I wrote the following article for the “Close Guantánamo” website, which I established in January 2012 with US attorney Tom Wilner. Please join us — just an email address is required to be counted amongst those opposed to the ongoing existence of Guantánamo, and to receive updates of our activities by email.

Also please sign and share the petition on Change.org urging renewed action from President Obama to close Guantánamo, which now has nearly 200,000 signatures!

As the prison-wide hunger strike at Guantánamo begins its fourth month, we at “Close Guantánamo” are concerned that men will die unless President Obama follows up on his fine words last week with actions to match his understanding of why the prison’s continued existence is so wrong. As he said, it is “critical for us to understand that Guantánamo is not necessary to keep America safe. It is expensive. It is inefficient. It hurts us in terms of our international standing. It lessens cooperation with our allies on counter-terrorism efforts. It is a recruitment tool for extremists. It needs to be closed.”

To close Guantánamo, as we have been urging, the President needs to do three particular things:

1. To appoint a high-level official to deal specifically with the prison’s closure;
2. To drop his ban on releasing the Yemenis who make up two-thirds of the 86 prisoners cleared for release by the President ‘s own inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force, which he imposed in January 2010 after the arrest of the Yemen-trained would-be plane bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab;
3. Either to tackle Congress regarding the imposition of obstacles preventing the release of prisoners, or to use the waiver in the legislation (the National Defense Authorization Act) that allows him to bypass Congress if he regards it as being in America’s best interests.

Bringing the appalling injustice of Guantánamo to an end is, we believe, very much in America’s best interests. Read the rest of this entry »