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Last Wednesday, October 1, the world’s most dedicated campaigners for the closure of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay gathered, at significant locations across the US and globally, for the 33rd successive monthly coordinated Close Guantánamo vigils — in Washington, D.C., London, New York, San Francisco, Brussels, Mexico City, Portland, Detroit, Los Angeles and Belgrade — with campaigners in Irvine, CA holding an indoor vigil, and with the redoubtable progressive outpost of Cobleskill, NY following on Saturday October 4.

The monthly “First Wednesday” vigils involve campaigners from various Amnesty International groups, Close Guantánamo, the UK Guantánamo Network, Witness Against Torture, the World Can’t Wait, the Peacemakers of Schoharie County, and various activist groups in New York City, with support from numerous other organizations.

As ever, I’m immensely proud of our little global family of activists, all of whom recognize the significance of the enduring injustice of Guantánamo, and its baleful influence on brutal and unjust detention policies from Israel to El Salvador and, more recently, the US mainland, via the expansion of fundamentally lawless detention facilities run by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) as part of the malignant “war on migrants” that Donald Trump launched when he took office in January.

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Please click on either of the ‘Donate’ 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, September 3, the 32nd consecutive monthly global vigils for the closure of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay took place at five locations across the US — in Washington, D.C., New York, Portland, OR, Los Angeles and Detroit — and in London and Brussels.

In Kansas, Amnesty International USA death penalty abolition campaigners also joined in, as did former Guantánamo prisoner Mansoor Adayfi in Belgrade, and two dedicated Close Guantánamo supporters in Irvine, CA, and, on Saturday September 6, campaigners in Cobleskill, NY also took part. Mexico City had to cancel this month, but will be back on October 1.

My thanks as always to the dedication of everyone involved, from organizations including numerous Amnesty International groups, Close Guantánamo, the UK Guantánamo Network, Witness Against Torture, the World Can’t Wait, the Peacemakers of Schoharie County, and various activist groups in New York City, with support from numerous other organizations.

Please see below for photos from the vigils, and read on for my report, which this month focuses on the 24th anniversary, today, of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, which not only led to the establishment of the prison at Guantánamo Bay and a network of CIA “black site” torture prisons around the world, but also led to a fatal erosion of the rules governing warfare and the treatment of individuals deprived of their liberty that haunt us to this day.

I was away for the “First Wednesday” monthly global vigils for Guantánamo’s closure last week, on a much-needed trip to Italy with my family, where I undertook a thorough digital detox, switching off from all news of the outside world for eleven days, which I recommend to anyone who struggles not to be overwhelmed by the relentlessness of the 24/7 live-streamed horrors of the world in 2025.

My return, and my belated publication of these photos from the day, coincides, fortuitously, with the 24th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the US mainland on September 11, 2001, which continues to cast a baleful shadow on all of the supposed protections established after the Second World War governing the parameters of warfare and the acceptable treatment of prisoners, even if the relentless focus on it that was repeated every year has now faded away, as almost no one under the age of 30 in the US has any memory of it whatsoever.

The prison at Guantánamo Bay is the last corrosive bastion of the discredited flight from international and domestic laws and treaties that George W. Bush initiated when he launched a global “war on terror” in the wake of the attacks.

Just 15 men are still held — out of the 779 in total held by the US military since the prison was established four months after the 9/11 attacks, on January 11, 2002 — but all are still victims of the chaos that ensues when internationally agreed rules and laws are jettisoned in pursuit of vengeance; in the “war on terror”, via the claim that the severity of the the 9/11 attacks, in which 2,977 people were killed, was such that it represented a “new paradigm” for the conduct of warfare, in which “quaint” notions like the Geneva Conventions became irrelevant, torture was permissible, the entire world was regarded as a battlefield, and, as then-Vice President Dick Cheney memorably and chillingly declared shortly after the attacks, the US would cross over to “the dark side” to seek revenge and to ensure its future security.

