Radio: I Discuss Guantánamo’s Shameful 21st Anniversary on the Scott Horton Show
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Last week, as part of my concerted efforts to publicize the ongoing and unjustifiable existence of the prison at Guantánamo Bay on the 21st anniversary of its opening, I was delighted to be asked by the indefatigable radio host Scott Horton to appear on his show, in an episode that he gave the appropriate heading, “The US is Still Running an Illegal Prison at Guantánamo Bay.”
Scott and I have been dissecting the iniquities of Guantánamo and the “war on terror” on a regular basis for over 15 years, and I’m impressed by his astonishing dedication to amplifying critical voices that are generally ignored by the mainstream media. This was his 5,831st interview, in a career as a radio host spanning 20 years, and he has somehow also found the time to write and publish two books about US militarism and the “war on terror” — “Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan,” and “Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism.”
As Scott explained in his introduction to the show on his website, where you can listen to our half-hour interview, and also download it as an MP3, “Andy Worthington returns to talk about the 35 men who remain imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay as we pass the 21st anniversary of the prison. Of those 35 men, 20 have already been cleared for release, yet they remain in custody with no release date. Scott and Worthington talk about the shameful history of the prison, consider all the reasons it’s stayed open so long and discuss what must happen for this disgraceful chapter of America’s history to finally be brought to an end.”
Two Radio Shows: I Discuss Guantánamo and Julian Assange on TNT Radio and Parallax Views
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This week I was delighted to take part in two interviews, to discuss the prison at Guantánamo Bay, as the 21st anniversary of its opening approaches, and the ongoing plight of Julian Assange, still held in Belmarsh maximum-security prison in London, as he continues to challenge his proposed extradition to the US to face espionage charges relating to WikiLeaks’ publication of classified US documents leaked by Chelsea Manning.
On Monday, I spoke with Jason Olbourne on TNT Radio, based in Australia, in an interview that started 21 minutes into the 55-minute show. The interview is available here, and after a great introduction, in which Jason enthused about my photo-journalism project ‘The State of London’, and the music of The Four Fathers (asking if people have suggested that I sound like David Byrne), we spoke about Guantánamo, with Jason asking me to run through the story of how I first got involved with Guantánamo, in 2006, and how I worked out who was held there, and how very few of them had any meaningful involvement with Al-Qaeda or other terrorist groups.
Jason suggested that people might be held at Guantánamo in future, but was, I hope, persuaded by my explanation that Guantánamo is such a disaster area, legally, that no one with any sense would consider sending anyone there in future. I explained how the majority of the men held there were insignificant, but were tortured or otherwise abused in an effort to extract information from them, because of mistaken presumptions that they were hiding actionable intelligence — presumptions that wouldn’t have been so easy to make if the US authorities had not done away with any kind of screening process when they were first seized, and which led to Guantánamo becoming a place where the authorities’ actions resembled the witch hunts of centuries past.
Radio: I Discuss Guantánamo, Saifullah Paracha and the Plight of the Men Approved for Release on WSLR 96.5 in Florida
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Many thanks to Bob Connors and Tom Walker of WSLR 96.5, a progressive community radio station in Sarasota, Florida, for having me on their show, “The Peace & Justice Report,” on Wednesday. As the hosts explain, the show “covers local, state, national and international social justice issues,” featuring “a wide variety of guests whose views are underrepresented in the mainstream media,” including “peace activists who are devoting their lives to creating a world free from war, violence and environmental destruction.”
I’ve spoken to Bob and Tom before — in 2018, 2019 and last year —and it was great to talk to them again, not only because they are such welcoming hosts, but also because far too few radio shows in the US — or around the world — devote any time at all to the ongoing injustice of Guantánamo.
Our 22-minute interview is embedded below, and I hope you have time to listen to it, and that you’ll share it if you find it useful.
Radio: I Discuss Guantánamo and WikiLeaks’ Guantánamo Files with Misty Winston on TNT Radio
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My thanks to the great activist radio host Misty Winston for having me on her “Cognitive Dissonance” show on TNT Radio recently, to discuss Guantánamo in general, and, in particular, the classified military files released by WikiLeaks in 2011, over the course of an hour.
I’ve spoken with Misty before, and it was excellent to follow up with her about Guantánamo, which is so largely ignored these days by most media outlets. The show is available here, and I’ve also embedded it below.
Two Radio Shows: I Discuss Guantánamo with Buz Eisenberg and Misty Winston
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My thanks to former Guantánamo attorney Buz Eisenberg and activist Misty Winston for having me on their radio shows this week.
Buz has a show, “The Afternoon Buzz,” on WHMP 101.5 FM in Western Massachusetts, a hotbed of political radicalism and activism that I was fortunate enough to visit, back in 2015, on one of my annual visits to the US to call for the closure of Guantánamo on and around the anniversary of its opening. I met Buz during that visit, as part of a wonderful evening that has been preserved for posterity here.
I spoke to Buz on Tuesday, and our interview — which began with us discussing Ukraine, and our racist and xenophobic government here in the UK, and then involved a discussion of the two most recent releases from Guantánamo, Mohammed al-Qahtani and Sufyian Barhoumi, as well as other Guantánamo-related topics — took up the first half of the show. I hope you have time to listen to it, and if you have an hour to spare you can also listen to Buz’s other guests, director Sara Guerrero and Professor Elisa Gonzales.
