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Guantanamo Bay

Family, Supporters Demand Release Of Venezuelan Migrant In Guantanamo

February 18, 2025 Dalal Zainabi, Orinoco Tribune. , , , , ,
Family members of José Medina Andrade, a 29-year-old Venezuelan migrant and father of two, learned of his transfer to Guantanamo Bay through an article in the New York Times, revealing the latest chapter in what supporters describe as a pattern of family separation and human rights abuses in the US immigration system. At a press conference held Sunday, February 16, outside the courthouse building in downtown Seattle, José’s wife and sister joined community organizers to demand his immediate release. They contested his designation as a “high-threat” migrant, describing him instead as a family man who fled Venezuela and had become an active member of Washington’s migrant community.

122 Years Of US Imperialism In Guantánamo

February 11, 2025 Abraham Marquez, Geopolitical Economy. , , , , , , , , , , ,
Colonialist Christopher Columbus landed in Guantánamo Bay on his second voyage to the Americas in 1494. The empires of England, France, and Spain later disputed Guantánamo, a territory of 45 square miles. This “discovery” of the Cuban island unleashed a Spanish extermination campaign against the indigenous population, through disease, starvation, and brutality. What followed the genocide was the “vertiginous growth of the slave trade based in Havana”. Today, Guantánamo Bay remains occupied by the United States. It is used as a detention center by the most powerful military in history.

US Court Blocks Trump Administration Sending Immigrants To Guantanamo

February 10, 2025 Fatma Zehra Solmaz, Anadolu Ajansı. , , , ,
A federal court on Sunday halted the Donald Trump administration’s attempt to transfer three Venezuelan immigrants, detained in New Mexico, to Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba. Earlier that day, the men's lawyers argued in a legal filing that the detainees "fit the profile" of those the administration had targeted for transfer to Guantanamo. The filing also stated that they were "Venezuelan men detained in the El Paso area with (false) charges of connections with the Tren de Aragua gang," CNN reported. The lawyers urged a US District Court in New Mexico to block the transfer, arguing that the "uncertainty" surrounding the detainees’ legal rights and access to lawyers warranted an injunction.

How Does Trump Propose To Redefine Immigrants So They’re Beyond The Reach Of The Law?

February 6, 2025 Andy Worthington. , , , , , ,
On January 20, as Donald Trump took office for the second time, it seemed that the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay, which had recently marked the 23rd anniversary of its opening, might become as marginalized and generally forgotten as it was in his first term in office, when he largely sealed it shut for four years. Last Wednesday, however, and seemingly out of the blue, Trump suddenly announced that he had just issued a new executive order, “Expanding Migrant Operations Center at Naval Station Guantánamo Bay to Full Capacity”, to expand an existing migrant detention facility at the naval base.

Trump To Order Gitmo Prepared As Offshore Prison For Migrants

January 30, 2025 Eloise Goldsmith, Common Dreams. , , ,
U.S. President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he will sign an executive order instructing the departments of Defense and Homeland Security to prepare the U.S. naval base on Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to hold tens of thousands of migrants. "We have 30,000 beds in Guantanamo to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people," Trump said at the White House at a ceremony to sign the Laken Riley Act, an immigrant detention bill, into law. "Some of them are so bad we don't even trust the countries to hold them because we don't want them coming back. So we're going to send them out to Guantánamo," he said.

After 23 Years, Prisoners Remain In Guantanamo Without Charges

January 14, 2025 Margaret Flowers, Clearing the FOG. , , , ,
January 11 marked the twenty-third anniversary of the opening of the US military prison on occupied land in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Clearing the FOG speaks with Andy Worthington, an investigative journalist and author of The Guantanamo Files. Worthington explains that the United States opened the prison in Guantanamo to avoid legal restrictions. He describes the connections between Guantanamo and the CIA 'black sites' where prisoners were tortured and who the men are that were recently released as well as who remains. There are calls for Joe Biden to release all of the men and end the scandal of the prison at Guantanamo Bay before he leaves office.

The ‘Ghost’ Of Guantanamo Is Freed

January 1, 2025 Andy Worthington. , , ,
In welcome news, the Pentagon has announced that it has repatriated from Guantánamo Ridah Al-Yazidi, 59, a Tunisian prisoner held without charge or trial since the very first day of the prison’s operations nearly 23 years ago, on January 11, 2002. Although almost completely unknown to the outside world, because of the mainstream media’s persistent lack of interest in investigating the mundane lawlessness of so much of the prison’s operations, Al-Yazidi’s case is one of the most outstanding cases of casual injustice at Guantánamo.

