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Last week, the 45th “First Wednesday” monthly global vigils for the closure of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay took place across the US and around the world — outside the White House in Washington, D.C., outside the Houses of Parliament in London, in Brussels, the home of the European Parliament, and in New York, Detroit and Los Angeles. Campaigners in Cobleskill, NY joined us on Saturday October 10, and, on the weekend of October 3-4, attendees at the AIUSA Los Angeles Western Regional Activism Conference also took part.

I remain, as always, immensely grateful to our small but dedicated global family of campaigners who come together once a month to metaphorically hold up candles around the world to show that not everyone has been engulfed in the general amnesia and indifference regarding the continuing existence of Guantánamo, and, just as importantly, to send a message to the 15 men still held that they haven’t been forgotten.

Please check out the photos below, and read on for my thoughts on this particular occasion, a month after the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks that led to the establishment of Guantánamo, and with just three months to go until we mark the 25th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, on January 11, 2027. Next month, the vigils take place on November 4, the day after the US midterm elections, when, we hope, the malignant Trump administration will lose control of Congress, so that those of us who care about Guantánamo will be able to once more work with the handful of sympathetic Democrats who are capable of putting the unresolved scandal of Guantánamo back on the agenda. Do join us if you can!

I first established the monthly vigils back in February 2023, when Joe Biden was in the White House, and it seemed to me that our annual vigils, held on January 11 every year to mark the anniversary of the prison’s opening, weren’t enough to maintain pressure on the administration to address the fact that 20 of the 34 men still held at that time had been approved for release, but were still imprisoned. Over the last two years of the Biden administration, our efforts maintaining visibility for Guantánamo and the men still held helped to secure the release of 19 of the 34 men still held, including most, but sadly not all of those approved for release.

As I noted when I posted the flier for this month’s vigils, although only 15 men are still held at Guantánamo, out of the 779 men and boys held at the prison since it first opened, they are all still held in “states of such fundamental lawlessness that if any other country — with one exception, as discussed below — was holding people in similar conditions they would be subjected to international condemnation.”

As I explained, “Six are held without charge or trial (like the overwhelming majority of the 779 individuals held throughout Guantánamo’s unforgivably long history), six have been charged with terrorism-related crimes but are caught up in seemingly endless pre-trial hearings because of the taint of the torture to which they were subjected in CIA ‘black sites’, two have been convicted (with one serving a life sentence in solitary confinement), and one is in legal limbo after being ruled unfit to stand trial because of psychosis brought on by his torture in the CIA ‘black sites.’”

The exception I mentioned in my post is, of course, the State of Israel, which is currently holding 9,265 Palestinian “security prisoners” in its gulag of torture prisons for Palestinians. 4,520 of these prisoners — nearly six times as many prisoners as have been held at Guantánamo throughout its nearly 25-year history — are held without charge or trial, under “administrative detention”, inherited from the British, or as “unlawful combatants”, under a law passed in 2002, around the same time that George W. Bush stripped the men and boys held at Guantánamo of all their rights as human beings by defining them as “unlawful enemy combatants.”

In addition, since October 7, Israel has also refused to allow the ICRC (the International Committee of the Red Cross), the only international and objective monitor of prison conditions, to visit any of the Palestinian “security prisoners.” This is an almost totally ignored scandal whose significance can readily be appreciated through a recognition that, even at the height of its global “war on terror”, the Bush administration allowed ICRC visits to almost every prisoner at Guantánamo, and only excluded the ICRC from its CIA “black site” torture prisons, where 119 prisoners were held.

For further information, see my recent post about Israel’s ongoing ban on ICRC visits, in defiance of an Israeli Supreme Court ruling, and please see below additional photos from last week’s vigils, including some specifically noting the similarities between Guantánamo and Israel’s prisons for Palestinians. These comparisons were made all the more pointed and powerful because last week’s vigils took place on October 7, marking the third anniversary of the attacks on southern Israel by militants who broke out of the “open-air prison” of the Gaza Strip, but also, more horrifically, marking the start of Israel’s response, the almost unimaginably depraved ongoing genocide, which I marked in an article entitled, Three Years of Gaza as a Ghetto of Genocidal Extermination.

