"You are completely destroyed": Testimony on Torture from Shaker Aamer's Medical Report at Guantanamo

On April 7, 2014, Shaker Aamer, the last British resident still held at Guantanamo, and his attorneys filed a habeas petition (PDF) asking for his release due to chronic health problems that can not be treated at Guantanamo. The worst of these problems apparently stems from PTSD from the torture Shaker has endured since he was captured by the Northern Alliance, then turned over to the Americans on Christmas Eve, 2001.

The details of his torture at Bagram, Kandahar and Guantanamo are described in lengthy quotations from a February 2, 2014 medical psychiatric report by Dr. Emily Keram, a forensic psychiatrist who has evaluated a number of Guantanamo detainees at the request of the U.S. courts, the Military Commissions, and various habeas attorneys. The report is appended to the habeas filing.

What follows here is a long section from her report (PDF), where Dr. Keram quotes Shaker's narrative about his experiences under torture after his capture. From my experience, it is one of the most remarkable and disturbing documents to have come out of Guantanamo, as Shaker Aamer is an intelligent, sensitive man who speaks English. He has left us a record of his torture that cries out to be read.

I reproduce portions of Shaker's testimony here in the hopes of mobilizing support for freeing him from Guantanamo (he has been "cleared for release" for years now). I also hope this helps mobilize support for freeing or transferring all the detainees/prisoners to humane incarceration with the certainty of quick adjudication of their cases. Those detainees who are not guilty of anything should be released, and at this point -- read the following and you will understand fully -- given the surety of medical treatment as long as they need it.

Both the habeas filing and the medical report were linked in a story by long-time Guantanamo expert and passionate advocate for an end to torture and indefinite detention, Andy Worthington. His article, "Gravely Ill, Shaker Aamer Asks US Judge to Order His Release from Guantánamo," is posted at the Close Guantanamo website.

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From Shaker Aamer's Medical Report (verbatim):

Mr. Aamer and I reviewed his conditions of confinement at Bagram Airfield. He reported severe maltreatment by guards, interrogators, and medical personnel working in concert, by means of humiliation, sleep deprivation, exposure to cold, manipulation of food and water, stress positions, threats of sexual assault against his young daughter, and beatings.

“The nakedness made me feel animal-like. I was not a human being anymore. I meant nothing to them. I lost my dignity, my pride, being a man. I had to take off my underwear and hand it to them. You lose your humanity. You are an animal. You know if you don’t do it, they will do it by force and it will be a lot worse. I respected and believed they would give me a fair chance because they were Americans. I was happy that I was with Americans because of their human rights.

I had sleep deprivation for 11 days. That made me crazy. They poured cold water over me. They kept me standing for 20 hours a day. I had to hold my hands and arms out. If I dozed off they would bang on the concrete with an axe. The sleep deprivation caused hallucinations. It started with noise. Then I heard old music from my childhood. I wondered, ‘Where did they get those tapes?’ I heard people talking. I started looking for who was talking. There was no one there. No one else heard them. Finally I heard music from my childhood that I knew they never could have found. I talked to the doctor about it. He said I was going crazy. He told me, ‘You should talk to the interrogators so then you can relax.’

They withheld food, except for frozen MRE’s. They would give you a bottle of frozen water. You didn’t want to drink because it would make you have to pee. The guards won’t take you to pee so I peed where I was sitting. I didn’t have a bowel movement for 25 days. My stomach became like a stone. I didn’t see a doctor initially because the interrogators were happy because I was telling them everything, whatever they wanted. [Interrogators controlled access to medical personnel] Then the doctor gave me a laxative. They took me to a hole. Female and male guards were watching. A guard pulled down my coveralls and told me to shit. It was very hard. I had to push hard. The female and male guards were joking. A female said, ‘Look, he’s having a baby.’ I passed what felt like stones. The guards gave me a tissue from an MRE to wipe myself. It was bloody. I felt so humiliated.

All of the statements I made at Bagram were during the sleep deprivation. I would have said anything. I told them, ‘I will tell you I am bin Laden if you want me to tell you I am bin Laden.’”

Mr. Aamer described the effects of maltreatment on his mental state.

