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. If you can help, please click on the button below to donate via PayPal. Please also consider taking out a free or paid subscription to my new Substack newsletter.

UPDATE: Just after I posted this article, the news broke that eleven of the 14 men approved for release from Guantánamo have been resettled in Oman. My article celebrating this news will be published tomorrow, but the photo campaign and the vigils will, of course, be proceeding as planned, because 15 men are still held — three who have also long been approved for release, three “forever prisoners”, never charged, but never approved for release either, and nine others in the military commissions trial system. Here’s my article about the release of these eleven men, containing more information than you’ll find in the mainstream media!

With the plight of 14 men who have long been approved for release from Guantánamo but are still held dominating the thoughts of those of us who have spent years — or decades — calling for the prison’s closure, this coming week — which includes the 23rd anniversary of the prison’s opening, on Saturday January 11 — is a crucial time for highlighting the need for urgent action from the Biden administration, in the last few weeks before Donald Trump once more occupies the White House, bringing with him, no doubt, a profound antipathy towards any of the men still held, and a hunger for sealing the prison shut as he did during his first term in office.

This Thursday, January 9, marks 8,400 days since the prison opened, and, as I’ve been doing every 100 days for the last seven years, I’m encouraging people across the US and around the world to show their solidarity with the men still held by taking a photo with the Close Guantánamo campaign’s poster marking this grim milestone, and calling for the prison’s closure. The poster is here, and please send your photo here. If you don’t have a printer, you can bring up the poster on a phone, or on a tablet or laptop, and get someone to take a photo with their phone.

Normally, I also produce a separate poster marking the number of days that Guantánamo has been open on the anniversary of its opening, but this year, because the anniversary falls just two days after 8,400 days, I’m encouraging everyone holding vigils on January 11 to print off the 8,400 days poster and to use that. After 8,400 days, two days really make very little difference at all.

Read the rest of this entry »