Wonderful News as Eleven Men Are Freed from Guantánamo and Resettled in Oman
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In what will forever be remembered as a truly significant day in Guantánamo’s long and sordid history, the Biden administration has freed eleven Yemeni prisoners, flying them from Guantánamo to Oman to resume their lives after more than two decades without charge or trial in US custody; mostly at Guantánamo, but in some cases for several years previously in CIA “black sites.”
All eleven men had been held for between two and four years since they were unanimously approved for release by high-level US government review processes, and, in one outlying case, for 15 years.
A deal to release them in Oman had been arranged in October 2023, but had been cancelled at the last minute, when a plane was already on the runway, because of what was described, when the story broke last May, as the “political optics” of freeing them when the attacks in southern Israel had just taken place — although Carol Rosenberg, writing for the New York Times about the releases yesterday, suggested that “congressional objections led the Biden administration to abort the mission.”
Free the Guantánamo 16: A Message to President Biden as His Time Runs Out
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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.
As the dust settles on last week’s Presidential Election, and the US and the rest of the world wait anxiously to see quite what Donald Trump has planned for the future, one policy decision seems unlikely to offer any surprises.
As in his first term in office, Trump — who is very evidently Islamophobic (as we all ought to recall from his Muslim ban in 2017), and is the head of a debased Republican Party that contains numerous screamingly hysterical enthusiasts for the continued existence of the prison at Guantánamo Bay — will almost certainly seal Guantánamo shut, as he did in his first term, refusing to set any prisoner free unless, by some miracle, they are required to be freed through legal means.
For the 30 men still held at Guantánamo, the situation is remarkably similar to that which faced President Obama eight years ago, as the news sank in that Hillary Clinton would not be taking over from him, and that Donald Trump would soon be inheriting Guantánamo, which he had bullishly promised to “load up with some bad dudes.” In the end, that threat never materialized, as, even in Trump’s inner circle, enough common sense existed to recognize that Guantánamo was an unsalvageable legal mess, and that, for any “bad dudes” that Trump managed to round up, prosecuting them in federal courts would be the only sensible option.
The Bleakness of Guantánamo, as Biden’s End Nears
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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.
In the epidemic of disasters afflicting the world, it’s sometimes hard to even remember that, at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, the US government is still holding 30 men, detained for between 15 and 22 years, who, for the most part, have never been charged with crimes, and are imprisoned, apparently indefinitely, without charge or trial.
With just a fortnight to go until the US Presidential Election, these men’s plight has become politically invisible, even though their treatment — outside of all norms governing the deprivation of liberty of individuals — has, from the beginning, relied on their demonization and dehumanization as Muslims, with a clear line stretching from their fundamentally lawless imprisonment to the way that demonized and dehumanized Muslims are being treated in the Gaza Strip today.
Now suffering under their fourth president, the men at Guantánamo had some hope, when Joe Biden took office, that positive changes were on the horizon. NGOs and lawyers had lobbied his transition team, urging that, at the very least, he address the plight of those specifically imprisoned indefinitely without charge or trial, as opposed to those charged in the military commissions, a broken system, first introduced after the 9/11 attacks, before Guantánamo even opened, albeit one with some tangential connection to the law.
Guantánamo Scandal: Eleven Men Were Set to Be Freed Last October, Until “Political Optics” Shifted After Hamas’ Attack on Israel
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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.
Thanks to NBC News, and the four anonymous US government officials who spoke to them, for exposing the latest scandal involving the US prison at Guantánamo Bay — the refusal of the Biden administration to release eleven men, for whom long months of negotiation had secured a safe and viable resettlement option, because of the perceived “political optics” of freeing them after the attacks on Israel by Hamas and other militants on October 7.
Within Guantánamo circles, this scandal was well known, but attorneys for the men had been subjected to a Protective Order issued by the government, preventing them from talking about it, and, as a result, they had all dutifully kept quiet, as had others, like myself, who had got to know about it.
Their silence is, in itself, an indictment of how the US government operates at Guantánamo, as I also recognised when I refused to publicize it, because of the fundamentally lawless situation in which these men are held.
Held for 900 Days Since Being Approved for Release from Guantánamo: Sanad Al-Kazimi, a Yemeni Torture Victim
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Today marks 900 days since Sanad al-Kazimi, a 54-year old Yemeni, and a father of four, was unanimously approved for release from Guantánamo by a Periodic Review Board, a high-level US government review process established under President Obama.
This article, telling his story, is the ninth in an ongoing series of ten articles, published since early February, telling the stories of the 16 men (out of 30 still held at Guantánamo in total) who have long been approved for release. The articles are published alternately here and on the Close Guantánamo website, with their publication tied into significant dates in their long ordeal.