“It’s a process of losing your mind. First it’s knowing you are not in control of yourself anymore. Someone else is in control of you. So you fool yourself and think, ‘Well, he’s only controlling me physically, but not mentally.’ They’re not in your head. But then you realize you’re wrong and they control your mind.

Then it’s welcome to the microwave. It’s easy to crack an egg from the outside. It’s hard to blow up the egg from the inside. They let you recover so you think you’re strong again. And then they break you again. And you thought you were strong again. And you don’t know your thoughts anymore. Like the microwave, they boil you from the inside to the outside until you explode.

After the microwave, the eggshell may be intact because the heat penetrated to the inside. The shell looks strong. But if you crack the egg, inside you will see charcoal.

So I would go to the interrogators thinking, ‘How can I lower the level of torture? What can I say to please him? I am going to be so easy with him today, I will please him.’”....

“It makes me scared to talk about it. I’ve been keeping it all inside. I’m scared because they are listening to us now and they’re learning; I’m teaching them how to interrogate. And now they will write a whole new book on interrogation with what they have learned....

“It’s a terrible procedure. The interrogator starts to talk with you about things that are small and well known. You agree. But he is driving you to a cliff. The more you drive with him on his interrogation, he starts throwing out fish bait, so little by little they show you that they are interested in knowing who you are. They do this by saying, ‘Shaker Aamer, we know you; we know who you are. We know you are nobody. We know you are a small fish rubbing shoulders with the big fish.’

My goal is, ‘How can I minimize the torture? I just want to sleep.’ I never had a goal more than that. It was never my goal to get out of the facility and be freed. My goal was just to lessen the torture. The problem is, not all the small fish know the big fish; but you want to lessen the torture.

So, their interest in you makes you trust them. You start to tell them the truth; you build the truth by telling the story in chronological order. You build the building one story at a time. Until I separated from my wife and go [sic] to hide in the mountains and wait for the man to take me through the mountains. The interrogators asked me the name of the mountains, the name of the man who would guide me. I didn’t know. And that’s when the interrogators went crazy.

The interrogators threw chairs. They put me in a grey disc with my legs spread. They banged the chairs. And you are just trying to avoid any hit. They shook me. They threw me on the ground. They banged my head into the wall.

I was telling them the truth. Their interest made me trust them. It made me hope the torture will decrease. But when I couldn’t tell them what they want [sic] to hear they made me stand for hours, they scream at me, they bang into me. You aren’t even thinking beyond how to protect yourself and not attack them so that you don’t get a bullet in your head. They do that until you are shivering, until they have broken you, until your mind is completely empty. You feel like you’re not real anymore. Like it’s a dream.

And now the worst part comes. They treat you with kindness. It destroys you completely. Your thinking is paralyzed. Your feeling is paralyzed. And the interrogator says, ‘I am trying to help you.’ You don’t know what to love and what to hate because it’s all happening at the same time. You don’t know anything anymore. You can’t tell apart good and bad, kind and evil. You lose the sense of the meaning of kindness.

You ask yourself, ‘Are they really trying to hurt me or are they trying to help me?’ You can’t tell anymore. They bang your head on the wall and then they give you a hot meal. One interrogator talked about what he would do to my five-year-old daughter in details that destroyed me. He said ‘They are going to screw her. She will be screaming, ‘Daddy! Daddy’’ You are completely disorganized. You are completely destroyed.

It happened many times. You learn they don’t really want to hear what the truth is. The truth only results in the same; more torture. So you begin to follow their story; they ask you questions, they give you descriptions and you agree. What was the color of the car? Did the driver look like this? Was the driver from al Qaeda? I answered, ‘How should I know.’ They said, ‘Well, a taxi driver wouldn’t drive to this compound would he, so he must be al Qaeda. The taxi driver takes you to the Arab guesthouse so the taxi driver is al Qaeda and the Arab guesthouse is al Qaeda.’

The interrogators give you the details, but they don’t want you to agree. They say have you seen a fat guy? A guy with a turban? This guy? That guy? Guess what? Those guys are al Qaeda. And then you feel like that you are al Qaeda. Then the interrogators tell you that al Qaeda recruited you without you knowing it; they were behind funding your travel.