The “black sites” may be long gone, but the damage caused by the recklessness, lawlessness and cruelty of the “war on terror” lives on, both at Guantánamo itself, where six of the 15 men still held — some previously tortured in the “black sites” — have, monstrously, been imprisoned for over two decades without charge or trial, and where the other men — most also previously tortured in the “black sites” — continue to be denied any fundamental justice. Although they have been charged with crimes, the method chosen for their prosecution, the military commissions, unwisely dredged up from the history books by the Bush administration, is so flawed that most of the cases remain deadlocked in a Groundhog Day of endless pre-trial hearings, in which the defense teams seek to expose the full details of the torture to which the men were subjected, while prosecutors do their utmost to prevent it.

Even for those freed — almost all as a result of administrative review processes, rather than any recognized legal basis — many, if not most, remain dogged to some extent by the taint of Guantánamo, with limited rights and limited freedom of movement, despite never having been charged with any crimes.

In numerous cases, men resettled in third countries, because successive US governments have regarded it as unsafe to repatriate them, have found that the elusive freedom they were promised has never materialized, and some have found post-Guantánamo life to be even more arduous and unjust than their experiences at Guantánamo itself, as their host countries have reneged on whatever promises were made in their secret resettlement agreements with the US, while the US itself has largely shown little or no interest in their fate, despite their continuing obligations under international humanitarian law.

Beyond the specific victims of the “war on terror”, the US’s flight from reason, law and decency post-9/11 has also made the world a much darker place, normalizing torture, normalizing indefinite imprisonment without charge or trial, and normalizing a perilous notion of global warfare in which borders — and notions that any kind of military aggression can only be conducted between two parties that are officially at war — have become irrelevant.

Notoriously, the US itself not only launched two wars of aggression and occupation in response to the 9/11 attacks — in Afghanistan and Iraq; it also behaved as though it was also perfectly acceptable to kidnap people anywhere on earth, to establish torture prisons in other countries, and also to undertake air strikes and drone attacks on countries with which it was not at war.

On this particular anniversary, it’s appropriate, I think, to reflect on how much of the poisonous legacy of the US’s “war on terror” continues to reverberate in particular in the State of Israel, whose long and brutal oppression of the Palestinian people provided a template for the US’s post-9/11 policies of indefinite, extrajudicial imprisonment without charge or trial via the “administrative detention” policies that it has long used to hold Palestinians without charge and without rights in its vast network of abhorrent prisons in which the use of torture is also rife.

In Gaza, where, unthinkably, Israel is nearing the second anniversary of its relentless genocide of the Palestinian people in response to the attacks on southern Israel on October 7, 2023 — and which President Biden, to his shame, explicitly compared to the 9/11 attacks — it’s worth reflecting that, although not explicitly described as such, Israel’s entire justification for its grotesque slaughter of civilians and its almost entire erasure of Gaza’s built environment is that it is engaged in its own “war on terror”, a war on Hamas in which it has deliberately blurred the distinction between civilians and combatants, and frames its grotesque genocidal actions as a legitimate assault on “terrorists.”

In addition, while Israel has never shied away from extrajudicially pursuing and executing individuals abroad who it regarded as enemies — which it was engaged in long before 9/11 — it’s also difficult not to see its actions over the last 23 months — not only in Gaza and the West Bank, but also via its targeted assassinations of individuals in Lebanon, Syria and Iran, and, most recently, in Qatar and Yemen — as being explicitly perceived within Israel (and in large parts of the US political establishment) as justified by the US’s post-9/11 assertion that, in pursuit of “terrorists”, the entire world is a legitimate battlefield.

If the US’s response to the 9/11 attacks was a disturbing assault on the post-WWII “rules-based order”, Israel’s actions over the last 23 months would seem to amount to the final nail in its coffin. The human cost has also been immense. By even the most conservative estimates, the US-led post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan and Iraq killed 200 times as many people as were killed on 9/11. Officially, Israel has, to date, killed 60 times as many Palestinians as the number of Israelis killed on October 7, but, as experts have definitively established, that is a serious undercount, and Israel may already have passed that unforgivable ratio, confirming that, in the new world disorder that began the day after September 11, 2001, the relentless brandishing of the word “terrorist” is apparently sufficient to justify mass slaughter as revenge on a truly heartbreaking and unforgivable scale.

