington, D.C., in which Judge Sparkle Sooknanan, a Biden appointee, ruled definitively that the Trump administration’s use of Guantánamo to hold migrants with final deportation orders flown from ICE detention facilities on the US mainland was and is completely illegal under immigration law (the Immigration and Nationality Act), and is also “impermissibly punitive” as a violation of the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. It’s been ten months since Trump began using Guantánamo to hold migrants, and five months since lawyers with the American Civil Liberties Union (the ACLU), the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) submitted a lawsuit on behalf of two Nicaraguan nationals held at Guantánamo at the time, and also on behalf of every other migrant in “a similarly situated class.” It’s unknown as yet if the Trump administration will appeal, but it’s abundantly clear from Judge Sooknanan’s ruling that there are absolutely no grounds for doing so. The use of Guantánamo to hold migrants was a vile example of performative cruelty, meant to terrify all migrants in the US, and would-be migrants elsewhere, and its demise is long overdue.

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.