Life after Guantanamo

My report about disturbing news regarding six former Guantánamo prisoners who have been repatriated to Yemen from the UAE, where they had been arbitrarily detained in abusive conditions since their transfer from Guantánamo in 2015 and 2016. Although this sounds like a positive move, their safety cannot be guaranteed in war-torn Yemen, and I urge campaigners to call on the State Department to take urgent action to support them, and to guarantee their safety.

My response to UN human rights experts condemning the UAE for its proposal to forcibly repatriate Ravil Mingazov, a Russian sent to the UAE from Guantánamo in 2016, even though he faces “substantial risk of torture” in his home country. I call on the US government to respond by urgently appointing a Special Envoy for Guantánamo Closure to intervene of Mingazov’s behalf — and also on behalf of 19 other men sent to the UAE from Guantánamo (18 Yemenis and an Afghan). All have been subjected to arbitrary detention and enforced disappearance since their resettlement, despite having been promised their freedom when they were first transferred.

A cross-post, with my own introduction, of a recent CNN article looking at how US support for the Chinese government’s assertion that the Uyghur prisoners held at Guantánamo were terrorists not only continues to dog the men released from the prison between 2006 and 2013, but has also reinforced the Chinese government’s rationale for its brutal and horrendous “re-education” camps in Xinjiang province, where at least a million Uyghurs have been detained arbitrarily and have been subjected to human rights abuses.

84 days into Joe Biden’s presidency, I look at how his lack of prompt action regarding Guantánamo — in the first instance, by not reviving the Office of the Special Envoy for Guantánamo Closure in the State Department — has left six men approved for release between 2009 and 2020 still languishing at the prison. It is also impacting on the lives of men already released, who, as under Donald Trump, have no one within the administration to communicate with when they face life-threatening problems, which, in the case of Lutfi bin Ali, a Tunisian, recently led to his death.

Here’s the video of, and a discussion of, an online Guantánamo meeting on January 11, 2021, the 19th anniversary of the opening of the prison, featuring guest speakers Mohamedou Ould Salahi and myself, and hosted by the Lewes Amnesty Group.

Sad news via the United Nations and the Associated Press, updating the story of 18 Yemenis sent to the United Arab Emirates between 2015 and 2017, after being unanimously approved for release from Guantánamo by high-level US government review processes. Promised new lives, they — and a handful of other ex-prisoners, including some Afghans and Guantánamo’s last Russian prisoner — found themselves imprisoned in abusive conditions instead, and, adding insult to injury, the Yemenis are now being threatened with repatriation to Yemen, where their lives are at risk.

An update on a long-running story of obstruction by the Canadian government, which is refusing to allow three Uighur men and former Guantánamo prisoners, who were resettled in Albania and Bermuda, and who are married to Canadian citizens and with children who are also Canadian citizens, to be reunited with their families in Canada, citing long-discredited security concerns.

My report on the good news that three Afghan nationals and former Guantánamo prisoners, who were sent to the UAE in 2016-17, have been repatriated following a peace agreement negotiated between the Afghan government and former warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hesb-e Islami movement in 2016.

In my latest article, I follow up on a recent article about former Guantánamo prisoner Mohamedou Ould Salahi for Middle East Eye by Amandla Thomas-Johnson, who visited him in Mauritania. I focus in particular on Salahi’s belief in the importance of forgiveness, which is always extraordinarily powerful when it comes from people who have been subjected to appalling treatment.

Following up on a recent Canadian news report about three former Guantánamo prisoners — Uighurs (from China’s oppressed Xinjiang province), who were resettled in Albania and Bermuda. They are seeking permission from the Canadian government to join their wives and children, who are all Canadian nationals, but are finding that discredited allegations from Guantánamo continue to haunt them.