Hopefully, by next year, when we mark the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the genocide in Gaza will somehow have been brought to an end, but, even if it is, the monstrous crimes of both the US in its “war on terror” and Israel in its opportunistic reimagining of it (fully backed, of course, by the US and other western countries) need to be so robustly condemned that the blood-stained tide of 21st century history — in which powerful but fundamentally deranged nations have conceived of mass genocidal slaughter as “counter-terrorism” — are fundamentally held accountable so that “never again” might mean what it was meant to mean in the wake of the Nazis’ atrocities in the Second World War.

* * * * *

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”, 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’ 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 (August 6), our small but dedicated global family of campaigners came together for the 31st successive month at our “First Wednesday” monthly global vigils for the closure of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay.

Nine vigils took place — five in the US, in Washington, D.C., New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Detroit, with others in London, Brussels, Mexico City and Belgrade, where the former prisoner Mansoor Adayfi held a solo vigil. Campaigners in Cobleskill, NY joined us on the Saturday (August 9).

My thanks as always to the dedication of everyone involved, from organizations including numerous Amnesty International groups, Close Guantánamo, the UK Guantánamo Network, Witness Against Torture, the World Can’t Wait, the Peacemakers of Schoharie County, and various activist groups in New York City, with support from numerous other organizations.

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Please click on either of the ‘Donate’ 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.

 

On Wednesday July 2, the latest “First Wednesday” global vigils for the closure of the prison at Guantánamo Bay took place — four in the US, three in Europe, and one in Mexico City. An additional US vigil took place on Saturday July 5.

Please see the photos below, and read on for my analysis of the importance of the vigils, not only for the men still held, but also to highlight how, since Donald Trump came back to the White House, it has become increasingly apparent that the core injustice of Guantánamo — holding men indefinitely without charge or trial, and without providing any evidence for doing so — is being shamefully and cynically repurposed to justify detentions in the “war on migrants” that he declared when he took office in January.

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On Wednesday June 4, campaigners across the US — in Washington, D.C., New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Detroit — and in London, Brussels and Mexico City, held the latest “First Wednesday” coordinated vigils calling for the closure of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay. In Belgrade, former prisoner Mansoor Adayfi held a solo vigil, and on Saturday June 7, campaigners in Cobleskill, NY rounded off the week of actions with a defiant protest in the rain.

I can’t express sufficiently my admiration for the small but big-hearted global family of activists who come out together once a month to defy the collective amnesia that, for the most part, has engulfed Guantánamo throughout most of the 23 wretched years of its existence. Many thanks to those involved, from various Amnesty International groups, Close Guantánamo, the UK Guantánamo Network, Witness Against Torture, the World Can’t Wait, the Peacemakers of Schoharie County, and various activist groups in New York City, as well as numerous other supporting groups.

Please see below for photos of the vigils, and read on for my assessment of why it remains important to campaign for Guantánamo’s closure — including the performative cruelty of Donald Trump’s use of the prison in his horrendous “war on migrants,” and how, inadvertently, he has demonstrated that the prison itself, although still holding 15 men, has become politically irrelevant, furthering arguments for its closure.

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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. Please also consider taking out a free or paid subscription to my new Substack newsletter.

 

On Wednesday May 7, for the 28th successive month, a global family of dedicated campaigners held vigils for the closure of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay at nine locations across the US and around the world — Washington, D.C., London, New York, San Francisco, Brussels, Mexico City, Detroit, Los Angeles, and Portland, OR — with Cobleskill, NY holding an additional vigil on Saturday May 10.

I’m immensely proud of, and grateful for the dedication of our global family of campaigners — from various Amnesty International groups, and representatives of other groups including the Close Guantánamo campaign, Witness Against Torture, the World Can’t Wait and the UK Guantánamo Network — for continuing to shine a light on the lawlessness of Guantánamo, in the face of widespread amnesia or indifference.

