Guantanamo

21 Arrested Interrupting Senate Protesting Torture & Guantanamo

January 14, 2015 Sarah Lazare, www.commondreams.org Resist! CIA, Congress, Guantanamo, Human Rights, Torture

Over a dozen protesters disrupted the Senate Monday afternoon by chanting demands for an end to U.S. torture with impunity. The civil disobedience, organized by Witness Against Torture, was a dramatic culmination of a week of action in Washington, D.C. to press for the closure of the military's offshore prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba as it enters its 14th year. "Torture, It’s Official, Prosecute Now!" protesters shouted in unison, in reference to the recently released, partially-redacted executive summary of the Senate report on CIA torture. The actions followed an earlier rally for an end to impunity for police who kill people of color and for indefinite detentions without trial in Guantánamo Bay.

Now That You Know, You Cannot Turn Away

January 10, 2015 Witness Against Torture, www.PopularResistance.org Resist! Guantanamo, Torture, Wars and Militarism

At the end, right after reading Fahd’s words, “Now that you know, you cannot turn away,” we had each person in our troupe come to the microphone to finish the phrase: “I will not turn away because…” The voice and expression of each person, one after the other, was a powerful and moving testament to our commitments and an invitation to those watching to also refuse to turn away. I will not turn away because…Witness Against Torture January 9, 6 “… I see beauty in the eyes of each person.” “… I am a mother who has lost a son.” “… I am a human being, a Muslim, a target of the war on terror.” “… I am blessed to know love and family, and will never deny that to another.” “… the existence of the prison at Guantanamo is illegal and immoral.” “… we need the courage to face the truth of the ugliness.”

Witness Against Torture Fast Begins With Vigil At Pentagon

January 6, 2015 Witness Against Torture, www.popularresistance.org Resist! Guantanamo, Torture, Wars and Militarism

It was 7:00 AM and very cold at the vigil. The sun came up, rosy pink, reflecting on the walls of this mammoth building, as employees walked in to work. Some were finishing up cigarettes or candy bars as they went. I think of my aunt Teresa Hennessy who worked her adult life there, perhaps beginning in the 1950s through the 80s. What secrets did she die with, what feelings did she have about how she spent her life, a good Catholic? The faces of folks walking by today showed stress, boredom, eagerness; two sets of couples holding hands, many uniforms, and civilian clothes that barely kept them warm from the cold morning. Some were hearing our message as Art sang, "Everyone beneath their vine and fig tree," in his beautiful tenor voice. Our fellow citizens are trying to provide for themselves and their families by participating in the works of war. How we have bastardized our work, our resources.

Freed Guantánamo Detainees Adjust To Life In Uruguay

January 2, 2015 Diana Cariboni, www.mintpressnews.com Educate! Cuba, Guantanamo, Uruguay

The group of four Syrians, a Tunisian and a Palestinian is still bound by the silence imposed by Washington regarding their experiences in the prison. IPS met with them for the second time Dec. 30 in the house where the Syrians are living in downtown Montevideo. A few are already speaking some Spanish and struggling to adjust to their new reality. Contacts with relatives have been established and the men are now looking for ways to reunite with their families, with the support of the Uruguayan government. After the shock of liberation, the six men are still struggling to fully understand where they are and to match as much as possible their beliefs and expectations for a new life with Uruguay’s social norms. Difficult, but necessary, is to reconcile the diverse social and political expectations and interests surrounding the group since the government of José Mujica decided to host them as refugees on humanitarian grounds.

National Protest Against Prison At Guantanamo Planned For Miami

January 1, 2015 Cassia Laham, www.fightbacknews.com Resist! Cuba, Guantanamo, Human Rights, Prison, Torture

Following the recent CIA torture report, determined activists in Florida are gearing up for the annual march and protest to shut down the U.S. torture prison at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba. Anti-war leaders expect hundreds will protest outside the gates of the U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) on Jan. 11 in Doral, Florida, which is located near Miami. Notable speakers from across the country include Nancy Mancias of CodePink!, Camilo Mejia of Veterans for Peace and Holly Kent-Payne of Chicago with the Committee to Stop FBI Repression. “We need to continue to oppose U.S. torture of citizens and non-citizens alike. The detention centers at Guantanamo Bay are symbols of oppression and violence and must be shut down,” said Pamela Maldonado, an organizer with People’s Opposition to War, Imperialism, and Racism (POWIR).

