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Guantanamo Bay

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.

Close Guantanamo Monthly Vigils

June 6, 2023 Center for Constitutional Rights. , , ,
Monthly vigils — or even weekly vigils — for the closure of Guantánamo were a noticeable feature of the London protest scene for many years, while British prisoners were still held there, although, with the release of Shaker Aamer, the prison’s last British resident, in October 2015, it became impossible to sustain the impetus, and the Trump years, of course, were bleak for protestors, because Trump had tweeted, even before he took office, that “there must be no more releases from Gitmo,” and he was largely true to his word, releasing only one man in his nearly 1,500 days in office.

Global Vigils For The Closure Of Guantánamo On Women’s Day

March 11, 2023 Andy Worthington. , , ,
Monthly vigils — or even weekly vigils — for the closure of Guantánamo were a noticeable feature of the London protest scene for many years, while British prisoners were still held there, although, with the release of Shaker Aamer, the prison’s last British resident, in October 2015, it became impossible to sustain the impetus, and the Trump years, of course, were bleak for protestors, because Trump had tweeted, even before he took office, that “there must be no more releases from Gitmo,” and he was largely true to his word, releasing only one man in his nearly 1,500 days in office.

Lessons From Majid Khan’s Release From Guantánamo

February 26, 2023 David Rosen, Progressive.org. , , , ,
On February 2, U.S. prisoner and former al Qaeda courier Majid Khan was released from the Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp in Cuba after more than sixteen years of imprisonment. “We are very pleased with Majid’s release,” says J. Wells Dixon, a senior staff attorney at the New York City-based Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR). “Majid’s transfer to Belize is the culmination of nearly twenty years of work by the CCR and the law firm Jenner & Block,” Dixon tells The Progressive “Our only regret is that he was not released sooner.” On October 7, 2001, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the United States, together with Great Britain, launched “Operation Enduring Freedom,” the war in Afghanistan and the beginning of the “global war on terror.”

21 Years Later, Guantánamo Is Still Open — And We Are Still Protesting

January 15, 2023 Frida Berrigan, Waging Nonviolence. , , ,
The prison that started out as a provisional, secret, slapdash gulag on the lee side of the Cuban state of Guantanamo is now a rebar-enforced institution with hundreds of millions of dollars flowing into it every year for a dwindling but entrenched population. It survives despite Supreme Court rulings against it, the accumulation of literally millions of billable hours by some of the best legal minds in the United States and Europe, decades of fervent and smart and courageous protest, and four presidents. Witness Against Torture is a small part of that protest movement. We were founded in 2005, when 25 of us went to Cuba with the plan of marching to Guantánamo to see the prisoners. In the process, we would publicly violate the Bush administration’s travel related bans on Cuba and have an opportunity to draw attention to the treatment of “war on terror” prisoners while on trial.

Witness Against Torture Statement: Guantanamo Turns 21

January 10, 2023 Josie Setzler, Witness Against Torture. , , ,
As the illegal U.S. prison at Guantanamo enters its third decade of existence on January 11, Witness Against Torture will hold vigil at a White House rally at 1 pm Wednesday. We demand that the U.S. Government close Guantanamo and bring justice for Guantanamo survivors. We call on the U.S. public to remember the men who suffer in Guantanamo, those who have died there, and those still suffering after their release. Since 2005, Witness Against Torture has called out their names and lifted up their words in the DC corridors of power. Most of the 780 Muslim men and boys brought to Guantanamo since 2002 were never charged or tried. Many were tortured and abused. 35 men remain in the prison. 20 of them have been cleared for release, yet they continue to languish.

Guantanamo Bay And The US Global Empire

May 21, 2022 Lowkey, Mintpress News. , ,
In the twenty-ninth installment of “The Watchdog” podcast, Lowkey speaks to Todd E. Pierce about the global reach of the U.S. empire and its totalitarian ambitions to control the entire planet. Todd is a retired U.S. Army officer and defense attorney whose experiences serving at the front line of empire moved him to become a defender of its victims. Towards the end of his military service, he volunteered to become a defense attorney for three prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Previously a neoconservative cold warrior, Pierce joined the military at an early age and served in the first Gulf War. Yet after being exposed to the realities of neoconservative doctrine, his faith in the project began to waver.

America Plea Bargains For Its Crimes Of Torture

March 28, 2022 John Kiriakou, Scheer Post. , , , , , ,
The Guardian reported last week that a recently-declassified CIA Inspector General’s report from 2008 found that CIA officers at a covert detention site in Afghanistan used a prisoner, Ammar al-Baluch, as a “training prop,” taking turns smashing his head against a plywood wall and leaving him with permanent brain damage.  Baluch is currently one of five defendants before a military tribunal at the US military prison at Guantanamo charged with participating in the planning for the September 11 attacks.  The case has been stuck in the pre-trial phase for 10 years, in part because much of the information that the government wants to use against the defendants was collected using torture.

National Faith Groups Call On Congress And President To Close Guantanamo Bay Prison

January 13, 2022 National Religious Campaign Against Torture. , , , ,
Washington, DC – On Tuesday, Jan. 11, twenty-nine national faith groups sent a letter to President Biden and all Members of Congress calling on them “to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and to ensure that all of the people held there are either released, agree to a plea deal, or receive a fair trial in a federal court.” Rev. Ron Stief, Executive Director of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, released the following statement: “For twenty years our country has held people without charge or trial in Guantanamo. Some of the people we still hold there were tortured by the U.S. after they were captured. Others have been cleared to leave Guantanamo yet remain imprisoned there, indefinitely detained without trial.

President Biden Must Find The Political Will To Close Guantanamo Bay

January 12, 2022 Andy Worthington. , , ,
It is, to be blunt, beyond dispiriting to have to be calling for the closure of the tired and discredited “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay 20 years — 7,306 days — since it first opened. The prison, as I have long explained, is a legal, moral and ethical abomination, and every day that it remains open ought to be a source of shame to anyone with any respect for the law — or, for that matter, with any common decency. In countries that respect the rule of law, the only way to be stripped of your liberty is as a criminal suspect or as a prisoner of war protected by the Geneva Conventions. At Guantánamo, the Bush administration threw away the rulebook, holding men without any rights whatsoever as “enemy combatants”, who could be held indefinitely, with no requirement that they ever face charges, and with no legal mechanism in place to ever ensure their release.
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