Photos and Report: Guantánamo in the UK – A New Parliamentary Group Meets, and Mohamedou Ould Slahi Visits
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Last week was a big week for Guantánamo activism in the UK, as the inaugural meeting of the brand-new All-Party Parliamentary Group for Closing the Guantánamo Detention Facility took place in the Houses of Parliament, attended by former prisoner and best-selling author Mohamedou Ould Slahi and his former guard Steve Wood, who then, in the following days, attended three screenings of ‘The Mauritanian’, Kevin Macdonald’s feature film about Mohamedou, followed by Q&A sessions in which I was also involved.
The inaugural meeting of the APPG was attended by six MPs and peers — Chris Law (SNP), who chaired the meeting, and is the co-chair of the APPG, John McDonnell (Lab.), Baroness Helena Kennedy (Lab.), Sir Peter Bottomley (Con.), Richard Burgon (Lab.) and Rachael Maskell (Lab.).
Layla Moran (Lib Dem) is the other co-chair of the APPG, but was unable to attend because of other pressing commitments, although her assistant Emilia Harvey was there to represent her. All were voted in as officers of the APPG.
All-Party Parliamentary Group for the Closure of Guantánamo Holds Inaugural Meeting in UK Parliament, April 24, 2023 with Mohamedou Ould Slahi
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On Monday April 24, at 5.30pm, the All-Party Parliamentary Group for the Closing of the Guantánamo Detention Facility will be holding its inaugural meeting in Committee Room 19 of the Palace of Westminster (the Houses of Parliament). Members of the public are welcome, but the room only holds a maximum of 40 people. If you want to attend, please enter by the Cromwell Green entrance from 3.45pm onwards. Campaigners, myself included, will be in the Palace of Westminster’s cafe from 4pm.
The co-chairs of the new APPG are Layla Moran MP (Liberal Democrat) and Chris Law MP (SNP), and other MPs include Sir Peter Bottomley (Conservative), Caroline Lucas (Green) and the Labour MPs John McDonnell, Richard Burgon, Rachael Maskell and Andy Slaughter. Peers include Sayeeda Warsi (Conservative) and the Labour peers Helena Kennedy, Shami Chakrabarti and John Hendy.
At this inaugural meeting, as a press release from Amnesty International UK explains, “the group of MPs and peers will hear an update on the current situation at Guantánamo, which still holds 30 detainees, 16 of them cleared for release but still detained.”
Radio: ‘Guantánamo Voices’ on Resonance FM, Featuring Sarah Mirk, Mohamedou Ould Slahi and Me, and Music by The Four Fathers
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I’m delighted to promote a one-hour show, ‘Guantánamo Voices’, produced by comics journalist and broadcaster Alex Fitch for Resonance FM, the London-based non-profit community radio station, specializing in the arts.
The show is based on two interviews and one recording of an event — interviews with myself, discussing Guantánamo’s history, recorded last week to mark the 21st anniversary of the opening of the prison, and with comics creator Sarah Mirk, whose wonderful graphic novel anthology, ‘Guantánamo Voices’, was published by Abrams in 2020. I reviewed it here, and was also thrilled to be featured in a comic about Guantánamo that was written by Sarah and published in The Nib in 2018.
The event recorded by Alex, featuring former prisoner and author Mohamedou Ould Slahi and myself, took place at the University of Brighton in March last year, during Mohamedou’s first UK speaking tour, which I wrote about here when I first met him, after years of writing about him, and campaigning for his release. Please also see the video here of a Q&A featuring both of us in Tunbridge Wells, following a screening of ‘The Mauritanian’, the feature film based on Mohamedou’s story, directed by Kevin Macdonald, and also feel free to check out my article about the screening and the tour here.
Video: “Guantánamo Diary Revisited” – Q&A with Mohamedou Ould Slahi, Director John Goetz and Andy Worthington
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.
Two weeks ago, Cinema Libre Studio, in Los Angeles, generously allowed the documentary film “Guantánamo Diary Revisited“, for which they are the distributor in the US and Canada, to be shown in an online screening as a fundraiser for my ongoing work on Guantánamo (via my website here, and also via the Close Guantánamo campaign), and I’m pleased to report that it raised several hundred dollars to support my work.
Directed by the journalist John Goetz, the film follows former Guantánamo prisoner Mohamedou Ould Slahi (aka Salahi), as, with the help of Goetz, he tracks down some of those responsible for his torture, meeting with a variety of responses, ranging from guilt to denial, which makes for a very powerful documentary.