New Campaign Calling For Release Of Shaker Aamer From Guantanamo

November 17, 2014 Andy Worthington, www.andyworthington.co.uk Resist! Afghanistan, Guantanamo, Wars and Militarism

Next Monday, November 24, I’m launching a new campaign, “We Stand With Shaker,” with my colleague Jo Macinnes, and the support of organisations including Reprieve and the Save Shaker Aamer Campaign, calling for the release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, born in Saudi Arabia, who has a British wife and four British children. Shamefully, for both the US and the UK governments, Shaker is still held despite being approved for release under President Bush in 2007, and under President Obama in 2009, following the deliberations of the high-level, inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force that the president established shortly after taking office for the first time in January 2009.

Guantanamo Defense Lawyer Resigns Over ‘Show Trial’

September 3, 2014 NPR, www.npr.org Educate! Guantanamo, Law, Terrorism, Torture

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind behind the Sept. 11 attacks, is facing a military commission at Guantanamo Bay and potentially the death penalty. He was captured in 2003 but his case still hasn't gone to trial. Last week, Maj. Jason Wright — one of the lawyers defending Mohammed — resigned from the Army. He has accused the U.S. government of "abhorrent leadership" on human rights and due process guarantees and says it is crafting a "show trial." Wright joined the military in 2005. He served 15 months in Iraq during the surge and has worked as a Judge Advocate. For nearly three years, he served on Mohammed's defense team. Wright formally resigned on Aug. 26. Earlier this year, the Army had instructed him to leave the team in order to complete a graduate course that was required with his promotion from Captain to Major. He refused the order; he says it would have been unethical for him to have followed it. Asking For Trust, Wearing The Captors' Uniform Wright tells NPR's Arun Rath that it's hard to gain any client's trust, but it was especially hard with Mohammed. His former client is one of six "high-value detainees" being prosecuted at Guantanamo for offenses that could carry the death penalty.

GITMO: A Concentration Camp in Small Town USA

August 3, 2014 Dennis Trainor Jr, www.PopularResistance.org Resistance Report Criminal Justice and Prisons, Democracy, Guantanamo, Human Rights, Wars and Militarism

Jason Leopold, in the clip from the full length Acronym TV episode, How Americans Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Guantanamo Prison, talks about the most shocking thing that struck him about visiting Guantanamo Bay Prison: The surrounding is like any small American town. An Irish pub, swing sets in the back yard of houses where American kids are growing up, a McDonalds, a high school proudly graduating the class of 2014, and other pedestrian businesses all going about their business while up the road, a facility that has the air of a concentration camp.

Hunger Strikes At Secret US Prison In Afghanistan

July 17, 2014 Spencer Ackerman, www.theguardian.com Resist! Guantanamo, Hunger Strikes, Prison

Sometimes they stopped eating to protest unclean drinking water. Other times they stopped eating because their comrades were placed in segregated housing. Still other times they stopped eating out of dissatisfaction with their access to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), their only source of connection to their families and the outside world. Without any visibility beyond the walls of their prison, non-Afghan detainees that the US holds in almost complete secrecy in Afghanistan have engaged in hunger strikes, the Guardian has confirmed. The hunger strikes are reminiscent, on smaller scale, of those at Guantánamo Bay that seized the world's attention last year. Confirmation of the strikes, from multiple sources as well as first-hand testimony of a former detainee, comes despite the US military refusing to disclose practically anything about the conditions of confinement for nearly 40 men held in a section of a prison, known as the Detention Facility in Parwan, on the outskirts of Bagram airfield. While the US no longer detains Afghans at Bagram following a transfer of the prison, it continues to hold 38 non-Afghans there, most of them Pakistanis. Nearly 13 years after 9/11, they comprise the most secretive cohort of detainees still held by the US. One Pakistani detainee, recently released from Bagram, said his and others' periodic hunger strikes were prompted by a lack of options.

Navy Nurse Refuses To Force-Feed Guantánamo Captive

July 16, 2014 Carol Rosenberg, www.miamiherald.com Resist! Guantanamo, Law, Navy, Prison, Torture

In the first known rebellion against Guantánamo’s force-feeding policy, a Navy medical officer recently refused to continue managing tube-feedings of prison hunger strikers and was reassigned to “alternative duties.” A prison camp spokesman, Navy Capt. Tom Gresback, would not provide precise details but said Monday night that the episode had “no impact to medical support operations at the base.” “There was a recent instance of a medical provider not willing to carry out the enteral feeding of a detainee,” he said in an email. “The matter is in the hands of the individual’s leadership.” Word of the refusal reached the outside world last week in a call from prisoner Abu Wael Dhiab to attorney Cori Crider of the London-based legal defense group Reprieve. Dhiab, a hunger striker, described how a nurse in the Navy medical corps abruptly refused to “force-feed us” sometime before the Fourth of July — and disappeared from detention center duty.

