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Guantanamo

Global Vigils For Closure Of Guantánamo On The 24th Anniversary

January 17, 2026 Andy Worthington. , , ,
Between Saturday January 10 and Monday January 12, an impressive 18 vigils for the closure of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay took place across the US and around the world, marking the 24th anniversary of the opening of the prison, with a 19th taking place on January 15. Eleven of these vigils were by campaigners who have been taking part in the monthly coordinated “First Wednesday” global vigils that I initiated three years ago, and that have been taking place every month ever since. Seven of these are at locations in the US — outside the White House in Washington, D.C., in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Detroit, Cobleskill, NY, and Portland, OR — while the other four are in London, Brussels and Mexico City, with former Guantánamo prisoner Mansoor Adayfi holding a solo vigil in Belgrade.

The Last Close Guantánamo Vigils Of 2025

December 9, 2025 Andy Worthington. , , , ,
Last Wednesday, December 3, groups of stalwart campaigners gathered across the US and around the world for the 35th monthly global vigils for the closure of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay. The “First Wednesday” vigils took place outside the White House in Washington, D.C., and in London, New York City, Brussels, Detroit, Los Angeles and Portland, OR, with former prisoner Mansoor Adayfi also holding a solo vigil in Belgrade. Further vigils took place in Cobleskill, NY on Saturday December 6, and outside the Howard Zinn Book Fair in San Francisco on Sunday December 7.

Venezuela Vows ‘All Strategies’ To Repatriate Citizens

March 18, 2025 Orinoco Tribune. , , , , , , , , , ,
Venezuelan National Assembly President Jorge Rodríguez declared Monday that the government will mobilize multilateral organizations and international law firms to repatriate citizens detained abroad. He accused the United States of “kidnapping” Venezuelan migrants and collaborating with El Salvador in a “modern slave trade.” The announcement came after reports that more than 200 Venezuelan migrants were transferred from U.S. custody to prisons in El Salvador based on unproven allegations of ties to the Aragua Train criminal gang.

Migrants Rescued From Guantánamo Arrive In Venezuela

February 22, 2025 Orinoco Tribune. , , ,
Venezuelan Minister for Internal Affairs, Justice and Peace Diosdado Cabello received 177 Venezuelans rescued from the US military base in Guantánamo Bay that illegally occupies Cuban territory. Cabello explained that the operation was the result of a request by the Venezuelan government negotiated with the US government. The New York Times (NYT) reported that one migrant was sent back to the US. The 177 migrants arrived in Venezuela near midnight on Thursday, February 20, on a Conviasa Airbus 340-200 passenger jet at the Simón Bolívar International Airport in Maiquetia, La Guaira state.

Biden Gave Trump The Blueprint To Lock Up 30,000 Migrants

February 2, 2025 Jose Olivares, Drop Site. , , , , , ,
On Wednesday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to “expand” a migrant detention center located within the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base. Prior to the release of the executive order, the administration announced that 30,000 migrants would be detained at Guantánamo. “We have 30,000 beds in Guantanamo to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people. This will double our capacity immediately,” Trump said. But according to Department of Homeland Security and Navy documents from 2021 and 2022 reviewed by Drop Site News, the Trump administration may not be able to detain that high of a number of migrants at the facility — at least not immediately.

US Transfers 11 Detainees Out Of Guantanamo Bay Prison

January 7, 2025 Middle East Eye. , , ,
The United States sent 11 Yemeni detainees at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility to Oman, the Pentagon said on Monday, leaving 15 people at the infamous detention centre. The transfer was initially slated for October 2023 but the 7 October 2023 Hamas-led attack on southern Israel and Israel's subsequent war on Gaza delayed the transfer, according to an admission from US officials in May last year. "The United States appreciates the willingness of the government of Oman and other partners to support ongoing US efforts focused on responsibly reducing the detainee population and ultimately closing the Guantanamo Bay facility," the US military said in a statement.

From Guantanamo To Abu Ghraib: Female Participation In Prisoner Abuses

November 18, 2024 Ann Wright, Popular Resistance. , , , , , ,
As a retired U.S. Army Reserve Colonel with 13 years on active duty and 16 in the Reserves, I became interested in the topic of women involved in prisoner abuses when so many U.S. women at all levels were linked to the prisons or prisoners in Afghanistan, Guantanamo, Cuba, and Iraq.  In reading press articles about detentions, incarcerations, and the abuse and torture of prisoners identified as threats to national security, I was struck by the number of women who had some role in the detentions -- women in the U.S. military, civilian women in various U.S. government agencies and civilian women contractors.

The CIA And The 9/11 Plea Deals

August 3, 2024 John Kiriakou, Consortium News. , , , , ,
The U.S. Defense Department announced Wednesday that Khalid Shaikh Muhammad (KSM), the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, as well as two co-defendants, had agreed to plead guilty to multiple charges of terrorism and would escape execution, serving consecutive life sentences with no chance of parole instead. The agreement brings to an end, at least for KSM, Walid bin Attash, and Mustafa al-Hawsawi, an odyssey through uncharted and unprecedented Defense Department legal territory. The announcement led to mixed feelings from many of the 9/11 victim families, human rights activists and the legal community, and there are certainly lessons to be learned.