Biden’s Legacy: Enhancing The ‘State Secrets Privilege’ To Protect The National Security State

December 8, 2024 Kevin Gosztola, The Dissenter. , , , , , ,
Abu Zubaydah, a high-profile detainee at Guantanamo Bay, was tortured by the CIA. He attempted to subpoena James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, both architects of the agency’s torture program who interrogated him at a black site in Poland. However, the CIA invoked the “state secrets privilege” to block Zubaydah from seeking testimony that could be used in a Polish criminal investigation. The case involving the state secrets privilege was eventually heard by the United States Supreme Court, and the court not only ruled in favor of the CIA but also expanded the privilege.

Deal Or No Deal?

October 3, 2024 Andrew P. Napolitano, Consortium News. , , , , ,
The case of the Gitmo plea agreement keeps getting curiouser and curiouser. A few weeks ago, we learned that a plea agreement had been entered into by way of a signed contract among the retired general in the Pentagon who is supervising all Gitmo prosecutions, the Gitmo defendants and defense counsel, and the military prosecutors. The agreement, as we understand it from sources who have seen it, provides that in return for a guilty plea, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and others will serve life terms at Gitmo, rather than be exposed at trial to the death penalty. The guilty plea is to include a public and detailed recitation of guilt.

Held For 1,000 Days Since Approval For Release From Guantánamo Prison

February 10, 2024 Andy Worthington. , , ,
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.

An Ex-CIA Agent Looks Back At 22 Years Of Torture At Guantanamo Bay

January 11, 2024 John Kiriakou, Scheer Post. , , , ,
January 11 marks the 22nd anniversary of the founding of the prison component of the U.S. military base at Guantánamo Cuba. The U.S. military has been at Guantánamo for decades, of course, but the idea to use the isolated base as a prison where men — and in some cases boys — who had never been formally accused of a crime could be held forever, came from the office of Vice President Dick Cheney in 2002. In the intervening years, presidents and members of Congress of both parties have ignored civil rights, civil liberties and human rights to keep this abomination open. It’s up to the rest of us to demand its destruction.

I Was The Only US Official Imprisoned Over The Torture Program

September 26, 2023 John Kiriakou, Scheer Post. , , , , ,
I was the only person associated with the CIA’s torture program who was prosecuted and imprisoned.  I never tortured anybody. But I was charged with five felonies, including three counts of espionage, for telling ABC News and the New York Times that the CIA was torturing its prisoners, that torture was official U.S.  government policy, and that the policy had been approved by the president himself.  I served 23 months in a federal prison.  It was worth every minute. There is certainly no easy fix to this situation.  The New York Times reported in March 2022 that prosecutors had opened talks with attorneys representing Khalid Shaikh Muhammad and four co-defendants to negotiate a plea agreement that would drop the death penalty in exchange for sentences of life without parole and promises that the men would be allowed to remain in Guantanamo.

Guantanamo Bay Detainee Sues Former Psychologists In New Torture Case

September 20, 2023 Emma Epperly, The Spokesman-Review. , , , ,
A man tortured two decades ago by the CIA for his suspected role as a terrorist has sued two former Spokane psychologists, who made millions of dollars from the government for developing the techniques used during the brutal interrogations. Zayn Al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn, also known as Abu Zubaydah, says he underwent extreme torture, including prolonged extreme solitary confinement, waterboarding, mock executions and lack of medical attention that cost him his left eye. Zubaydah is suing psychologists and former CIA contractors Bruce Jessen and James Mitchell, who he says tortured him.

Provocations Escalate: US Nuclear Submarine Docks In Cuban Territory

July 16, 2023 Alejandra Garcia, Resumen English. , , , ,
It is no coincidence that just days before Cuba marked two years since the July 11 riots, a nuclear-powered US submarine crossed Cuban waters and docked at the illegal base at Guantanamo Bay. From July 5-8, it remained afloat in that Cuban territory usurped and illegally occupied by Washington 121 years ago as a clear threat to peace in the region. On July 11, the Cuban Foreign Ministry formally denounced this provocative escalation by the United States, “whose political or strategic motives are unknown. The presence of a nuclear submarine at this time forces us to question what military reasons are behind this act.

Gitmo’s Permanent Chains

July 7, 2023 Seymour Hersh, Scheer Post. , , , , , ,
Now comes yet another little-noted report on the continuing excesses and inhumanity at Guantánamo Bay, the post-9/11 American military prison that only two decades ago set the standard for war crimes—a standard that is now being eclipsed by the war in Ukraine. The report’s author is Fionnuala D. Ní Aoláin, the United Nations special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights while countering terrorism, a law professor at the University of Minnesota and the Queens University in Belfast, and an experienced human rights investigator. She based her report on a four-day visit to the island prison last February.
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