Muslim Americans Boycott White House Ramadan Dinner

July 16, 2014 Kevin Gosztola, www.dissenter.firedoglake.com Resist! boycott, FBI, Guantanamo, Muslim, White House

Muslim American groups and individuals are boycotting the White House’s Iftar dinner and will instead be participating or supporting a protest outside the White House against United States government policies, which disproportionately impact Muslims all over the world. The Iftar is when Muslims break fast during Ramadan. In the past, the White House has held its Ramadan dinner with members of Muslim groups and various distinguished Muslim Americans. The dinner has been seen as an opportunity for Muslims to engage with officials in power. And, while there will still be Muslim Americans who attend the dinner, there is a growing concern that policies simply keep getting worse and they would be complicit if they attended the Ramadan dinner. More than a hundred Muslim advocates, activists, and scholars put out an open letter the day of the dinner explaining why they believed a boycott was necessary. They claimed the dinner “represents nothing more than an attempt to whitewash state violence, absolve government institutions from taking responsibility and creating mechanisms of accountability and transparency for the civil rights violations that have been perpetrated towards Muslims and Muslim Americans, and Americans at large, beginning from even before the onset of the War on Terror.”

WAT Guantanamo Poster Campaign

July 9, 2014 Creative Resistance, www.creativeresistance.org Resist! Arts, Creative Resistance, Guantanamo, Torture

This article is from our associated project, CreativeResistance.org. For the last three years, Witness Against Torture has presented short runs of posters featuring quotes from former and current Guantánamo detainees. This week, we are releasing five new posters designed by WAT member Justin Norman. These artistic renderings of the plight of the detainees will hopefully engage people in a new way. We hope you like them. Furthermore, you can purchase printed images of these posters on our website. These purchases help in raising funds for our efforts to shut down the detention center that continues to hold them. Got Five Minutes? We need your help sharing these provocative images on Social Media. On social media people are most likely to share a photo or a meme rather than an article – this is the most effective way to get the men’s message into the social media world. In the past, these posters have been highly effective. The “Imagine” poster has been shared over a thousand times on Facebook, and another, the “Begg” poster, which has been used by a former detainee as his profile image.

Report On Torture Survivor’s Week

July 2, 2014 Witness Against Torture, www.witnesstorture.org Resist! Congress, Guantanamo, Law, Protest, Torture

Dear Friends, Last week, members of Witness Against Torture gathered in Washington, D.C. for the International Day in Support of Survivors of Torture. Our group of about fifteen attended a panel organized by National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT) on Thursday on U.S. sanctioned torture, engaged in nonviolent direct action at Senator Ayotte and McCain’s offices, and participated in an all-day vigil with Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition(TASSC). On Sunday, we retreated to the Peace Oasis to put in motion a framework for January 11, 2015. During our opening session on Thursday, we found our energy drawn to the Cotton amendment that passed in the House of Representatives and similar efforts to keep Guantanamo open by Kelly Ayotte in the Senate. These bills would make transfers from Guantanamo virtually impossible and continue to senselessly criminalize the men detained without charge at the prison. Furthermore, we decried McCain’s tweet about shipping the newest Benghazi Attack suspect to Guantanamo. Jeremy V. wrote a letter to each senator expressing our concerns.

Judge Upholds Order Demanding Release Of CIA Torture Accounts

June 29, 2014 Spencer Ackerman, www.theguardian.com Educate! CIA, Guantanamo, Law, Torture

A military judge has rejected the US government's attempts to keep accounts of the CIA's torture of a detainee secret, setting up a fateful choice for the Obama administration in staunching the fallout from its predecessor's brutal interrogations. In a currently-sealed 24 June ruling at Guantánamo Bay – described to the Guardian – Judge James Pohl upheld his April order demanding the government produce details of the detentions and interrogations of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri during his years in CIA custody. The Miami Herald also reported on the ruling, citing three sources who had seen it. Among those details are the locations of the "black site" secret prisons in which Nashiri was held until his September 2006 transfer to Guantánamo; the names and communications of CIA personnel there; training and other procedures for guards and interrogators; and discussions of the application of so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques". The government has charged Nashiri in connection to the deaths of 17 sailors in the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole. After his 2002 capture, Nashiri's interrogators revved a power drill near his head, threatened him with a gun and waterboarded him, producing a sensation akin to drowning.

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