Photos and Report: Coordinated Protests for the Release of “The Guantánamo 20”, and the Closure of the Prison, in London and Washington, D.C.
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.
On Wednesday, February 15, campaigners in London and Washington, D.C. held their first coordinated monthly protest calling for the closure of the prison at Guantánamo Bay, and, specifically, for the release of 20 men (out of the 34 men still held), who have long been approved for release, but who are still held because of a lack of urgency on the part of the US government when it comes to securing their freedom.
I wrote about the plight of the 20 men here, when Majid Khan was released from Guantánamo and resettled in Belize, eleven months after his military commission sentence came to an end, when I noted that, while it was, of course, just and appropriate that Khan had been freed and resettled, because the US government was legally required to freedom at the end of his sentence, it was unforgivable that the Biden administration is dragging its heels when it comes to releasing the 20 other men still held who have been approved for release, because the decisions to release them were taken by administrative review processes that carry no legal weight.
As I stated at the time, “Until they are freed, the message the US government is sending to these 20 men, and to the world, is that it is easier to resettle from Guantánamo someone convicted of terrorism but demonstrably remorseful than it is to resettle someone never charged with a crime at all.”
Videos: Andy Worthington and Sara Birch at the London Rally for the Closure of Guantánamo, Jan. 14, 2023
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.
On Jan.14, as I explained in a recent article, Photos and Report: The Inspiring Close Guantánamo March and Rally in London, Jan. 14, 2023, the UK Guantánamo Network, which includes members of various Amnesty International groups, the Close Guantánamo campaign and the Guantánamo Justice Campaign, held a march and rally for the closure of the prison at Guantánamo Bay, marking the 21st anniversary of its opening three days earlier.
The rally in Trafalgar Square, which featured a number of speakers, followed a march from the Houses of Parliament, up Whitehall and past 10 Downing Street to Trafalgar Square, in which dozens of campaigners marched in silence, in single file, wearing orange jumpsuits and hoods, and holding placards showing the 35 men still held.
Speakers at the rally included myself and Sara Birch, the convenor of the UK Guantánamo Network, who read out a statement by former prisoner Omar Deghayes, and I’m delighted to post videos of both these speeches, on my YouTube channel (which you’re welcome to subscribe to!), as recorded by Sinai Noor.
Photos and Report: The Inspiring Close Guantánamo March and Rally in London, Jan. 14, 2023
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.
On Saturday (January 14), the UK Guantánamo Network held a powerful and inspiring march and vigil for the closure of Guantánamo in central London.
The UK Guantánamo Network, formed in 2021, comprises representatives of various Amnesty International groups, Close Guantánamo, the Guantánamo Justice Campaign, the London Guantánamo Campaign and Freedom From Torture, and under the inspiring leadership of Convenor Sara Birch (of Lewes Amnesty Group), representatives of at least seven Amnesty groups (Lewes, the Kent Network, Reading, Blackheath and Greenwich, Ealing, Brighton and Hillington) turned up, as well as myself, representing Close Guantánamo, members of the Guantánamo Justice Campaign, and supporters of Julian Assange, whose extradition case is intimately tied in with Guantánamo, as it involves charges relating to the classified military files from the prison that were released by WikiLeaks in 2011, and on which I worked as a media partner.
We gathered in Old Palace Yard opposite the Houses of Parliament at 11.30am, dressing up in orange jumpsuits and hoods, and then, holding placards calling for the closure of the prison and photos of the 35 men still held, we marched in single file, and in silence, up Whitehall, via Parliament Square and 10 Downing Street, to Trafalgar Square, with various photo opportunities along the way.
Free The Guantánamo 20: Events Marking the 21st Anniversary of the Opening of the Prison
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.
With a heavy heart, the small but dedicated group of human rights activists from across the United States and around the world who, on a daily basis, are appalled by the continued existence of the fundamentally lawless prison at Guantánamo Bay are preparing to mark the 21st anniversary of its opening this Wednesday, Jan. 11.
This anniversary I’ll be in London (not the US as I was every Jan. 11 from 2011 to 2020), but I’m hoping that I’ll still be able to make waves, along with my American friends and colleagues, and this year I’m particularly focusing on the 20 men, out of the 35 still held — who have been approved for release, but are still held.
Photos of these 20 men are in the composite image at the top of this article, which I made a few days ago, and when I posted it on Facebook, I explained, “16 of these men have been approved for release since President Biden took office, while three others were approved for release in 2010, but are still held, and one other man was approved for release in the dying days of the Trump presidency.”
