Is Hope Still Alive on the Anniversaries of the Genocide and Torture Conventions, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?
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For anyone concerned with human rights and international humanitarian law, two dates in 1948 — December 9 and December 10 — are of crucial importance, as these are the dates when the recently-formed United Nations, via its General Assembly, idealistically and optimistically adopted, on December 9, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the Genocide Convention), and, the day after, adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which established, for the first time, fundamental human rights to be universally protected, and which, as the UN explains, “inspired, and paved the way for, the adoption of more than seventy human rights treaties.” Ever since, December 10 — today — has been known and celebrated as Human Rights Day, while December 9 is marked as the International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide and of the Prevention of this Crime.
One of those subsequent treaties is the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (the Torture Convention), which, after decades of wrangling, was finally adopted by the General Assembly on December 10, 1984, the 36th anniversary of the UDHR, expanding on Article 5 of the Declaration, which states, unequivocally, “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”
The Genocide Convention, and the long quest for accountability
The Genocide Convention, drawing on the work of the Polish Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin, who first coined the term during the Second World War, defines genocide as “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” — “killing members of the group”, “causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group”, “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”, “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group”, and “forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
Guantánamo Resettlements in Turmoil as Oman Forcibly Repatriates Yemenis Given New Homes Between 2015 and 2017
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I wrote the following article for the “Close Guantánamo” website, which I established in January 2012, on the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, with the 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.
In genuinely dispiriting news, Spencer Ackerman has reported, via his Forever Wars website, that the majority of the 28 former Guantánamo prisoners from Yemen who were resettled in Oman between 2015 and 2017 have been forcibly repatriated to their home country over the last few weeks.
The news is particularly dispiriting because, until now, the Sultanate of Oman had appeared to be one of the most successful countries involved in resettling former Guantánamo prisoners, all unanimously approved for release by high-level US government review processes, but who could not be safely repatriated.
This was either because the State Department regarded it as unsafe for them to be sent home (on the basis of human rights concerns, or concerns about their potential recruitment or targeting by forces hostile to the US), or because provisions inserted by Republicans into the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) proscribe certain countries, including Yemen, from receiving their citizens (again, for reasons of national security), or, in a few cases, because they were essentially stateless.
Lloyd Austin Cynically Revokes 9/11 Plea Deals, Which Correctly Concluded That the Use of Torture Is Incompatible With the Pursuit of Justice
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I wrote the following article for the “Close Guantánamo” website, which I established in January 2012, on the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, with the 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.
In depressing but sadly predictable news regarding the prison at Guantánamo Bay and its fundamentally broken military commission trial system, the US defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, has stepped in to torpedo plea deal agreements with three of the men allegedly involved in planning and executing the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, which were announced just 48 hours before in a press release by his own department, the Department of Defense.
The three men in question are Khalid Shaikh Mohammad (KSM), the alleged mastermind of the attacks, Walid Bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi, and, although the full details of the plea deals were not made publicly available, prosecutors who spoke about them after the DoD’s press release was issued confirmed that the three men had “agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy and murder charges in exchange for a life sentence rather than a death-penalty trial.”
The plea deals, approved by the Convening Authority for the military commissions, Army Brig. Gen. Susan Escallier, who was previously the Chief Judge in the US Army Court of Criminal Appeals, would finally have brought to an end the embarrassing and seemingly interminable efforts to prosecute the three men, which began sixteen and a half years ago, and have provided nothing but humiliation for four successive US administrations — those led by George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
Guantánamo Scandal: Eleven Men Were Set to Be Freed Last October, Until “Political Optics” Shifted After Hamas’ Attack on Israel
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I wrote the following article for the “Close Guantánamo” website, which I established in January 2012, on the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, with the 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.
Thanks to NBC News, and the four anonymous US government officials who spoke to them, for exposing the latest scandal involving the US prison at Guantánamo Bay — the refusal of the Biden administration to release eleven men, for whom long months of negotiation had secured a safe and viable resettlement option, because of the perceived “political optics” of freeing them after the attacks on Israel by Hamas and other militants on October 7.
Within Guantánamo circles, this scandal was well known, but attorneys for the men had been subjected to a Protective Order issued by the government, preventing them from talking about it, and, as a result, they had all dutifully kept quiet, as had others, like myself, who had got to know about it.
Their silence is, in itself, an indictment of how the US government operates at Guantánamo, as I also recognised when I refused to publicize it, because of the fundamentally lawless situation in which these men are held.
Photos and Report: Eight Global Vigils for the Closure of Guantánamo on February 7, 2024
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As the prison at Guantánamo Bay continues its miserable existence, now in its 23rd year of denying justice to the men held, and betraying every legal principle that is supposed to distinguish the US from dictatorships, I’m grateful to the campaigners across the US, and around the world, who, following the annual protests for Guantánamo’s closure on January 11, the 22nd anniversary of its opening, have resumed the monthly vigils that I initiated a year ago to try to keep a light shining on Guantánamo once a month rather than just once a year.
Via organizations including numerous Amnesty International groups, the UK Guantánamo Network, Witness Against Torture and The World Can’t Wait, vigils took place on Wednesday (February 7) in Washington, D.C., Cobleskill, NY, Detroit and San Francisco, as well as in Mexico City and London, where I joined fellow campaigners outside the Houses of Parliament, and in Brussels and Copenhagen, where campaigners held their vigils on the preceding days.
Close Guantánamo: Our Achievements in 2023, Marking Guantánamo’s 22nd Anniversary on Jan. 11, and What We Can Do in 2024
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I wrote the following article for the “Close Guantánamo” website, which I established in January 2012, on the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, with the 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.