While most of the 779 men held at Guantánamo since it opened over 22 years ago were picked up — or bought — in Afghanistan or Pakistan and processed through military prisons in Afghanistan before their arrival at Guantánamo (mostly between December 2001 and November 2003), al-Kazimi was one of around 40 prisoners whose arrival at Guantánamo involved a more circuitous route, through the network of CIA “black sites” established and run in other countries between March 2002 and September 2006, and, in some cases, in proxy prisons in other countries run on behalf of the CIA.
Held for 600 Days Since Being Approved for Release from Guantánamo: Khaled Qassim, a Talented Artist
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Sunday (March 10) marked 600 days since Khaled Qassim (aka Khalid Qasim), a 47-year old Yemeni, was unanimously approved for release from Guantánamo by a Periodic Review Board, a high-level US government review process.
That decision took place on July 19, 2022, but nearly 20 months later Khaled is still awaiting his freedom, a victim, like the 15 other men unanimously approved for release by high-level US government review processes, of an inertia at the very top of the US government — in the White House, and in the offices of Antony Blinken, the Secretary of State.
For the last year and a half, an official in the State Department — former ambassador Tina Kaidanow — has been working on resettling the men approved for release, most of whom, like Khaled, are Yemenis, and cannot be sent home because of a ban on their repatriation, inserted by Republicans into the annual National Defense Authorization Act in the early days of Barack Obama’s presidency, and renewed every year since.
Held for 1,000 Days Since Being Approved for Release from Guantánamo: Uthman Abd Al-Rahim Muhammad Uthman
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In the first of a new series of profiles of men held at Guantánamo — specifically, the 16 men (out of the 30 still held) who have long been approved for release by high-level US government review processes — I’m focusing on Uthman Abd Al-Rahim Muhammad Uthman, a 43-year old Yemeni citizen, who, today, has been held for 1,000 days since the US authorities first decided that they no longer wanted to hold him.
Uthman arrived at Guantánamo on January 16, 2002, five days after the prison opened, when he was just 21 years old, and, as a result, he has been held for over half his life at Guantánamo. The photo is from his classified military file, released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and dating from April 2008, meaning that he would have been 27 years old, or younger, when it was taken.
Since his arrival at Guantánamo — 8,058 days ago (that’s 22 years and 22 days) — Uthman has been held without charge or trial, and with no sign of when, if ever, he will eventually be freed, even though the high-level government review process that approved him for release concluded unanimously, on May 13, 2021, that “continued law of war detention is no longer necessary to protect against a continuing significant threat to the security of the United States.”
Video and Report: The Incredibly Powerful “Close Guantánamo!” Event in the EU Parliament, September 28, 2023
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I’m just back from the most extraordinary three-day trip to Brussels, the centrepiece of which was “Close Guantánamo!,” an astonishing and deeply moving three-hour event in the EU Parliament featuring nine speakers.
Three of the speakers were former prisoners, including Mansoor Adayfi, held for over 14 years at Guantánamo and subsequently resettled in Serbia, where, after nearly seven years, he has only this year secured a passport and been able to travel outside the country. Also speaking were two lawyers, a UN Rapporteur and myself, as well as the former Muslim Chaplain at the prison, and the relative of a victim of the 9/11 attacks.
The full video is below, via YouTube, and I hope that you have time to watch it, and that you’ll share if if you find it as inspiring as those who attended it, and those who took part in it. An edited version will hopefully be available soon, including the contents of PowerPoint presentations that were made by some of the speakers, which are not visible in this recording of the event, and the removal of some of the dead time — for example, the general milling about between the first and second sessions.
Video: The Annual New America Panel Discussion About Guantánamo, Featuring Karen Greenberg, Tom Wilner and Myself
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Almost every year since 2011, the New America think-tank in Washington, D.C. has generously hosted panel discussions about Guantánamo with the attorney Tom Wilner and I, at which we have been joined by a number of other guests.
At the time of that first event, Barack Obama was the president, and 173 men were still held. In 2012 we marked the 10th anniversary of the prison’s opening, also launching the Close Guantánamo campaign, returning every year thereafter, except for 2014, when Tom and I were both too dispirited to summon up any enthusiasm. The 2016 event coincided with a “Countdown to Close Guantánamo” campaign, launched by Andy and Roger Waters on Democracy Now!, to put pressure on Obama to finally fulfill his promise to get the prison closed, but, when Obama left office, 41 men were still held, who then had endure four years of hostility from a president who had no interest in releasing any of them.
Having moved the events online in 2021, because of Covid, Tom and I and our by now regular companion, Karen Greenberg, the Director of the Center on National Security at Fordham Law School, met again online a year ago to discuss Guantánamo on its 20th anniversary, when we were, I think it’s fair to say, caught been hope and pessimism, but this year, sadly, hope is losing that battle.
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.
Who's still at Guantánamo?
