Guantanamo

Announcing the release of The Four Fathers’ new album, ‘Songs of Loss and Resistance’, on Bandcamp, featuring ten original songs — mostly protest songs, nine by me, and one by our guitarist Richard Clare — which is available to listen to for free, or, if you’d like, to buy as a download, or even as a limited edition CD. You can also buy individual tracks as downloads. The album covers tumultuous events in the UK and globally over the last eight years, including the existential threat to humanity posed by climate collapse, the Grenfell Tower fire, the Brexit referendum, the anti-gentrification Tidemill garden occupation in Deptford, the ongoing plight of Guantánamo’s “forever prisoners”, and the unjust imprisonment of WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange. It was recorded sporadically, between July 2018 and January this year, with the great Charlie Hart, a multi-instrumentalist and producer, best-known as a member of Ronnie Lane’s Slim Chance in the 1970s and ‘80s, who also plays electric piano and accordion on three of the songs.

My latest quarterly fundraiser, in which I ask you, if you can, to make a donation to support my ongoing work on Guantánamo, as a reader-funded independent journalist and activist, over the next three months. As well as providing some context for why this work remains important, I also discuss my other writing — on Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and climate collapse — pointing out how, to varying degrees, my work is part of a wider effort by other independent voices to counter the general indifference and misinformation that pervades almost the whole of the mainstream media.

Photos from, and my report about the eleven global monthly coordinated vigils for the closure of Guantánamo that took place across the US and around the world on September 4, 2024. The vigils take place on the first Wednesday of every month, and the next date is October 2.

My detailed report about the disturbing news that the majority of the 28 former Guantánamo prisoners from Yemen, who were resettled in Oman between 2015 and 2017 because it was unsafe for them to be sent home, have been forcibly repatriated in recent weeks. To provide some necessary context, my article also includes an overview of the Obama administration’s resettlement program, in which, from 2009 to 2017, 125 former prisoners were resettled in 28 countries around the world, and I also discuss some glaring examples of countries that have failed to treat these men fairly or humanely, as supposedly required in the “diplomatic assurances” agreed with the US. The news from Oman is particularly dispiriting because the resettlement program there had been successful, with many of the men securing work, and marrying and having children. Oman has provided no explanation, and comments by US officials have been particularly troubling, with one State Department official stating that the US government had “never had an expectation that former Guantánamo detainees would indefinitely remain in receiving countries.” Another US official suggested that the Omanis were “making room” for a new arrival of former prisoners from Guantánamo, eleven men whose resettlement was supposed to take place last October, but was cancelled after the Hamas attacks on October 7. Both are alarming positions for the US government to take, as they blithely ignore the fact that, for the last 15 years, Congress has included provisions in the annual National Defense Authorization Act specifically preventing the repatriation of any Yemenis from Guantánamo because of security concerns. The Omanis’ actions, with US support, also violate the fundamental principle, under international human rights law, of non-refoulement, which prohibits the return of anyone to a country where they may face torture or other forms of abuse, which is a distinct possibility in divided and war-torn Yemen. Of particular concern, however, are the ramifications of the suggestion that resettlements were never meant to be permanent, which needs to be robustly challenged, because otherwise it will indicate to some of the other countries who resettled former prisoners between 2009 and 2017 that they too can get rid of these men if they find their continued presence inconvenient.

My recent interview with Chris Cook, on his long-running Gorilla Radio show in western Canada, in which we discussed the recently announced, but swiftly aborted plea deals at Guantánamo for three men accused of involvement in the 9/11 attacks, the latest monthly coordinated global vigils for the closure of Guantánamo, which had just taken place at ten locations across the US, and in London, Brussels and Mexico City, the far-right riots in the UK, and much more.

Photos from, and my report about the ten vigils for the closure of Guantánamo that took place across the US and around the world on August 7, 2024, marking 18 months of coordinated monthly global vigils that I initiated in February last year. The vigils take place on the first Wednesday of every month, and the next date is September 4.

My analysis of the shameful news that, just two days after plea deals were announced in the cases of three of the men charged in connection with the 9/11 attacks — whereby the death penalty would be dropped in exchange for guilty pleas and the promise of life sentences instead — defense secretary Lloyd Austin has revoked those plea deals. The three men include Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, the alleged mastermind of 9/11, and the plea deals provided what appears to be the only viable conclusion to the legal impossibility of successful prosecuting them after their torture for three and a half years in various CIA “black sites.” Efforts to prosecute them have been ongoing since 2008, but are primarily stuck in a kind of “Groundhog Day,” because the men’s lawyers correctly seek to expose the torture to which they were subjected, while prosecutors seek to hide it, although over the last two years prosecutors have been working towards the plea deals, having apparently accepted that successful prosecutions are impossible. Austin’s capitulation — to Republican criticism, and to what appears to be the Democrats’ own commitment to a type of endless vengeance when it comes to the “black site” prisoners — is therefore a deplorable failure to accept the compromises needed to bring this sordid chapter in US history to an end, as well as to provide the remaining prisoners with adequate physical and mental health treatment, as required under international humanitarian law, and it is to be hoped that his “undue command influence” will be successfully challenged in court.

Examining yet another facet of the ongoing chronic injustice at Guantánamo — the recent sentencing, for war crimes, of Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, Guantánamo’s most profoundly disabled prisoner, who suffers from a chronic degenerative spinal disease, which, despite seven operations at the prison, has not been adequately resolved, and will in all probability eventually leave him paralyzed. A 62- or 63-year old Iraqi Kurd, whose real name is Nashwan al-Tamir, al-Iraqi has been held at Guantánamo for over 17 years, after being held in a CIA “black site” for six months. Although the US authorities initially tried to tie him to Al-Qaeda and terrorism, the main charges against him ended up relating to his time as a military commander in Afghanistan at the time of the US-led occupation. At his sentencing, al-Iraqi was profoundly apologetic to the family members of those who were killed as a result of his orders in Afghanistan; however, the military jury delivered the maximum sentence, of 30 years, although this was reduced to ten years via a plea deal he agreed to two years ago. Nevertheless, this means that he will not be released until 2032, which still seems hugely punitive, given his contrition, his medical condition, and the fact that, when his sentence ends, he will have been held for 26 years in total.

My recent interview with Chris Cook, on his Gorilla Radio show in western Canada, about the UK’s recent General Election, and also about Israel’s horrendous prisons for Palestinians, following the release of a particular prisoner, Moazzaz Obayat (also identified as Muazzam Obayat), horribly broken by torture, who compared the prisons to Guantánamo. As I explained to Chris, I think it’s reasonable to conclude that they’re even worse.

Photos from, and my report about the ten vigils for the closure of Guantánamo that took place across the US and around the world on July 3, 2024, the latest in an ongoing series of monthly coordinated global vigils that began last year. The vigils take place on the first Wednesday of every month, and the next date is August 7.