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Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer (of a photo-journalism project, ‘The State of London’, which ran from 2012 to 2023), 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”, which you can watch on YouTube here.

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. He has also, since, October 2023, been sickened and appalled by Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and you can read his detailed coverage here.

To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s new Substack account, set up in November 2024, where he’ll be sending out a weekly newsletter, or his RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter and YouTube. Also see the six-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, The Complete Guantánamo Files, the definitive Guantánamo habeas list, and the full military commissions list.

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

Please click on either of the ‘Donate’ or ‘Buy’ buttons below (via PayPal or Stripe) to make a donation towards the $2,500 (£2,000) I’m trying to raise to support my work on Guantánamo and on other related topics over the next three months. To get links to all my work in your inbox, please also consider taking out a free or paid subscription to my new Substack newsletter.

 

Last Wednesday, the 44th monthly global vigils for the closure of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay took place across the US and around the world — in New York, Los Angeles and Detroit, outside the Houses of Parliament in London, and outside the European Parliament in Brussels. Friends in San Francisco joined us, as did two former Guantánamo prisoners, Mansoor Adayfi in Belgrade, and Mohamedou Ould Slahi in the Netherlands.

Campaigners in Washington, D.C., outside the heart of the beast, the White House, were unable to make the “First Wednesday” date, and, instead, held a vigil on Friday September 11, the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks that led to the Bush administration’s sickening, brutal and counter-productive global “war on terror”, and the establishment of Guantánamo, the last physical manifestation of that failed war, whose polluting influence has contaminated US law to this day.

Last Wednesday’s vigils coincided with a grim milestone in Guantánamo’s history — 9,000 days of the prison’s existence, and at all the vigils supporters held up the Close Guantánamo campaign’s 9,000 days poster, the latest in an initiative that has been running since January 2018, marking every 100 days of the prison’s existence with photos of supporters standing with the posters to show support for our unsilenceable demand for the hellhole of Guantánamo to finally be closed.

We received over 50 photos in total, all of which can be found here on the Close Guantánamo website. Some of these photos are also posted below, along with photos from the vigils, and I hope you’ll also read on for my reflections on how and why Guantánamo has always been, and always will be a grotesque and irredeemable legal, moral and ethnical abomination that pollutes the soul of the US every day that it is open, and for profiles of the 15 men still held in varying states of fundamental lawlessness.

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On Wednesday, as I cycled to Parliament Square for the 44th successive monthly vigil for the closure of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay (part of monthly vigils that take place across the US and around the world), I suddenly felt that I had stepped back in time.

Like a phoenix reborn from the ashes of political repression, 60 Just Stop Oil activists, in hi-vis jackets bearing the climate action group’s distinctive logo, were sitting in the road outside the Houses of Parliament, having brought traffic to a halt.

The occasion for Just Stop Oil’s revival was the first PMQs (Prime Minister’s Questions) of Andy Burnham, Britain’s new and unelected Prime Minister, anointed by the Labour Party’s Zionist elite to try to undo the electoral armageddon augured by his failed predecessor, Keir Starmer, less animated and less convincing than a packet of lard, but a Zionist of such formidable enthusiasm that, despite having been a human rights lawyer, he told LBC in October 2023 that Israel had the right to cut off water and fuel to an entire civilian population.

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In a world of endless, pointless distractions, of 24-hour rolling news that means that people can’t even remember what happened yesterday, of a gloating genocide in Gaza that is tearing our hearts apart, but that no one can stop, and of extreme heat and drought that is telling us, globally, that our days on our unique, miraculous planet are well and truly numbered, because of our inability to stop burning fossil fuels, it’s nothing short of a miracle that, once a month, a handful of diligent activists across the US and around the world get together to hold coordinated vigils for the closure of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay.