Thanks to everyone who took part in events marking the 22nd anniversary of the opening of the prison at Guantánamo Bay on January 11 — via the 20 vigils for the prison’s closure that took place across the US and around the world, via our ongoing photo campaign, for which over 120 people sent in photos of themselves with a poster marking 8,036 days of the prison’s existence on January 11, and calling for its closure, and via a number of online events.
One of these events was an online panel discussion, hosted by the New America think-tank in Washington, D.C., at which I was joined by the eloquent former prisoner Mohamedou Ould Slahi, and Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, who, until recently, was the UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms while Countering Terrorism.
Last year, Fionnuala became the first UN Rapporteur to visit the prison, subsequently producing what I described at the time as “a devastatingly critical report about systemic, historic and ongoing human rights abuses at the prison,” in which she concluded that, despite some improvements to the regime under Presidents Obama and Biden, the totality of ongoing conditions at the prison amounts to “ongoing cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment,” which, in certain cases, “may also meet the legal threshold for torture.”
Video: Guantánamo at 22 – Mohamedou Ould Slahi, Fionnuala Ní Aoláin and Andy Worthington at New America
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On January 11, the 22nd anniversary of the opening of the prison at Guantánamo Bay, I was delighted to take part in an online panel discussion, “Guantánamo at Twenty-Two: What is the Future of the Prison Camp?”, hosted by New America, the US think-tank located close to the White House in Washington, D.C.
I’ve been taking part in annual panel discussions about Guantánamo at New America since 2011, normally with Tom Wilner, the US attorney with whom I co-founded the Close Guantánamo campaign in 2012, but this year Tom wasn’t available, and I was pleased that my suggestions for two compelling replacements — former prisoner Mohamedou Ould Slahi, the author of the best-selling Guantánamo Diary, and Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms while Countering Terrorism — were met with enthusiasm.
The moderator was Peter Bergen, New America’s Vice President, and the video, via YouTube, is posted below. It was a powerful event, and I hope that you have time to watch it, and that you’ll share it if you find it useful.
Video and Report: The Incredibly Powerful “Close Guantánamo!” Event in the EU Parliament, September 28, 2023
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I’m just back from the most extraordinary three-day trip to Brussels, the centrepiece of which was “Close Guantánamo!,” an astonishing and deeply moving three-hour event in the EU Parliament featuring nine speakers.
Three of the speakers were former prisoners, including Mansoor Adayfi, held for over 14 years at Guantánamo and subsequently resettled in Serbia, where, after nearly seven years, he has only this year secured a passport and been able to travel outside the country. Also speaking were two lawyers, a UN Rapporteur and myself, as well as the former Muslim Chaplain at the prison, and the relative of a victim of the 9/11 attacks.
The full video is below, via YouTube, and I hope that you have time to watch it, and that you’ll share if if you find it as inspiring as those who attended it, and those who took part in it. An edited version will hopefully be available soon, including the contents of PowerPoint presentations that were made by some of the speakers, which are not visible in this recording of the event, and the removal of some of the dead time — for example, the general milling about between the first and second sessions.
Radio: I Discuss Guantánamo’s Collapsing Trials and “Forever Prisoners” with Misty Winston on TNT Radio
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On Monday, I was delighted to talk — for the first time in a while — with the US-based radio host Misty Winston, a fiercely independent thinker (and a massive supporter of Julian Assange) for her show on TNT Radio, an Australian-based online radio station that is more generally known for indulging conspiracy theorists. Misty is a great supporter of my work, and frequently amplifies my posts on Twitter — sorry, X — where she has over 70,000 followers, and I’m honoured that, on her Substack, she chose to describe me as a “legend”, a “fighter” and a “relentless champion.”
Our interview is available here, starting 19 minutes into the show, and I’ve also embedded it below (although in the embed you can’t fast forward as easily as in the link above).
We began by looking at the situation at Guantánamo right now, where 30 men are still held, 16 of whom have been unanimously approved for release by high-level government review processes, although, as I explained, despite being approved for release they continue to languish at Guantánamo with no sign of when, if ever, they will actually be freed. This is in spite of the fact that, as of September 6, they had been waiting to be freed for between 348 and 1,013 days, and, in three cases, 4,975 days.
Sep. 28: EU Parliament Holds “Most Significant Gathering Ever Assembled on Guantánamo”, With Former Prisoners, Lawyers, Myself and Others
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POSTSCRIPT: See here for my report about, and the video of the event, plus photos.
On Thursday September 28, a very special event, described by its organizers as “the most significant gathering ever assembled on Guantánamo in the European Parliament,” is taking place in Brussels.
Ten speakers will be taking part in the event, which runs from 9am until noon. Three are former prisoners — Mansoor Adayfi, a Yemeni held for 14 years, who was resettled in Serbia in 2016, and is the author of the devastating memoir, “Don’t Forget Us Here: Lost and Found at Guantánamo,” published in 2021, which manages, simultaneously, to be harrowing, hilarious and full of humanity; Moazzam Begg, the author of “Enemy Combatant,” published in 2006; and Lakhdar Boumediene, an Algerian resettled in France in 2009, who is the co-author, with Mustafa Art Idr, of “Witnesses of the Unseen: Seven Years in Guantánamo,” published in 2017.
Also attending is Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms while Countering Terrorism, who was the first Rapporteur to visit Guantánamo, earlier this year, and whose devastating report, published in June, described an ongoing regime that, despite some tinkering by Presidents Obama and Biden, constitutes, as she described it, “ongoing cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment,” which “may also meet the legal threshold for torture.”
Who's still at Guantánamo?
