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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.

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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.

At the time of his inauguration, Biden was holding 40 men, 22 of whom were “forever prisoners,” held indefinitely without charge or trial. Six others had already been approved for release but were still held, while the other 12 were, to some extent or another, under the jurisdiction of the military commissions.

From May 2021 to September 2022, the Biden administration addressed these concerns. All but three of the “forever prisoners” were approved for release by Periodic Review Boards, the high-level parole-type process established under President Obama, which had previously and repeatedly recommended their ongoing imprisonment.

In addition, between July 2021 and April 2023, ten prisoners in total were released, reducing the prison’s population by a quarter, and making concrete steps towards its final closure seem almost within reach.

Then it all fell apart.

No releases for a year and a half

Even though 16 of the 30 men still held have long been approved for release, none have been freed in the last 18 months. A complication is that, although the ten men previously freed were all repatriated, third countries must be found for these 16 men — mostly Yemenis — because Republicans in Congress, since the early days of the Obama administration, have insisted on inserting provisions into the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), proscribing the return of prisoners to certain countries, including Yemen, Libya, Somalia and Afghanistan.

President Biden made an effort to address this problem by appointing a former ambassador, Tina Kaidanow, as the Special Representative for Guantánamo Affairs in the State Department in August 2021, who was “responsible for all matters pertaining to the transfer of detainees from the Guantánamo Bay facility to third countries.”

Despite a lack of high-level support within the administration, and stymied by a general lack of interest around the world in resettling former prisoners, Kaidanow nevertheless successfully negotiated the proposed resettlement, in Oman, of eleven of these 16 men, who were supposed to have been freed last October.

Shamefully, however, even though an airplane was on the tarmac at Guantánamo to take these men to their new lives, the October 7 attacks in southern Israel by Hamas and other militants persuaded Biden and his senior officials that the “political optics” no longer supported their release, and the plan was shelved, with no new date set for it to be reinstated.

Sadly, we have just heard that Tina Kaidanow has died, at just 59 years of age, without having been able to see her last, largely ignored but hugely important post yield the fruit it deserved: the removal of one dark and enduring stain on the US’s reputation, through the restoration of these men’s freedom.

Broken trials and UN condemnation

In the military commissions, too, the administration has slammed the brakes on any progress in the seemingly endless effort by the US government to successfully prosecute men subjected to horrendous torture in CIA “black sites” prior to their arrival at Guantánamo, mostly in September 2006.

Three years ago, prosecutors finally recognized that the use of torture precluded the possibility of successful prosecutions, and began negotiating with defense lawyers, and the Convening Authority, the government-appointed official overseeing the commissions, to secure plea deals instead with the men accused of involvement in the 9/11 attacks.

These took the death penalty off the table, and would have provided life sentences at Guantánamo in return for confessions that would have finally allowed for some sort of closure for the relatives of those killed on September 11, 2001. However, when it was announced, in August this year, that plea deals had been agreed with three of these men, the defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, almost immediately revoked them, once more rendering justice and any kind of closure off-limits.

Through this long period of inertia and of counter-productive measures, the US government has also been subjected to withering criticism by various United Nations Special Mandate holders, which, shamefully, it has entirely ignored.

These reports and opinions were published throughout 2023, beginning with condemnation, from numerous Special Mandate holders, on January 11, the 21st anniversary of the prison’s opening, of the treatment of Guantánamo’s most disabled prisoner, Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi (charged in the military commissions), and continuing with two other devastating opinions, issued by the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, one in the case of “forever prisoner” Abu Zubaydah, and the other in the case of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri (also charged in the military commissions), with the Abu Zubaydah opinion also indicating that the very basis of the detention system at Guantánamo “may constitute crimes against humanity.”

Finally, in June 2023, a report issued by Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, the Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms while Countering Terrorism, concluded, as a result of assessments undertaken after she became the first ever UN Rapporteur to visit the prison, in February 2023, that, despite some improvement in conditions over the years, the prison’s operations overall still constitute “ongoing cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment,” and “may also meet the legal threshold for torture.”

So is there hope for the future?

Perhaps, ironically, if Kamala Harris loses to Donald Trump in the Presidential Election, pressure to free all the men approved for release before Trump’s inauguration in January will become unavoidable, because Trump, as he was in his first term in office, will be an absolute disaster for the men held at Guantánamo, sealing the prison shut as he did throughout his four lamentable years as president.

If Harris does win, however, it is to be hoped that there will also be renewed pressure to free the men approved for release, even though the very basis of safe and secure resettlements in third countries — already undermined by the brutal treatment of men resettled in the UAE between 2015 and 2017, who found themselves imprisoned instead of being helped to rebuild their lives, before being forcibly repatriated — was dealt a major blow in August, when Oman, the great hope for the men awaiting release, which had previously accepted 28 Yemenis from Guantánamo between 2015 and 2017, also repatriated these men, mostly against their will, and in defiance of the promises made when they were first taken in — which is, of course, that their resettlement would be permanent.

Alarmingly, Vincent M. Picard, a spokesman for the State Department’s counterterrorism division, stated that, “In general, the United States government has never had an expectation that former Guantánamo detainees would indefinitely remain in receiving countries,” even though that provides no explanation whatsoever about where they are supposed to go if their resettlements come to an end.

As Fionnuala Ní Aoláin explained, with reference to the Yemenis in Oman, “Non-refoulement [not returning anyone to a country where they face a risk of torture or other ill-treatment] should be an absolute protection, because countries like Oman have a choice to protect these vulnerable torture survivors or not.”