The vigils — outside the White House in Washington, D.C., outside the Houses of Parliament in London, outside the European Parliament in Brussels, and in New York, Detroit, San Francisco, Cobleskill, NY, Mexico City and Belgrade — began 43 months ago, in February 2023, as a concerted effort to prevent Guantánamo, routinely engulfed in the collective amnesia of the political and media establishments, from being entirely forgotten.

Please see the photos below, of activists from, amongst other groups and organizations, Amnesty International, the UK Guantánamo Network, Witness Against Torture and the World Can’t Wait, and read on for my assessment of why remembering Guantánamo and calling for its closure is still so essential, followed by more photos.

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Last Wednesday, July 1, campaigners across the US and around the world held the 42nd consecutive monthly “First Wednesday” global vigils calling for the closure of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay.

Three vigils took place at key locations — outside the White House in Washington, D.C., outside the US Embassy in London, and outside the European Parliament in Brussels — and others took place in Detroit and Los Angeles. The regular New York vigil, on the steps of the central library in Manhattan, was cancelled because of an extreme heat warning, but, in Vienna, former Guantánamo prisoner marked the occasion while speaking at a supplementary meeting of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), and, on Saturday July 4, campaigners in Cobleskill, NY marked the occasion during their weekly vigil for peace and justice, which has been ongoing since the Iraq War.

This month, in particular, all the vigils had special relevance because of their proximity to July 4, the anniversary of US Declaration of Independence, which, this year, was marking its 250th anniversary, under the sickeningly unsuitable leadership of Donald Trump. Please see the photos below, and read on for my assessment of why the continued existence of Guantánamo so fatally undermines efforts to celebrate the 250th anniversary as marking a beacon of freedom from the executive tyranny of the British government under King George III.

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In a variation on a famous quote, “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act”, which is widely but apparently incorrectly attributed to George Orwell, I recently came up with a phrase that, on an ongoing basis, I’ll be using to describe those of us who continue to try to remind the world of the existence of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay, and of the 15 men still held there in varying states of fundamental lawlessness:

“In a time of universal deceit, even the act of remembering is a revolutionary act.”

Guantánamo has long been engulfed in a kind of collective amnesia, barely mentioned by US lawmakers, and largely ignored by the mainstream media, which is why our monthly “First Wednesday” vigils, though small in number, continue to be important. If a grave and ongoing injustice isn’t even mentioned, or marked with people in orange jumpsuits bearing witness to it as an internationally significant ongoing crime scene, how is anyone supposed to even remember that it still exists?

This month, nine vigils took place across the US and around the world — in London, New York, Brussels, Mexico City, Detroit, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Innsbruck, Austria, and Cobleskill, NY. Our most politically resonant campaigners — at the heart of the dysfunctional warmongering beast, outside the White House, in Washington, D.C. — were largely unable to join us this month, with only one stalwart, longtime Close Guantánamo supporter Steve Lane, attending, and without any photos being taken, but they’ll be back next month, and individual campaigners also sent photos from Oakland, CA and Liège in Belgium.

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The monthly “First Wednesday” vigils for the closure of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay, on Wednesday May 6, marked the 40th successive month that campaigners across the US, in Washington, D.C., New York, Detroit and Los Angeles, and around the world, in London, Brussels and Belgrade, have come together to call for freedom or justice for the 15 men still held — down from 34 when our vigils started — and for the prison to be closed.

Campaigners in San Francisco joined us on Friday May 8, and in Cobleskill, NY on Saturday May 9, and Ed Charles in Oakland, and Lizzy in Arizona, also sent photos. Campaigners in Mexico City had to postpone their vigil, while, in Los Angeles, Jon Krampner held an unrecorded solo vigil, and wrote, “Neither Julie nor Kate could make it, so I was by myself and went to the Downtown LA Federal Building from 10:30 to 11:30 a.m., with my jumpsuit, hood and Amnesty ‘Close Guantánamo’ sign. One young man hurrying into the building said he supported me, but, being in a hurry, declined my request for him to photograph me. Not much interaction beyond that; just a few people pausing to look at me and the sign. This is not much of a report, but at least I showed up.”