The film is available on DVD, and also via a number of streaming services, and if you haven’t seen it, I hope you’ll find the opportunity to do so, as it provides a unique insight into the mentality of those who were on the front line of implementing torture at Guantánamo.
Video: Q&A with Mohamedou Ould Salahi, Kevin Macdonald, Nancy Hollander and I at Screening of ‘The Mauritanian’ in Tunbridge Wells
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.
Last month, I was privileged to take part in a number of events during the first ever UK speaking tour by former Guantánamo prisoner and torture victim Mohamedou Ould Salahi (aka Slahi), which was arranged by my friend Bernard Sullivan and his niece Oriel, in which the author of the acclaimed memoir “Guantánamo Diary” brought his extraordinary message of forgiveness to Bristol, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Chatham House and the LSE in London, Brighton, Tunbridge Wells and a peace centre in Somerset. Mohamedou’s tour culminated in a visit to the Houses of Parliament, where he addressed a number of supportive MPs and peers, and had the distinction of being the first non-British former Guantánamo prisoner to be welcomed into the Palace of Westminster.
As I have previously reported, I met Mohamedou for the very first time at the Chatham House event. I had already taken part in a number of online events with him, so I knew of his charisma, his winning smile and his wicked sense of humour, but, meeting him in person, it was also impossible not to recognize how the torture to which he was subjected continues to haunt him. Like an unsettled day in which the sun breaks out, illuminating everything with warmth and radiance, only for dark clouds to then obscure it, suddenly bringing darkness and cold, Mohamedou alternates between extraordinary sociability and silent seriousness behind which the ghosts that continue to dog him are evidently still at play.
The Chatham House event, on March 10, was my first opportunity to see Mohamedou’s mesmerising effect on audiences, and it was followed, as were all his speaking events, by attendees queuing up to buy copies of “Guantánamo Diary”, and to have them signed by Mohamedou, as he engaged with them and brought them directly into his world for a few moments.
“Guantánamo Diary Revisited”: Online Screening of New Documentary as a Fundraiser for My Guantánamo Work
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.
I’m delighted to announce that, next week, from April 20-23, filmmakers and distributors Cinema Libre Studio are hosting an online screening of the new documentary film, “Guantánamo Diary Revisited,” followed by an exclusive Q&A session, on April 23, as a fundraiser to support my ongoing work on Guantánamo via my website, and via the website of the Close Guantánamo campaign that I co-founded in 2012 with the US attorney Tom Wilner.
“Guantánamo Diary Revisited” is directed by the investigative journalist John Goetz, and has just been released by Cinema Libre Studio in the US and Canada on DVD and on a variety of streaming platforms. It follows former Guantánamo prisoner and best-selling author Mohamedou Ould Slahi (aka Salahi), after his release from Guantánamo in October 2016, as, with John, Mohamedou set out to find the “Special Projects” interrogators, including the mysterious Mr. X, who tortured him at Guantánamo on the orders of the now-deceased defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, “in order to seek revenge … by inviting them to tea,” as the film’s publicity blurb explains.
Mohamedou, extraordinarily, realized that the only way to avoid being trapped by the torture to which he was subjected was to forgive everyone who had wronged him, the significance of which I first noticed soon after his release, when, in a video made for the ACLU, he said, “I wholeheartedly forgive everyone who wronged me during my detention, and I forgive because forgiveness is my inexhaustible resource.”
How I Finally Met Former Guantánamo Prisoner Mohamedou Ould Salahi As A Free Man
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Last Thursday, at Chatham House, the independent policy institute in St. James’s Square in London, I finally got to meet someone I greatly admire, who I’ve been writing about since 2006 — Mohamedou Ould Salahi (aka Slahi), former Guantánamo prisoner, torture survivor, and the author of the best-selling memoir Guantánamo Diary, who was taking part in a discussion about Guantánamo with Rachel Briggs, a Chatham House Fellow, and Sonya Sceats of Freedom from Torture, as part of his ongoing UK speaking tour.
I’ve taken part in various online events with Mohamedou over the last year (see here, here and here), but meeting him in person was a particular thrill. He was as witty and as playful as I expected, and, at the event, spoke compellingly about the importance of forgiveness, which he has extended to all those who tortured and abused him, and which is a defining aspect of his philosophy.
I first came across Mohamedou’s case in 2006-07, while I was researching and writing about the stories of all the men held at Guantánamo for my book The Guantánamo Files, published in September 2007.
