Murders in US custody

Please support my work! I’m currently trying to raise $2500 (£2000) to support my writing and campaigning on Guantánamo and related issues — including the US torture program — over the next three months of the Trump administration. Today is the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, which commemorates the entry into force, on June […]

Last November, a war crimes tribunal established in Malaysia “found George Bush and Tony Blair guilty of ‘crimes against peace’ and other war crimes for their 2003 aggressive attack on Iraq, as well as fabricating pretexts used to justify the attack,” as Glenn Greenwald explained at the time. The seven-member Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal, […]

My friend and colleague Jeff Kaye, a full-time psychologist who somehow also finds time to conduct research into Guantánamo and America’s post-9/11 torture program, had a fascinating — and disturbing — article published last week on Truthout, in which, after stumbling upon the autopsy reports of two prisoners who died at Guantánamo in 2007 and […]

In the whole sordid ten-year history of Guantánamo, one of the most distressing events, which has never been adequately investigated, involves the deaths of three prisoners on the night of June 9, 2006. According to the authorities, the deaths were the result of a coordinated suicide pact, but this never sounded credible to anyone who […]

Yesterday, the publication of the final report of the Baha Mousa Inquiry demonstrated that, occasionally, when something truly monstrous has occurred, the British government can do the right thing, and hold a proper inquiry. Baha Mousa, a hotel receptionist in Basra, Iraq, was killed by British soldiers in September 2003, his brutalized body bearing 93 […]

In an 11-minute interview with Russia Today (see below), former Guantánamo prisoner Murat Kurnaz recalled how he was seized in Pakistan in November 2001, and his experiences in US custody in Afghanistan and at Guantánamo. Born in Germany, but only regarded as a resident because his parents are Turkish, Kurnaz was released in August 2006, […]

Back in January 2010, law professor and Harper’s columnist Scott Horton had a fascinating and alarming article published in Harper’s Magazine (it was online in January, and in the March print edition), entitled, “The Guantánamo ‘Suicides’: A Camp Delta Sergeant Blows the Whistle,” a devastating analysis of three supposed suicides at Guantánamo on the night […]

This is the fourth article in “Bagram Week” here at Andy Worthington, with seven articles in total exploring what is happening at the main US prison in Afghanistan through reports, analyses of review boards, and the voices of the prisoners themselves, and ongoing updates to the definitive annotated Bagram prisoner list. As part of “Bagram […]

This is the second article in “Bagram Week” here at Andy Worthington, with seven articles in total exploring what is happening at the main US prison in Afghanistan through reports, analyses of review boards, and the voices of the prisoners themselves, and ongoing updates to the definitive annotated Bagram prisoner list. So what’s happening at […]

Today is the 60th anniversary of Human Rights Day, declared by the United Nations in 1950 to mark the adoption by the UN of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights — essentially, the founding document of the human rights movement — on December 10, 1948. To mark the occasion, and, I think, to highlight American […]