Cuba Condemns US Nuclear Submarine In Guantanamo

July 13, 2023 Orinoco Tribune. , , ,
Cuba condemned the presence of a US nuclear submarine at the Guantánamo naval base in Cuba earlier this month. Cuban authorities labeled the move a military provocation. On Tuesday, July 11, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez stated via social media, “We categorically condemn the presence between July 5 and 8 of a nuclear submarine at the Guantánamo naval base. It constitutes a provocative escalation by the US, which forces us to question what strategic purpose it is pursuing in our region, declared a Zone of Peace.” According to the Defense Video and Imagery Distribution System (DVIDS), the submarine that docked at Guantánamo Bay is the USS Pasadena (SSN 752).

UN Expert Demands Immediate Shutting Down Of Guantanamo Prison

June 27, 2023 People's Dispatch. , , , ,
UN special rapporteur Fionnuala Ní Aoláin on Monday, June 26, asked the US authorities to shut down the infamous Guantanamo Bay prison and apologize for the torture of inmates. She asked that all persons responsible for such abuses in the last 20 years be held accountable. Ní Aoláin was addressing a press conference in New York on the occasion of UN’s International Day in Solidarity with the Victims of Torture. She also released her report on Guantanamo Bay prepared after visiting the prison earlier this year. “The US government must urgently provide judicial resolution, apology and guarantees of non-repetition,” Ní Aoláin said, claiming that the establishment was in violation of international human rights laws.

Those Who Violated The Geneva Conventions At Guantánamo Are Free

February 25, 2022 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. , , ,
Twenty years ago, on 11 January 2002, the United States government brought its first ‘detainees’ abducted during the so-called War on Terror to its military prison in Guantánamo Bay. US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said, ‘We do plan to, for the most part, treat them in a manner that is reasonably consistent with the Geneva Conventions’. For the most part. Evidence began to emerge almost immediately – including from the International Committee of the Red Cross – that the Geneva Conventions were being violated and that many of the prisoners were being tortured. By December 2002, the US media began to report that ‘many held at Guantánamo [were] not likely terrorists’.

A Torture Survivor Speaks At The Guantanamo Military Commissions

November 5, 2021 Scott Roehm, Just Security. , , ,
“I have a story that I have waited almost two decades to tell, so I want to thank you for taking the time to listen to my statement.” For the next two hours, Majid Khan spoke to a panel of military jurors, and to his family—especially his father and sister, who had hugged their son and brother that morning for the first time in nineteen years and sat just feet away in the spectator gallery, visibly suffering through the horror of what they heard. Mr. Khan described brutality and its effects even beyond the heinous acts detailed in the executive summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s 2014 oversight study of the CIA torture program. Torture inflicted by medical personnel stood out. He explained that he was raped by CIA medics – under the guise of both “rectal feeding” and “rectal rehydration,” the latter using a “green garden hose,” with one end connected to a faucet and the other forcibly inserted into his rectum.

Torture Rears Its Ugly Head at Guantánamo, It Should Be Closed

February 12, 2020 By Andy Worthington on his blog , ,
2020 has, to date, been noteworthy for how much attention has been focused on Guantánamo, the US naval base in Cuba that is home to the “war on terror” prison established in January 2002, and also to the inappropriately named Camp Justice, where trial proceedings for some of the men held in the prison take place. First up was the 18th anniversary of the opening of the prison, on January 11, when campaigners from numerous NGOs and campaigning groups — including Close Guantánamo — held a rally outside the White House to call for the prison’s closure.

Psyched At The American Psychological Association

October 21, 2018 Michael Brenner, Consortium News. , ,
This never-say-die persistence moved them, and their supporters, to make one more valiant attempt to reverse the course of justice by presenting to the APA Council of Representatives a plan to lift the ban on military psychologists (who number 525) from treating prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba, where the U.S. is still holding 48 foreign ‘terrorists.’ That population may increase if Trump’s stated idea of filling some empty billets is acted upon. It was pushed hard by the Pentagon with the endorsement of the old guard.

Close The Forever Prison At Guantanamo

February 16, 2018 Staff, Witnessagainsttorture.com , ,
It was with heavy hearts that we, as members of Witness Against Torture, listened to Trump’s State of the Union address Tuesday evening. We heard him attempt to stoke fear in his listeners with wave after wave of references to terrorists and criminals. He began by linking terror to “illegal immigrants,” border walls, “chain migration,” and visa lotteries, before moving on to ISIS, Al Qaida, rogue regimes, unlawful enemy combatants and more. By the time he mentioned the prison at Guantanamo, he had already clearly connected the foreigner and the immigrant with the idea of danger in his listeners’ minds. He had already skillfully set the stage when he announced his executive order to keep open the detention facilities at Guantánamo Bay. In Guantanamo, he reassured his listeners, we would “have all necessary power to detain terrorists — wherever we chase them down.”
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