Then they ask you to sign a statement. When I say no, the whole thing starts again. In the end, I offered to my interrogator to sign that I am al Qaeda, everything the interrogator wanted me to sign, if the interrogator would agree not to interrogate and torture me anymore. And the interrogator said, ‘I can’t tell you that we won’t interrogate you anymore.’

No matter what you said, they still wanted more. So they kept torturing me no matter what. The degree of the torture would change. Maybe they would let me sit for a brief period of time and then it would get worse again.

For the first 25 days at Bagram it was constant severe torture. For the last week they left me alone with the other detainees in a room with a heater. We all had frostbite. The interrogators only asked what we knew about certain people, but they weren’t pushing me for specific information. I didn’t see the sun except twice while I was at Bagram. And then there was ‘The Big Goodbye Party’ when you leave for Kandahar. I was beaten, shackled, and hooded. The guards laughed and cursed me. I was roped together with other detainees. Then the plane didn’t come. The next day they gave us another ‘Goodbye Party.’ We weren’t allowed to use the toilet. The plane came. I was fearful, thinking, ‘If this is happening right now, what is coming next? Maybe they’re getting ready to shoot me? Maybe it will be something worse than this.’”

Mr. Aamer experienced severe maltreatment at Kandahar Airfield with identical effects on his physical and mental state.

"I was shipped to Kandahar. The airplane was freezing cold. Someone took my socks from me. And then the ‘Welcome Party.’ They told the soldiers they could do anything they wanted with the detainees. We landed. They put us face first on cold concrete. We were shivering. They hit me with gun butts, kicked me with boots, and stomped on my back. There was a 17-year-old detainee. They put a gun up his rectum. He was screaming, ‘I’m no woman! I’m no woman!’ I yelled at the guards to stop in English. Then, because I spoke English the soldiers said, ‘He’s a traitor. He speaks perfect English.’ They beat me even harder. A black female soldier stopped them, saying, ‘You’ve had your fun.’

At about 0600, after 20 minutes of not being beaten, they put me in a cage with a blanket. They put me on my face and unshackled me. Then they ran out. They gave me bread. At about 0730 or 0800 they yelled at me to get up. They put my head on the ground, hooded and shackled me and took me to the interrogators tent. I was kept awake for 10 days.

The torture in Kandahar was more physical than in Bagram. They shook me, threw me on the floor, made me hold my arms out, hit my hands. There was no blanket, just lying on the ground. There was a nice thick blanket lying on the floor, but if I reached for it they would start beating me.

Two interrogators named John and Tony and a guy named Sallie or Sal took turns for three to six hours at a time or two to three hours at a time. There was also an Egyptian. They were with me almost all the time. At least I had my own place in Bagram; I was in a cage and the guards were on the outside. That was a comfort to me. But at Kandahar there was nothing between me and the guards. They were in the tent. If I closed my eyes, the guard would say to open them.

The interrogations at Kandahar had the same process as at Bagram in terms of the interrogators being both cruel and kind. The worst was Sal. He was so kind. He sat me outside the tent with the guards and heated up my food. The guards were starting [sic?] at me. I felt humiliated. Sal talked to me as if I were a human being. Then Sal would say he was going to screw my five-year-old daughter; he was going to do this and that to my daughter sexually; how my daughter would scream and scream. I thought about attacking Sal and getting killed. But I wouldn’t do anything aggressive. Force is the weapon of the coward.

This went on for 10 days. It was constant interrogation and torture. I told them the exact same truth that I had told the interrogators in Bagram, plus they had more true information about me. I also told the interrogators things that weren’t true in order to decrease the intensity of the torture I was suffering.

In those ten days, I only went to the toilet once. I had sleep deprivation. The ICRC came to see me in Bagram one time. Then they came to Kandahar to see me. They took me to a cage with other detainees. The judge from the ICRC saw me there, a Swiss judge. He gave me a card with my number on it.

After 10 days they sent the Egyptian guy who told me I was going to Guantanamo. They put me in a cage for four days and pretty much left me alone. A British agent came to see me, a young officer with a red beret. I wouldn’t talk with him because he said he couldn’t do anything to help me. The Americans only asked me questions those last four days at Kandahar like the last days at Bagram. They didn’t press me to lie about anything.