Free the Guantánamo 20: Photos From a Vigil at the US Embassy in London, As We Also Marked 7,600 Days of the Prison’s Existence
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 week was a good one for Guantánamo activism. Following the wonderful news about the release of Guantánamo’s oldest prisoner, Saifullah Paracha, over 40 people — from the US, the UK and Mexico City, plus five former prisoners in Serbia, Morocco and the Netherlands — took photos of themselves (or had photos taken of them) with the Close Guantánamo campaign’s poster marking 7,600 days of the prison’s existence on November 1. All the photos can be found on the Close Guantánamo website here, and also on the campaign’s Facebook page.
Some of the photos were taken the day after, at a well-attended UK Guantánamo Network vigil for the closure of the prison outside the US Embassy in Nine Elms, London. Largely driven by the energy of Sara Birch, the chair of the Lewes Amnesty Group, the UK Guantánamo Network includes members of various Amnesty Groups, Close Guantánamo, the Guantánamo Justice Campaign, the London Guantánamo Campaign and Freedom From Torture, and members have been holding online meetings since last year, working towards raising the profile of Guantánamo in the UK, by seeking to persuade MPs to re-establish an All-Party Parliamentary Group on Guantánamo (more on that soon), and also through protests and vigils.
For the 20th anniversary, in January this year, the UK Guantánamo Network arranged a march from Parliament Square to Trafalgar Square, where, despite torrential rain, there was a vigil, with speakers including John McDonnell MP (who chaired the APPG on Shaker Aamer back in 2014-15, which helped secure the release of the last British resident in Guantánamo), the film director Kevin Macdonald (the director of ‘The Mauritanian’, about Mohamedou Ould Slahi, who read out a message from Mohamedou) and myself. The march and vigil was also supported by several supporters of Julian Assange, whose case is tied in with Guantánamo through WikiLeaks’ publication of classified US files from the prison in 2011, on which I worked as media partner.
My Interview with Riverside Radio’s Andy Bungay About the Horrors of the Truss Government, Guantánamo, and the Plight of Julian Assange
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.
On Friday I was delighted to be interviewed by Riverside Radio’s Andy Bungay, for the last hour of an extended podcast of his Saturday night show, The Chiminea, for which, once a month, he is joined by Colin Crilly for the Colin Crilly Takeover Show.
The three-hour show is here, on Mixcloud, and our interview takes up most of the last hour, with some musical interludes.
For the first 20 minutes, from 2:02 to 2:22, we discussed the current collapse of the UK under Liz Truss, an unprecedented disaster that no one could quite have foreseen, even though it was clear — in that long summer of the campaign for a new Tory leader to replace the disgraced Boris Johnson — that she was a dangerous far-right ‘libertarian’ ideologue, heavily influenced by the unaccountable think-tanks in Tufton Street, who are obsessed with shrinking the state, and enriching the rich, and who are also ferociously pro-Brexit, and prominent players in the deranged world of climate change denial.
From Tomorrow, 16 Days of Rebellion and Protest Against the UK Government — for the Climate, the Economy and Justice
Please support my work as a reader-funded investigative journalist, commentator and activist. If you can help, please click on the button below to donate via PayPal.
Over the last few weeks, much of London has been plastered with posters advertising the environmental protest group Just Stop OIl’s ‘Occupy Westminster’ protest, beginning on Oct 1. The timing could hardly have been better, as, since it was first announced many weeks ago, a new fossil fuel-loving, climate change-denying government has been put in place — elected by just 81,326 Tory Party members and with no mandate from the people of the UK — which has proceeded to refuse to levy windfall taxes on the energy companies’ vast and unearned recent and future profits (choosing instead to put the burden on taxpayers for an energy price cap that was required to save the country from economic collapse), has lifted the ban on fracking, and has promised to open the floodgates to new oil and gas extraction (as well as, most recently, crashing the UK economy in the most alarming manner via unjustifiable and fiscally deranged tax cuts for the rich).
Backed by the malevolent far-right ‘libertarian’ think-tanks based in Tufton Street, close to Parliament, including the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), described by climate researchers and environmental groups as “the UK’s most prominent source of climate denialism”, Truss’s government has no interest in investing in renewables, even though the majority of the British public backs new on- and off-shore wind power, solar power and wave power, rather than fossil fuels, and also has no interest in investing to insulate Britain’s leaky homes, even though it would vastly reduce our energy needs, and well as providing significant employment.
The occupation of Westminster begins tomorrow (October 1), with activists gathering first at Euston, Paddington and Waterloo stations at 11am, and then converging on Westminster, with the plan repeated on Sunday October 2 (when, incidentally, the Tories’ train wreck of a conference begins in Birmingham), and, from Monday October 3, moving to Whitehall, opposite 10 Downing Street at 11am every day.
Who's still at Guantánamo?