TV and Radio: I Discuss Guantánamo’s 20th Anniversary on Turkish TV, and with Scott Horton and Rebecca Myles
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In the third of a series of articles linking to and promoting videos and recordings of events held to mark the 20th anniversary of the opening of the prison at Guantánamo Bay on January 11, 2022 (see the first two here and here), I’m posting links to two radio shows in which I was interviewed, and also to a Turkish TV show in which I was joined by other critics of the prison’s ongoing existence.
On January 11 itself — the 20th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo — I was delighted to be part of a discussion, “20 Years On: What Will It Take to Close Guantánamo Bay?” on “The Newsmakers,” a regular feature on TRT World, the English language channel of the Turkish national broadcaster TRT.
I appeared with Mark Fallon, the author of Unjustifiable Means: The Inside Story of How the CIA, Pentagon, and US Government Conspired to Torture, and Tracy Doig of the UK-based Freedom from Torture (formerly the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture). From 2002 to 2004, Fallon was the director of the Criminal Investigative Task Force (CITF) at Guantánamo, whose organization tried to build criminal cases against prisoners using non-coercive interrogations, while other agencies were engaged in the use of torture and other forms of abuse, which he strongly opposed. He was also one of the authors of a report, “13 Recommendations to Close the Guantánamo Bay Detention Facility,” which was published on the anniversary by the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law (CERL) at theUniversity of Pennsylvania.
Radio: I Discuss 20 Years of Guantánamo and the Proposed Extradition of Julian Assange with Chris Cook on Gorilla Radio
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Last week, I was delighted to be interviewed by Chris Cook for his weekly show ‘Gorilla Radio’ in Victoria, in British Columbia. Chris and I have spoken many times before, and it’s always a great pleasure to be on his show. Our interview is available here as an MP3, and the whole show, broadcast later, and also featuring eco-poet Kim Goldberg, is here. The interviews can also be accessed via the Gorilla Radio website here and here.
We began by talking about Abu Zubaydah, and the US torture program, prompted by my recent article, “The Forever Prisoner”: Alex Gibney’s New Documentary About CIA Torture Victim Abu Zubaydah, and I briefly summarized the whole horrible story of his four and a half years in CIA “black sites”, his 15 years (to date) in Guantánamo, and his status as one of Guantánamo’s “forever prisoners” — 14 of the 39 men still held, none of whom have ever been charged with a crime.
Chris also asked me about who has been held at Guantánamo throughout its history, enabling me to explain how, far from being “the worst of the worst”, as alleged, most of the men — and boys — held at Guantánamo over the last 20 years were nothing more than foot soldiers or, in many cases, civilians seized by mistake. I didn’t mention it, but I could have repeated my assertion, which I first made many years ago, that no more than three percent of the 779 men held by the US military at Guantánamo since the prison first opened have had any connection with the leadership structures of al-Qaeda, the Taliban or associated groups.
Radio: I Discuss the Never-Ending Limbo of Guantánamo with Chris Cook on Gorilla Radio
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Yesterday, I was delighted to talk to Chris Cook, for his Gorilla Radio show, broadcast every Thursday morning on CFUV 101.9FM in Victoria, on Vancouver Island in Canada. Chris and I have spoken many times over the years, and his show admirably fulfills its remit to cover topics relating to “social justice, the environment [and] community,” and to “provid[e] a forum for people and issues not covered in the corporate media.”
Chris and I spoke in the second half of the one-hour show, which is available here as an MP3.
At the start of the show, Chris spoke about the US’s recent drone attack in Afghanistan, in which civilians, mistakenly identified as ISIS-K terrorists, were killed. He noted that Rep. Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has “expressed regret for those killed in what he characterized a ‘mistake with horrific consequences,’” but asked, pointedly, “why America was continuing its attacks against the country it has reportedly withdrawn from.”
Radio: I Discuss the Prospects for Guantánamo’s Closure Under Joe Biden with Scott Horton
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On Friday, I was delighted to discuss the prospects for the closure of the prison at Guantánamo Bay under Joe Biden with the indefatigable Scott Horton, who always, flatteringly, refers to me as “the heroic Andy Worthington.” Scott and I have spoken on many dozens of occasions since 2007, and you can find our latest interview here as an MP3 or below via YouTube.
“Indefatigable” has to be the most apt description of Horton, who has conducted over 5,500 interviews since 2003, and has also found the time to write two books, 2017’s “Fools Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan,” and the recently published “Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism.”
Nearly 20 years into Guantánamo’s existence, we ran briefly through the failures of George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump to close the prison — with several minutes spent discussing the Obama years — before bringing the story up to date with Joe Biden, the fourth president to be in charge of the prison.
Radio: I Discuss Hopes for Guantánamo’s Closure Under Joe Biden, and Julian Assange’s Extradition, with Chris Cook on Gorilla Radio
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Chris Cook, in Victoria, British Columbia, hosts a great weekly progressive radio show, Gorilla Radio, and I’m delighted to have been talking to him on a regular basis — mostly about Guantánamo — for many years now.
I spoke to Chris recently for an hour, and you can find the show on his website here, and also here as an MP3. A shorter version of the interview was included in the show that was broadcast on December 17, featuring journalist and author John Helmer in the first half (and the MP3 of that show is here).
I began by providing a brief history of the prison at Guantánamo Bay, which will mark the shameful 19th anniversary of its opening in just three weeks’ time, and I stressed how, under Donald Trump, the prison has essentially been sealed shut for the last four years. Bearing that in mind, there is now hope that, at the very least, some of the remaining 40 prisoners will be freed, and there will progress towards the prison’s closure.
Who's still at Guantánamo?