After four days they gave me the ‘Goodbye Party’ at Kandahar and a far worse ‘Welcome Party’ at Guantanamo.”

The maltreatment and its physical and mental effects continued at Guantanamo.

“The interrogations at Guantanamo have twists. There’s a 'frequent flyer program' where they move you every two hours. The guards shout at you in the same block. They switch the water off. They spray Pine Sol in my clothes.

It’s the same process psychologically; I can’t tell cruelty and kindness apart. I told the interrogators everything to decrease the torture severity. Another thing that was at Guantanamo that was not at Bagram was the circles within circles. The guards were connected with medical, were connected with the people who gave supplies like linens, were connected with the administration like the NCO’s, were connected with the Navy or the Army, were connected with the CIA, were connected with the FBI, were connected with the Republicans and the Democrats. All of these people want to squeeze my neck at the center of all of the circles. You tell them what they want to hear to decrease the severity of the torture.

For example, an internist came to see me. I asked for a blanket because I have arthritis and the cold air conditioning makes it worse. The doctor said the arthritis is in my record and agreed that it was cold. The doctor said, ‘I will ask permission from the Joint Detention Group (JDG) for a blanket for you.’ And the doctor says he’s independent.

The worst thing about torture is that you don’t know how to think, what to do, how to feel. You know you have your mind, but you don’t now how to react, which is horrible because you feel vulnerable. It’s terrible. We believed that the people here; the CIA, the interrogators, use ‘djinn.’ [spirits] The evil djinn. Some of the things that happened, you can’t explain. Some people with think that it was drugs or something, but 95% of us believe we got possessed by djinn.”

Also posted at Firedoglake/The Dissenter

Andy Worthington on Obama's False Guantanamo Promises (Video)

Andy Worthington has posted a video at his website highlighting his comments at a recent rally to free Shaker Aamer. The July 18 rally, called by the Save Shaker Aamer Campaign, was held outside the UK Parliament building in London.

Besides talking about the just cause of discharging Shaker from Guantanamo, the last British prisoner held at the US military prison, who has been cleared by two administrations for release, yet still held indefinitely with dozens of others similarly cleared, Worthington concentrated on the recent promises Obama made to address the prisoners' situation.

Worthington wrote:

It is, of course, outrageous that Shaker is still held, as he was cleared for release under President Bush in 2007, and again under President Obama in January 2010, along with 85 of the other 166 men still held. Opportunistic opposition to the release of prisoners by lawmakers in Congress, and shameful inaction on the part of President Obama are responsible for keeping these 86 men in Guantánamo.

Moreover, there are still no signs that any of the men will be released, even though they have been on a hunger strike to highlight their plight since February, and two months ago President Obama, responding to unparalleled criticism internationally and domestically, promised to resume releasing prisoners.

I can scarcely express my disappointment with President Obama, who should not have promised to resume releasing prisoners if he had no intention of doing so, and who will be remembered for his cowardice and hypocrisy unless he is true to his word.

Andy's disappointment at the machinations over Shaker and the rest of the prisoners, and the ongoing obscenity that is Guantanamo is shared by many human rights workers and attorneys, but evidently not by the Obama administration, which has been been talking a good game (when pinned down) about closing Guantanamo and the need for humane treatment, but since taking over the reins of the prison from the Bush/Cheney administration in January 2009 has done next to nothing to act upon their empty rhetoric.

Here's Andy's video:

New York Times Decides Guantanamo Detainee Committed Suicide

Crossposted from MyFDL/Firedoglake

Jason Leopold continues to do superb reporting on the mysterious death last September of Guantanamo detainee Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif. Earlier today (11/26), Leopold posted breaking news that a government autopsy report on Latif, not yet officially released, concludes that the 36-year-old prisoner died of suicide.

Leopold sourced the revelation to Yemeni government officials and "a US military investigator close to the case." The Department of Defense has not yet officially stated any cause of death for Latif, who was discovered inert in his cell at Guantanamo's Camp 5 on September 8.