This month’s London vigil, in particular, was noteworthy, as campaigners with the UK Guantánamo Network, who have been working assiduously with MPs and peers to reestablish an All-Party Parliamentary Group for Guantánamo’s closure, invited members of the APPG to show support by visiting the vigil for a photo opportunity, and five MPs and peers took a break from their busy schedules to join us — Chris Law of the SNP, the chair of the APPG, Baroness Natalie Bennett of the Green Party, John McDonnell and Andy Slaughter of the Labour Party, and Brian Mathew, a Liberal Democrat.

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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. Please also consider taking out a free or paid subscription to my new Substack newsletter.

 

Saturday January 11 marked another gruesome and unforgivable milestone in the US’s ongoing long war on law and fundamental human decency — the 23rd anniversary of the opening of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay, where, despite recent positive developments (the release of 15 men), another 15 are still held in varying states of lawlessness.

To mark the occasion, groups across the US and around the world, who have been admirably and diligently taking part in monthly coordinated “First Wednesday” vigils for the last two years calling for the prison’s closure, shifted the dates of their vigils to the anniversary — although normal service will be resumed next month, on Wednesday February 5.

Below are photos of the vigils in Washington, D.C., London, New York, San Francisco, Cobleskill, NY and Detroit. A planned vigil in Los Angeles had to be called off because of the wildfires, and other groups held vigils on other days — Portland, OR on January 1, and Mexico City on January 8 — with the vigil outside the European Parliament in Brussels taking place this coming Thursday, January 16. Groups involved include various Amnesty International groups, Witness Against Torture, the World Can’t Wait, Close Guantánamo, the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, the UK Guantánamo Network, and many other groups, with other organizations also supporting the vigils on an ongoing basis.

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On Wednesday, December 4, campaigners across the US and around the world held the latest coordinated monthly vigils for the closure of the prison at Guantánamo Bay. The vigils began in February 2023, taking place on the first Wednesday of every month, and, as a result, they have become known, amongst some of the organizers, as the “First Wednesday vigils.”

Photos from the vigils are posted below, as is a detailed description of why this month’s vigils, in particular, were so important.

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Weariness mingled with determination marked the mood at the nine monthly coordinated vigils for the closure of the prison at Guantánamo Bay that took place across the US, and in London and Brussels, on November 6, 2024, the day after the US Presidential Election, when it had already become clear that Donald Trump would be the next president of the United States. Those involved represent organizations including Amnesty International, Close Guantánamo, Witness Against Torture, the World Can’t Wait, NRCAT (the National Religious Campaign Against Torture), Veterans for Peace and the UK Guantánamo Network.

Photos of these vigils are posted below, along with comments from those involved in organizing them, reflecting on their feelings as the news began to sink in that, in just ten weeks’ time, Guantánamo’s biggest supporter will be back in the White House. Please enjoy the photos and the commentary, and continue reading for my reflections on what this particular result means for the 30 men still held at Guantánamo. The next vigils are on Wednesday December 4, and in January we’ll break from our normal vigils on the first Wednesday of every month to join with other groups on Saturday January 11, the 23rd anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, when we’ll also be marking 8,400 days of Guantánamo’s existence.

While we all fear the worst for Trump’s second term as president — in connection with the already apocalyptic reality of climate collapse, women’s reproductive rights, the safety of immigrants and refugees, and, quite probably, unfettered support for Israel’s ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip, and its predatory actions in the West Bank and Lebanon — what all of us gathered on Wednesday also knew immediately was that, specifically on Guantánamo, Trump will be an unmitigated disaster, sealing the prison shut as he did in his first term in office, so that no one will leave the prison unless, by some miracle, they secure a victory in a habeas corpus petition in a US court.

For nearly two years, since I initiated the monthly global vigils on the first Wednesday of every month in February 2023, campaigners have been working tirelessly to try to get the Biden administration to address the plight of the men still held at Guantánamo, in particular by releasing the men still held who have long been approved for release.

At the time of Trump’s victory, of the 30 men still held at Guantánamo, 16 of them, to Biden’s shame, have been approved for release for between two and four years, and in three outlying cases for nearly 15 years. All are still held because the decisions to release them were taken by high-level US government review boards, whose decisions were purely administrative, meaning that no legal mechanism exists to compel the government to actually free them, if, as has become increasingly apparent, the Biden administration has had no interest in doing so.