As she also explained, “Sending these men to Yemen puts them in profound danger. Yemen is a country in the midst of a brutal civil war, and is also being bombed by the United States and other allied countries. Sending former Guantánamo detainees, men who have been the victims of US torture and ill-treatment back to Yemen flies in the face of the most fundamental human rights obligations of both Oman and the United States.”

What can we do?

On the ground, our options as concerned citizens appear limited, although, as has been the case throughout Guantánamo’s long and sordid history of abject brutality and lawlessness, matched by the almost complete indifference (or even hostility) of most of the political class, the mainstream media and US citizens themselves, those of us who care must continue to do whatever we can to publicize the plight of the men still held, to bear witness to their suffering, and to point out how corrosive the rancid ongoing existence of Guantánamo is to all notions of human rights, due process and international humanitarian law.

Since January 2018, we have been running an ongoing photo campaign, every 100 days of Guantánamo’s existence (and also, every year, on the anniversary of Guantánamo’s opening, on January 11), for which our supporters take photos of themselves — or have photographs taken of them — with posters marking these grim milestones, and calling for Guantánamo’s closure.

On October 1, we marked 8,300 days of the prison’s existence, and were delighted to receive 70 photos from across the US and around the world — some from regular participants, and others from new supporters.

The photo campaign was somewhat in the doldrums in the Trump years, and took some time to pick up under Biden, but since last December, when we marked 8,000 days, it has been reinvigorated, in part because of the unique contributions of Gavrilah Wells, an activist in San Francisco, who, uniquely, wanders the streets of her home city with her camera and a copy of the poster, engaging with those she meets, and seeking to get them involved.

As I told her in an email, “You have single-handedly breathed new life into this project, with your wonderful portraits, which capture a largely hidden truth about the US — that people everywhere oppose the continued existence of Guantanamo, but nobody normally asks them what they think. I wish some local or national media would pick up on what you’re doing!”

We also continue to highlight the injustice of Guantánamo’s continued existence, through monthly vigils, which take place on the first Wednesday of every month, and have regular support in eleven locations across the US and around the world — in Washington, D.C., in London, New York City, San Francisco, Mexico City, Brussels, Cobleskill, NY, Detroit, Minneapolis and Portland, Oregon.

One particular focus of the vigils is the 16 men approved for release but still held, via a poster of them, and a second poster, which I update every month, and which shows how disgracefully long they have been waiting to be freed since those decisions were taken. On October 2, when the most recent vigils took place, these men had, disgracefully, been waiting for between 740 and 1,434 days since those decisions were taken, and in three outlying cases for 5,367 days.

Sadly, shamefully, the mainstream media have shown no interest whatsoever in either the ongoing photo campaign or the monthly vigils, even though, in particular, the amount of time that the 16 men have been held since they were approved for release is nothing short of a national scandal.

Nevertheless, I believe that our continuing efforts to raise awareness of the glaring injustices of Guantánamo are worthwhile, and I hope you agree. We are all watching intensely what happens on November 5, which won’t, either way, probably help the Muslims in the Gaza Strip, but will hopefully, one way or another, help to, at least, secure freedom for these 16 men. We’ll keep you posted!

* * * * *

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer (of an ongoing photo-journalism project, ‘The State of London’), film-maker and singer-songwriter (the lead singer and main songwriter for the London-based band The Four Fathers, whose music is available via Bandcamp). He is the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign (see the ongoing photo campaign here) and the successful We Stand With Shaker campaign of 2014-15, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here, or you can watch it online here, via the production company Spectacle, for £2.50).

In 2017, Andy became very involved in housing issues. He is the narrator of the documentary film, ‘Concrete Soldiers UK’, about the destruction of council estates, and the inspiring resistance of residents, he wrote a song ‘Grenfell’, in the aftermath of the entirely preventable fire in June 2017 that killed over 70 people, and, in 2018, he was part of the occupation of the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden in Deptford, to try to prevent its destruction — and that of 16 structurally sound council flats next door — by Lewisham Council and Peabody.

Since 2019, Andy has become increasingly involved in environmental activism, recognizing that climate change poses an unprecedented threat to life on earth, and that the window for change — requiring a severe reduction in the emission of all greenhouse gases, and the dismantling of our suicidal global capitalist system — is rapidly shrinking, as tipping points are reached that are occurring much quicker than even pessimistic climate scientists expected. You can read his articles about the climate crisis here.

To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Also see the six-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, The Complete Guantánamo Files, the definitive Guantánamo habeas list, the full military commissions list, and the chronological list of all Andy’s articles.

Please also consider joining the Close Guantánamo campaign, and, if you appreciate Andy’s work, feel free to make a donation.

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.

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.

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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.

 

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.

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

When President Biden was elected in November 2020, opponents of the continued existence of the prison at Guantánamo Bay were cautiously optimistic that there would be renewed movement towards the closure of the prison.

After four years of Donald Trump, it was hard not to have some semblance of hope that there would be progress towards finally ridding the US — and the world — of this lingering symbol of the brutal and lawless excesses of George W. Bush’s “war on terror,” where men have been subjected to torture and other forms of abuse, and where the majority of the 779 men held by the military since the prison opened on January 11, 2002 have been imprisoned without charge or trial, and with little effort made to ensure that the law extended to them in any meaningful sense.

Nearly two years into Biden’s presidency, our cautious optimism has been both rewarded and thwarted.

No doubt chastened by the Republican backlash that greeted President Obama’s stated intention, as soon as he took office, of closing Guantánamo within a year, Biden took a low-key approach instead — not speaking openly about Guantánamo at all, and only indicating, via his press secretary, that there would be a review of the prison’s operations, and that the administration hoped to close it by the end of his presidency.

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