New arrivals at Guantanamo

In the classified US military files recently released by WikiLeaks, and identified as Detainee Assessment Briefs (DABs), files relating to 765 of the 779 prisoners held at the prison since it opened on January 11, 2002 have been released. The other 14 files are missing, and this article addresses who these prisoners are and why […]

There is cruelty. There is stupidity. And far too often, when it comes to the activities of the US government in the “War on Terror,” there is both. In my previous article, The Only Way Out of Guantánamo Is In a Coffin, I wrote about the death at Guantánamo — reportedly as a result of […]

Despite sweeping into office promising to close Guantánamo, President Obama now oversees a prison that may well stay open forever, from which the only exit route is in a coffin. The last living prisoner to be released from Guantánamo was Farhi Saeed bin Mohammed, an Algerian who was repatriated against his will in January. Since […]

Carol Rosenberg at the Miami Herald broke the news on Saturday that 12 prisoners have been released from Guantánamo, bringing the total number of prisoners held to 198. The news followed hints in the Washington Post on Friday that six Yemenis and four Afghans were set to leave, but Rosenberg — and the East African […]

The delivery of a new “terror suspect” to Guantánamo makes five new arrivals since March. Andy Worthington, author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison, looks at their stories, and asks what the administration –- under pressure in the Supreme Court, and with no functioning “war crimes” trials […]

Demonstrating either that the administration’s left hand does not know what the right hand is doing –- which would be apt –- or, more probably, that they don’t give a damn what anyone thinks, the foolish rumors of Guantánamo’s imminent closure, which I mocked here this morning, were comprehensively swept away a few hours later […]

It’s been another busy week at Guantánamo. On 4 June, the US administration attempted to hold the first of the reconvened Military Commissions since the farcical ‘trial’ of David Hicks in March, when the Australian Taliban volunteer –- persistently regarded by the administration as one of ‘the worst of the worst’, and one of only […]