An additional complication is that, for the most part, these men cannot be sent back to their home countries, because of provisions created by Republicans, proscribing the return of prisoners to certain countries, which are included every year in the annual National Defense Authorization Act. As a result, third countries must be found that are prepared to offer them new homes.

A year ago, eleven of these men were meant to have been resettled in Oman, but their planned release coincided with the October 7 attacks in Israel, and was called off after the Biden administration decided that the “political optics” were not appropriate for their release.

No new date has been set for these men’s release, but what is desperately needed right now is for President Biden to recognize that, having failed to free anyone from Guantánamo since April 2023, and with the imminent horrors of Trump’s animosity towards everyone held there creeping closer with ever passing day, he needs to act with great urgency to locate a suitable destination for resettlement, and to finalize negotiations with the host country, or host countries, before December 19, so that they can freed on January 19, the day before Trump’s inauguration. The month’s delay relates to another act of Republican obstruction, requiring that Congress be notified 30 days before the release of anyone from Guantánamo.

In the coming weeks, I anticipate that lawyers and human rights organizations will be pooling resources to try to exert pressure on Biden in his last two months in office, and I intend to work with them as much as possible, and to do what I can to facilitate the involvement of activists and campaigners, who have been so important in trying to keep the injustice of Guantánamo in the public eye, to hold back the amnesia that otherwise threatens to engulf it entirely.

Please feel free to watch the video below, via YouTube, in which, at the London vigil, I explained the situation at Guantánamo right now, and why it is so imperative for President Biden to take swift action to free the men still held who have long been approved for release.

Further photos from the vigils are below.

The ninth vigil that took place on November 6 was in Los Angeles, via solitary campaigner Jon Krampner, who sent the following message: “I stood in front of the Downtown Los Angeles Federal Building for an hour today in my orange jumpsuit and black hood with my AI ‘Close Guantánamo’ sign. It seemed like there were a few more people than usual today. Apparently there were a lot of people there for their citizenship reviews, as I could occasionally hear building security officers tell prospective interviewees not to bring in any weapons, guns, knives, illegal drugs or alcohol. It seems counterintuitive to me that someone would show up to a citizenship interview with a bazooka, Bowie knife, line of coke and a pint of Jim Beam, but the federal government wants to have all bases covered. I did get one person to take a picture of me. I gave him a slip of paper with my e-mail address printed in 18-point boldface type and he appeared to send it to me while I was standing there. But, as is so often the case, when I got home, there was no e-mail from him.”

In Minneapolis, Amnesty campaigners canceled their proposed vigil, because, as they explained, “We have just left daylight savings time, so our event would have been in darkness.” Instead, however, they held a Virtual Guantánamo event instead, with members of the group urged to contact President Biden.

In Mexico City, meanwhile, campaigners were unable to hold their monthly vigil, but Natalia Rivera Scott wrote, “I took some photos with my altar for the Día de Muertos. Every year I put the names of the men of Guantánamo that have died so I hope it’s meaningful.” One of those photos is posted below.

* * * * *

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.

 

For 20 months now, campaigners around the world — from organizations including Amnesty International, Close Guantánamo, Witness Against Torture, the World Can’t Wait, NRCAT (the National Religious Campaign Against Torture), Veterans for Peace and the UK Guantánamo Network — have held coordinated vigils across the US and around the world, on the first Wednesday of every month, calling for the closure of the prison at Guantánamo Bay.

On October 2, campaigners held vigils outside the White House in Washington, D.C., in London, New York City, San Francisco, Brussels, Cobleskill, NY, Detroit, Minneapolis and Portland, Oregon. Campaigners in Mexico City weren’t able to take part this month, but secured photos of a former prisoner and of supporters holding up “Cierren Guantánamo” signs, and in Strasbourg, at the Council of Europe, a Belgian campaigner successfully persuaded delegates at a meeting to have a photo taken in solidarity with those holding vigils worldwide. Many of the campaigners also held up posters marking 8,300 days of Guantánamo’s existence the day before. The posters, an initiative of the Close Guantánamo campaign, mark every 100 days of the prison’s existence, and all of the 8,300 days photos — 70 in total — can be found here.

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