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.

Remember back in May 2013, when a prison-wide hunger strike was raging at Guantánamo? Promoted into action by international criticism, President Obama delivered a major speech on national security issues in which he promised to resume releasing prisoners from Guantánamo, after a period of over two and a half years in which just five men had been freed.

That deadlock had arisen because Congress had imposed onerous restrictions on the release of prisoners, and the president was unwilling to spend political capital overcoming those obstacles, even though he had the power to do so.

After President Obama’s promise in May 2013, we at “Close Guantánamo” established the Gitmo Clock to mark how many days it is since the promise, and how many men have been freed. Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Remember President Obama’s promise to close Guantánamo within a year, which he made on his second day in office in January 2009?

So do we, and on Sunday, at the rally outside the White House, on the 13th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, we remembered that promise again, almost six years since it was made.

For many years now, these anniversaries have been cheerless occasions, as Congress sought to prevent the release of prisoners through the imposition of cynical and onerous legislation, and the president largely complied. Read the rest of this entry »

Please visit, like, share and tweet the Gitmo Clock, which marks how many days it is since President Obama’s promise to resume releasing prisoners from Guantánamo (450), and how many men have been freed (17). This article was published yesterday, as “Gitmo Clock Marks 450 Days Since President Obama’s Promise to Resume Releasing Prisoners from Guantánamo; Just 17 Men Freed,” on 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.

Last August, we at “Close Guantánamo” launched the Gitmo Clock, an initiative designed to perform two functions: firstly, to measure how long it is since President Obama’s promise, in a major speech on national security on May 23, 2013, to resume releasing prisoners from Guantánamo; and, secondly, how many men have been released.

Yesterday (August 16) marked 450 days since that promise, and we hope that you will visit the Gitmo Clock, like it, share it and tweet it to act as a reminder of what has been achieved in the last 15 months, and, more importantly, what remains to be achieved.

In the two years and eight months up to President Obama’s promise, just five men were released from Guantánamo, even though, throughout that period, 86 of the remaining prisoners were cleared for release. Those recommendations were made by the high-level, inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force that President Obama established, shortly after taking office in 2009, to review the cases of all the prisoners still held at the time, and to decide whether they should be released or prosecuted, or whether, in some cases, they should continue to be held without charge or trial. Read the rest of this entry »