Former Guantánamo Prisoner Mohamedou Ould Salahi Embarks on a UK Speaking Tour
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I’m delighted to report that former Guantánamo prisoner, torture victim and best-selling author Mohamedou Ould Salahi (aka Slahi) has safely arrived in the UK for his first ever speaking tour, and appeared yesterday evening (March 3) at the University of Bristol’s Human Rights Implementation Centre, where, according to the human rights activist Bernard Sullivan, who has organised his tour, he spoke “to a packed auditorium of academics, students and guests, with many others watching via Zoom”, and where copies of his book Guantánamo Diary, which he was signing, sold out.
Mohamedou is here for the rest of the month, taking part in nine other events, and I’m pleased to note that I will be joining him for two of these, at the University of Brighton and at the Trinity Theatre in Tunbridge Wells. Some of the events will also involve a screening of ‘The Mauritanian’, the feature film based on Guantánamo Diary, directed by Kevin Macdonald, and featuring Tahar Rahim, Jodie Foster and Benedict Cumberbatch.
I’ve been following Mohamedou’s story since I first began working on Guantánamo full-time 16 years ago, and I first met Bernard when he and his wife Susie helped to arrange a Parliamentary meeting about Mohamedou’s case, in April 2016, hosted by the Liberal Democrat MP Tom Brake, at which the actors Sanjeev Bhaskar and Toby Jones read out passages from Mohamedou’s book, and those in attendance also heard from his brother Yahdih, who lives and works in Germany, Nancy Hollander, Jo Glanville, the director of English PEN, and Jamie Byng of Canongate Books, Mohamedou’s UK publisher.
‘Guantánamo: 20 Years After’ — Mohamedou Ould Salahi and I Are Keynote Speakers at Brighton University Online Conference on Nov. 12-13
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.
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.
I’m delighted to announce a two-day online conference about Guantánamo — ‘Guantánamo: 20 Years After‘ — on Friday November 12 and Saturday November 13, hosted by the University of Brighton, which I’ve been organizing with Sara Birch, a lecturer in law at the university and, like me, a longtime advocate for the prison’s closure.
Covid-19 has made the conference an online affair, but what it has also done is to allow us to bring together people who might not have been able to travel for a physical conference; in this case, in particular, former Guantánamo prisoners who, in common with everyone who has been released from the prison over the unforgivably long years of its existence, face restrictions on their ability to travel freely, either because they aren’t allowed to have passports, or because they face often insurmountable problems getting visas.
I’m honoured to have been asked to open the conference on Friday as a keynote speaker, followed by former Guantánamo prisoner and best-selling author Mohamedou Ould Salahi, and on Saturday we’re delighted to have former prisoner Mansoor Adayfi and his collaborator Antonio Aiello — on Adayfi’s recently published memoir ‘Don’t Forget Us Here: Lost and Found at Guantánamo’ — as guest speakers.
“The Mauritanian” Perfectly Captures the Horrors of Guantánamo and the US Torture Program
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UPDATE MAR. 3, 2021: “The Mauritanian” is now available for streaming in the US, although UK viewers will have to wait until April 1.
Last Friday I was privileged to be invited to an online pre-release screening of “The Mauritanian,” the new feature film about former Guantánamo prisoner and torture victim Mohamedou Ould Slahi (aka Salahi), based on his best-selling memoir Guantánamo Diary, which I cannot recommend highly enough.
French actor Tahar Rahim shines as Mohamedou, capturing his nimble mind, and also capturing something of his gentle charisma, admirably supported by his attorneys Nancy Hollander (played by Jodie Foster) and Teri Duncan (actually a composite of two attorneys, played by Shailene Woodley), and with Benedict Cumberbatch appearing as Lt. Col. Stuart Couch, Mohamedou’s military prosecutor, who resigned after discovering his torture, and how the only evidence against him consisted of statements that he made as a result of his torture.
The screenplay was written by Michael Bronner (as M. B. Traven), working with the writing duo of Rory Haines and Sohrab Noshirvani, and the director was Kevin Macdonald, and all involved are to be commended for creating a film that does justice to Mohamedou’s story — and I’m grateful to Nancy Hollander for having specifically included a photo of herself holding up a “Close Guantánamo” poster in the end credits, which I took of her in April 2016 at a Parliamentary meeting for Mohamedou in London.
Who's still at Guantánamo?
