Recently, I was delighted to be invited to speak at a screening of “You Don’t Like the Truth: 4 Days Inside Guantánamo,” the excellent documentary film, directed by Luc Côté and Patricio Henriquez, about the Canadian citizen and former child prisoner Omar Khadr, based on seven hours of footage, from the summer of 2003, when Omar was just 16 years old, and Canadian agents came to Guantánamo to interrogate him, painfully dashing his hopes that they would secure his return home. I was pleased to speak at the UK premiere of the film, in London in June 2011, and I also discussed it on Press TV (see here and here, and see below for a video of the film via YouTube, uploaded in March 2015).

The screening takes place on Thursday evening in the auditorium at Amnesty International’s Human Rights Action Centre, 17-25 New Inn Yard, London EC2 3EA. The event starts at 7pm, and has been arranged by Amnesty International’s Children’s Human Rights Network — which is very appropriate given Omar’s age when he was captured, and the manner in which both the US and Canadian governments have cynically discarded his right to be rehabilitated rather than punished under the terms of the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict, to which both the US and Canada are signatories.

Tickets are free but must be booked in advance. Read the rest of this entry »

January 11, 2012 is the 10th anniversary of the opening of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo, and, to mark this bleak anniversary, dozens of campaigning groups are staging en event, “10 Years Too Many: National Day of Action Against Guantánamo.” Click on the image to enlarge.

Beginning at 12 noon outside the White House, speakers (myself included) will publicize some horrendous truths about Guantánamo, and will attempt to harangue the President for his failure to fulfil his broken promise to close the prison within a year of taking office. I was there last year (see here and here), and it’s depressing to note that nothing has improved in the last year, and that, in fact, all three branches of the government — the administration, Congress and the judiciary — have, whether through design or omission, made sure that no one is leaving Guantánamo anytime soon, and that, in fact, without concerted action, Guantánamo will remain open forever, and few, if any of the remaining 171 prisoners will ever leave.

After the rally at the White House, a human chain will be created stretching from the White House to the Capitol. The organisers have put out a call for 2,771 people – the number of prisoners still held unlawfully at Guantánamo (171) and Bagram (2,600) — to make up this human chain, and buses from around the country are being arranged via Witness Against Torture (who also have accommodation available) and The World Can’t Wait. Read the rest of this entry »

As I reported last month, ten NGOs, including Amnesty International, Liberty and Reprieve, announced their intention to boycott the government’s proposed inquiry into UK complicity in torture following the 9/11 attacks, on the first anniversary of Prime Minister David Cameron’s announcement that an inquiry would take place. Although the inquiry was initially greeted with guarded optimism, it rapidly became apparent that it was intended to be a whitewash, as I reported here, here, here and here.

Yesterday, the groups confirmed their intention to boycott the inquiry, sending a letter to the inquiry, asserting that “they will not be participating” and “do not intend to submit any evidence or attend any further meetings with the Inquiry team.”

In the letter, the NGOs said that the inquiry’s protocol and terms of reference showed it would not have the “credibility or transparency” to establish “the truth about allegations that UK authorities were involved in the mistreatment of detainees held abroad.”

As the Guardian reported, “Key sessions will be held in secret and the cabinet secretary will have the final say over what information is made public. Those who alleged they were subject to torture and rendition will not be able to question MI5 or MI6 officers, and foreign intelligence agencies will not be questioned.” Specifically, “Former detainees and their lawyers will not be able to question intelligence officials and all evidence from current or former members of the security and intelligence agencies, below the level of head, will be heard in private.” Read the rest of this entry »

Exactly 50 years ago, on May 28, 1961, the Observer gave over its front page to an article entitled, “The Forgotten Prisoners,” by the lawyer Peter Benenson, who had conceived of a worldwide campaign, “Appeal for Amnesty,” to urge governments to release or give a fair trial to people imprisoned because of their political or religious views. Benenson drew on Article 18 and 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the extraordinary post-war manifesto for a better world, which had been launched 13 years before, and his appeal — with its description of “prisoners of conscience” and its immortal line, “if these feelings of disgust all over the world could be united into common action, something effective could be done” — immediately drew supporters.

Within a year, Amnesty International was formed, which, as a blog post stated yesterday, “has grown to a global movement of 3 million supporters, members and activists with 18 national sections and 850 groups in over 27 countries.” Along the way, Peter Benenson’s original vision has been broadened to include, from the 1980s onwards, work on refugees and human rights education. In 1991, Amnesty decided to promote all the rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and in 2001 began to focus on “economic, social and cultural rights, paving the way for global campaigns on maternal mortality, slums and corporate accountability.”

On this important day, I’d like to wish Amnesty International a very happy 50th birthday, and to note how delighted I have been to work with Amnesty as part of its campaign to close Guantánamo and to secure justice for the prisoners still held there, including Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, particularly through the ongoing tour of “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo,” which I co-directed with Polly Nash. Mainly involving screenings to Amnesty student groups, the tour grew out of an invitation to speak at last year’s student conference in London. This was a wonderful and inspiring event, which, in turn, followed a screening of “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” at Amnesty’s London headquarters in February 2010. Read the rest of this entry »

In a news release on Friday, Amnesty International announced that its UK Director Kate Allen had written to Prime Minister David Cameron “calling on him to raise the case of the Guantánamo detainee Shaker Aamer when he meets US President Barack Obama” during the US leader’s visit to the UK on Tuesday and Wednesday this week.

The last British resident in Guantánamo, with a British wife and four British children who live in Battersea, Shaker Aamer has been held without charge or trial in America’s notorious “War on Terror” prison for over nine years, despite being told that he had been approved for transfer in 2007.

In WikiLeaks’ recent release of classified military documents relating to almost all of the 779 prisoners who have been held at Guantánamo throughout its long history (171 of whom remain), the reasons for Shaker Aamer’s continued detention were revealed as the paranoid sham that they have always been. Read the rest of this entry »