Please see below for the photos, and read on for my now monthly reflections on what the vigils mean, and why they continue to be important, followed by further photos. Next month’s vigils will take place on Wednesday June 3, when you’re welcome to join us, and I hope will also take part in the latest phase of Close Guantánamo’s ongoing photo campaign, making every 100 days of the prison’s existence, by taking a photo with the poster marking 8,900 days of Guantánamo’s existence on May 24, and sending it here. All this year’s photos can be found on a dedicated page on the Close Guantánamo website here.

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Despite unprecedented global chaos caused by just two rogue nations — the US and Israel — who have wilfully eviscerated all the rules regarding the conduct of warfare over the last two and a half years, and massively increasing the geographical scope of their illegal actions over the last six weeks, campaigners across the US and around the world held their 39th monthly consecutive global vigils for the closure of the US’s “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay last week.

On Wednesday April 1, campaigners gathered outside the White House in Washington, D.C., in New York City and Detroit, while other campaigners were outside the Houses of Parliament in London, the European Parliament in Brussels, and in Mexico City. The Saturday before, on “No Kings Day”, campaigners in San Francisco highlighted the rank injustice of the prison’s continued existence, with other campaigners, in Cobleskill, NY, joining on Saturday April 4, as part of weekly protests reflecting the demands of the times that have been running every Saturday for the last 25 years. There were also solo participants in Oakland, CA and in Liège, Belgium.

Please see below for photos from all of the vigils, and read on for my assessment of the importance of the vigils as part of wider resistance to the collapse into depravity  of all notions of any kind of moral order since the start of Israel’s genocide in Gaza 30 achingly long months ago.

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On March 4, the “First Wednesday” monthly global vigils for the closure of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay took place in Washington, D.C., New York City, Detroit, London and Brussels, with former prisoner Mansoor Adayfi holding a solo vigil in Belgrade, and with campaigners in Cobleskill, NY joining us on Saturday March 7, when Gavrilah Wells, an Amnesty campaigner from San Francisco, also sent photos from AIUSA’s Human Rights Conference and AGM in Washington, D.C.

These were the 38th successive monthly vigils for the prison’s closure, after I initiated them in February 2023, following the example established by campaigners in London five months before, securing the support of friends and colleagues across the US, and in Brussels and Mexico City, who, ever since, have shown an implacable commitment to keeping Guantánamo and its many injustices visible, in defiance of the tendency of politicians and the mainstream media to behave as though it no longer exists.

I’m hugely impressed that so many vigils took place given the proximity of the date to the all-encompassing horror of the launch of the illegal and unprovoked joint US-Israeli “war” on Iran just four days before, which, like a black hole of injustice, has understandably swallowed up almost everyone’s time and energy.

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On Wednesday February 4, campaigners at nine locations across the US and around the world resumed the monthly “First Wednesday” global vigils calling for the closure of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay, which I first initiated three years ago, and which have been running continuously ever since.

Last month, as happens every January, the vigils moved to January 11, to mark the 24th anniversary of the opening of the prison, when an unprecedented 19 vigils took place, 12 in the US and seven at other locations worldwide, as can be seen here.

Photos from the vigils in Washington, D.C., London, New York, Brussels, Portland, OR, San Francisco, Detroit and Cobleskill, NY are posted below, and please read on for my reflections on Guantánamo in 2026. Mexico City had to cancel their vigil at the last minute, but will be back next month — on Wednesday March 4 — while, in Los Angeles, Jon Krampner held a solo vigil, because his regular companions were unable to attend, but no one helped him commit the vigil to posterity by taking a photo. As he said, “I went to the Downtown Los Angeles Federal Building. Early on, two young Latinas briefly video’d me, making a few supportive remarks as they did so. Later on, a young guy walked past me, saying that the entire base should be given back to Cuba. Some people looked at me, many didn’t even appear to notice.”

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