Please support my work! I’m currently trying to raise $2500 (£2000) to support my writing and campaigning on Guantánamo and related issues over the next three months of the Trump administration.

For the last 41 days, my friends with Witness Against Torture — an organization of volunteer activists, founded in 2005, which “seeks to end torture worldwide, close the Guantánamo detention center, and seek reparations for torture victims” — have been running a campaign, “Forever Human Beings,” which I wrote about when their campaign started. the 41 days chosen for the campaign — from May 26 to July 5 — was chosen to reflect the number of prisoners still held at Guantánamo, and every day they highlighted the story of one particular prisoner.

To coincide with the end of their campaign — and US Independence Day — I wrote an article for Witness Against Torture about the significance of Guantánamo on the day that ordinary Americans celebrate their liberation from tyranny; this year, the 241st anniversary of the new nation’s freedom from the tyranny of King George III in 1776.

Ironically, however, those celebrating, for the most part, are unaware or unwilling to think of the uncomfortable fact that, at Guantánamo, a version of that same tyranny still exists, set up by the very government that is supposed to make sure that the kind of tyranny overthrown in 1776 can never happen again — specifically, imprisonment without charge or trial, which is supposed to be something that countries that claim to be civilized, and that claim to respect the rule of law, condemn without reservation. Read the rest of this entry »

Please send us a photo of yourself with a poster urging Donald Trump to close Guantánamo!

Please also support my work! I’m currently trying to raise $2500 (£2000) to support my writing and campaigning on Guantánamo and related issues over the next three months of the Trump administration.

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.

Just hours before the United States celebrates the 241st anniversary of its freedom from the yoke of British tyranny, all is not well in the Land of the Free. With Donald Trump in the White House, the US’s reputation abroad is floundering. Trump seems to govern by tweet and to have no idea of what the position of president entails, and far from “draining the swamp” as he promised, cleaning up politics and standing up for ordinary Americans, he has, predictably, embarked on a corporate-pleasing, right-wing agenda, slashing healthcare for poorer Americans, being gung-ho for war, showing contempt for the environment and love for energy companies, and hammering away at creating a travel ban for Muslims that is disgracefully racist and unacceptably wide-reaching and imprecise in its scope.

On Guantánamo, he has, to date, done very little despite threatening to send new prisoners there and to reintroduce torture — both ambitions that wiser heads counselled him to drop. However, inaction does absolutely nothing to deal with the ongoing injustice of Guantánamo, something that Trump cares nothing about, but that continues to trouble those of us who care about justice and the rule of law.

In a law-abiding world, there are only two ways to deprive someone of their liberty — as a criminal, put forward for a trial without excessive delay, or as a combatant seized in wartime, who can be held off the battlefield, unmolested, until the end of hostilities, under the terms of the Geneva Conventions. The men at Guantánamo are neither. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the Bush administration arbitrarily rounded up hundreds of men, and claimed that they had no rights whatsoever. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m delighted to report that, today, US Independence Day (July 4), the following open letter to President Obama, calling for the release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, was published by the Guardian, on its website, which has seven million readers worldwide, and picked up on by the Daily Mail, Sky News and ITV News. Also see this Guardian article (a version of which was published in the newspaper), accompanying the publication of the letter.

I wrote the letter for the We Stand With Shaker campaign , which I founded, with the activist Joanne MacInnes, in November, and Jo has spent the last few weeks assiduously securing signatures. Celebrity supporters include Sir Patrick Stewart OBE, Ralph Fiennes, Russell Brand, Roger Waters, Peter Gabriel, Sting, Richard E. Grant, Mark Rylance, Juliet Stevenson, David Morrissey, Frankie Boyle, Ken Loach, Mike Leigh and Michael Brearley.

Late yesterday afternoon, we secured the support of Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, who joined dozens of other MPs, including former Attorney General Dominic Grieve, the former Director of Public Prosecutions and the Head of the Crown Prosecution Service, Keir Starmer, and the six MPs who lead the cross-party Shaker Aamer Parliamentary Group: the co-chairs, John McDonnell (Lab.) and David Davis (Con.), and the four officers of the group: Andrew Mitchell (Con.), Jeremy Corbyn (Lab.), Caroline Lucas (Green) and Andy Slaughter (Lab.). Read the rest of this entry »