US prisons

This year, on the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, which I’ve been writing about most years since 2007, generally in relation to Guantánamo and the CIA torture program, I examine the latest horror story to emerge from the US, via Donald Trump’s migrant detention program, recently described by a visiting doctor as comparable “to torture facilities.”

My thoughts on the release from a US prison of John Walker Lindh, the “American Taliban”, after he served 17 years of a 20-year sentence for having supported the Taliban, as some commentators continue to insist that he should not have been freed early for good behavior.

My response to the outrageous and alarming decision by the US Justice Department, under Donald Trump, to charge Julian Assange of WikiLeaks under the Espionage Act, and how fundamentally it threatens press freedom, plus my call for the British government to refuse to extradite Assange to the US, and also to move him from Belmarsh, where his mental health is deteriorating.

On the eighth anniversary of WikiLeaks’ release of classified military files from Guantánamo, on which I worked as a media partner, I recall how I got involved, I reiterate the significance of the files, and I call for the release from custody, in the UK and the US, of Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning.

My call for support for whistleblower Chelsea Manning, who has been imprisoned for refusing to testify in a Grand Jury case against WikiLeaks. I have a particular interest in the information Chelsea made available, as it included classified military files from Guantánamo, which helped to establish how much of the so-called evidence from the prison was based on lies.

As Daesh’s would-be Caliphate crumbles in Syria, I express my disgust at UK home secretary Sajid Javid’s cynical and unacceptable decision to strip the citizenship of ISIS bride Shamima Begum, who was just 15 when she travelled to Syria, and also look at other countries’ responses, including those of the US.

Please support my work as a reader-funded journalist! I’m currently trying to raise $2500 (£2000) to support my writing and campaigning on Guantánamo and related issues over the next three months of the Trump administration. If you can help, please click on the button below to donate via PayPal.   I wrote the following article […]

Please support my work as a reader-funded journalist! I’m currently trying to raise $2500 (£2000) to support my writing and campaigning on Guantánamo and related issues over the next three months of the Trump administration.   Last week, I was delighted to talk to Linda Olson-Osterlund for the morning show, Political Perspectives, on KBOO FM, […]

This Wednesday and Thursday, November 29 and 30, a hearing is taking place at the High Court in London to assess whether Lauri Love, a computer expert with Asperger’s Syndrome, should be extradited to the US for acts of online activism —  allegedly targeting US government websites in the wake of the suicide of computer […]

On Tuesday, a significant victory took place in the long struggle by campaigners — and prisoners themselves — to improve detention conditions in US prisons, when a settlement was reached in Ashker v. Governor of California, a federal class action lawsuit on behalf of prisoners held in the Security Housing Unit (SHU) at California’s Pelican […]