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Via Middle East Eye, and reporter Peter Oborne (formerly the chief political columnist of the Daily Telegraph, until his resignation in 2015), comes the welcome news that Guantánamo prisoner and torture victim Ahmed Rabbani has been approved for release from the prison via a Periodic Review Board, a parole-type process established in 2013 by President Obama.

Oborne was told about Rabbani’s approval for release by his lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, the founder of Reprieve. “Even if it is nearly two decades late, it is fabulous that Ahmed has been cleared for release,” Stafford Smith said.

A Pakistani national of Rohingya origin, Rabbani, who is now 52 years old, was seized with his brother Abdul Rahim in Karachi in September 2002, and, after two months in Pakistani custody, spent 18 months in CIA “black sites” in Afghanistan, including the notorious prison identified by the CIA as ‘COBALT,’ but also known as the Salt Pit, or, as the prisoners described it, “the dark prison.” There he was hung naked from an iron shackle, with his feet barely touching the ground, and, like the other men held there, subjected to loud music designed to prevent them from sleeping.

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Please sign and share the petition, calling for David Cameron to apologise to Suliman Gani, which currently has over 1,100 signatures.

Yesterday evening, friends of Suliman Gani launched a petition on Change.org, urging Prime Minister David Cameron to retract allegations he made two weeks ago about Muslim community organiser Suliman Gani. At Prime Minister’s Questions, David Cameron called him a supporter of Islamic State (IS), when nothing could be further from the truth. Mr Gani has, in fact, appeared at an event called ‘The Evils of Isis’, at which he condemned their actions, and has repeatedly explained how their actions are un-Islamic.

The Prime Minister’s false allegations were part of an effort to undermine Sadiq Khan prior to today’s London Mayoral elections, which also involved Zac Goldsmith, who called Mr. Gani “one of the most repellent figures in this country”, while failing to remember that he had a photo taken with Mr. Gani at an event last year, and also failing to recognise that Mr. Gani has long expressed support for and interest in the Conservative Party.

Today, as Londoners go to the polls to vote for the capital’s next Mayor, please sign and share the petition, and please vote wisely. Read the rest of this entry »

In the week since it was announced that Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo, is to be released, to be returned to his family in the UK, there has been a huge sigh of relief from the many, many people who campaigned for his release — supporters of the long-standing Save Shaker Aamer Campaign, which I have been involved with for many years, attending protests and speaking at events, of We Stand With Shaker, the campaign I established with Joanne MacInnes last November, which drew huge support for photos of celebrities and MPs standing with a giant inflatable figure of Shaker, and supporters of the Shaker Aamer Parliamentary Group, established last November by John McDonnell MP, a persistent supporter of worthy causes and fighter against injustice, who, with Caroline Lucas (our sole Green MP), Jeremy Corbyn and Shaker’s constituency MP, Jane Ellison, has been the most consistent MP supporting Shaker’s cause.

My article celebrating the news of Shaker’s forthcoming release was liked and shared by over 1,500 people on Facebook. Posted on the Close Guantánamo page, it has reached over 21,000 people; on the We Stand With Shaker page it has reached over 11,000 people. Thank you to everyone who has supported the various campaigns to secure Shaker’s release, including the MPs who traveled to Washington D.C. in May to call for his release, meeting with Senators and Obama administration officials — David Davis and Andrew Mitchell of the Conservatives, and Jeremy Corbyn and Andy Slaughter of the Labour Party.

Now, of course, Jeremy is the leader of the Labour Party, and John McDonnell is the shadow chancellor — a wonderful development for those who care about tackling injustice. Jeremy was elected on an anti-austerity platform, and because of his honesty and decency, and all of the above was apparent in his speech as leader to the Labour Party Conference, when he specifically thanked Shaker’s supporters, and in particular the Save Shaker Aamer Campaign: Read the rest of this entry »

The following is a version of a press release I wrote and sent out on behalf of the We Stand With Shaker campaign that I launched in November with the activist Joanne MacInnes. The photo to the left, of campaigners about to set off from Runnymede to Parliament yesterday on a three-day Relay for Rights, shows, at the back, Chris Grayling, the Lord Chancellor, as King John. The first non-legal appointee to the job, he is to be publicly criticised at the Global Law Summit by Tony Cross, chairman of the Criminal Bar Association, who told the Independent, “I’m going to talk about how successive governments have treated public law with contempt, certainly over the last 20 years.”

Giant inflatable figure of Shaker Aamer to visit Queen Elizabeth Conference Centre to protest about hypocrisy of corporate Magna Carta celebration while Shaker is still denied habeas corpus at Guantánamo.

At 1pm on Monday 23 February, Andy Worthington and Joanne MacInnes, the directors of We Stand With Shaker, the campaign calling for the release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, will be joining lawyers at Old Palace Yard, opposite the Houses of Parliament, for Not the Global Law Summit, an event put together by the Justice Alliance.

The Justice Alliance is a lawyers’ organisation campaigning to defend legal aid from savage cuts imposed by the government, and Not the Global Law Summit is the culmination of Relay for Rights, a three-day march from Runnymede to protest about the hypocrisy of the Global Law Summit, taking place from 23-25 February at the Queen Elizabeth Conference Centre. While purporting to mark the 800th anniversary of the signing of Magna Carta, the summit, at which tickets cost £1500 a head, is actually an international corporate sham, described by the journalist Peter Oborne as “sordid, disgusting and debased.” Read the rest of this entry »