Leopold wrote that a "spokesman for United States Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), Joint Task Force-Guantanamo's (JTF-GTMO) higher command" told Truthout that DoD would "issue a statement as soon as [Yemen] accepts [Latif's] remains." Just two days after Latif's death, a Guantanamo spokesman told Associated Press, "There is no apparent cause [of death], natural or self-inflicted."

But none of this stopped the New York Times from stating in an editorial yesterday (11/25) calling for Guantanamo's closure that Latif had in fact committed suicide. Coming out of nowhere, such a statement was, frankly, bizarre.

Here's what the Times wrote, some 12 hours before Leopold even posted his story at Truthout, and with no published source anywhere definitively reporting Latif's cause of death as suicide (bold emphasis added):

In September, a member of this stranded group, a Yemeni citizen named Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif, killed himself after a federal judge’s ruling ordering his release was unfairly overturned by an appellate court. It was the kind of price a nation pays when it creates prisons like Guantánamo, beyond the reach of law and decency, a tragic reminder of the stain on American justice.

Narratives R Us

There is a lot wrong about the claims in the NYT op-ed, as much as I might agree with the overall thrust of the editorial about shutting down Guantanamo. The Times editors may have thought the latest death of a prisoner at Guantanamo highlighted the crime of keeping Guantanamo open. And they are right about that, but their conclusion -- their narrative of Latif's death -- closes off inquiry into what actually occurred, and in doing that they are not acting as a watchdog upon possible government abuse.

First of all, there is no affirmative statement by the government that Latif's cause of death was suicide. In fact, as Leopold points out in his article, all the earlier statements from DoD led one to believe that suicide was not a cause of death. The only recent article to claim otherwise was by Leopold, and it was not published until many hours after the NYT made their claim.

Secondarily, not only does the New York Times supposedly know how Latif died, they also imply they know why he killed himself, i.e., he "killed himself after a federal judge’s ruling ordering his release was unfairly overturned by an appellate court."

Well, yes, he did die after the appellate court ruling -- nearly eleven months afterward, as the ruling by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia came in October 2011. A subsequent appeal by Latif's attorneys to the U.S. Supreme Court was rejected last June, also approximately three months before Latif died.

Since no one reads articles very carefully, and it is enough to spread a particular narrative in mainstream media sources to manufacture a version of Truth, the NYT does its readers a disservice by producing a bogus narrative of the death of Adnan Latif. According to the Times, Latif killed himself, and it was likely because his court case was overturned.

To be fair to the Times, there were stories in the press that speculated upon just such a scenario, as the Reprieve spokesperson in this Alternet article from last September appeared to do. In addition, the Swiss chapter of Amnesty International wrote about the Latif death on November 1, and indicated that the Guantanamo prisoner had died of suicide. ("Le suicide du détenu yéménite Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif en septembre 2012 nous rappelle la cruauté de ce régime de détention qui permet une détention illimitée et illégale.").

But statements by human rights groups are not the same as statements by the editorial board of the New York Times. One wonders what led them to assert that Latif had died from suicide, when no public source, indeed no story in their own paper had reported the same, until Truthout published Leopold's story nearly 12 hours later.

"Questions Remain"

Leopold's story is subheaded, "Questions Remain." Indeed they do.

The Truthout story draws upon eyewitness stories from a number of detainees as reported to human rights attorney David Remes. While Truthout withheld detainees' names to prevent possible retribution by Guantanamo authorities, former British resident Shaker Aamer gave permission for his name to be attached to his own statements about Latif's death.

Aamer, who is the subject of a major campaign to secure his release from the U.S. prison camp, told Remes that, among other things, Latif had been on hunger strike just before he died. He had been moved into Camp 5 only two days before he was found dead.

While readers should turn to Jason's article to read his complete story, it is worth noting the barebones of the revelations here, as it's unlikely you'll get them in the mainstream media any time soon.

According to Aamer and other detainees, Latif had gotten into an argument with guards in early August, after they failed to pass on a request from Latif about not getting his medications. Latif reportedly threw a rock at a guard tower and broke one of the spotlights.

Leopold's story explains what happened next:

The incident took place during Ramadan and resulted in dozens of soldiers being called into the rec area, some of who rolled up in Hummers, fired their weapons into the ground and threatened to kill Latif, according to several prisoners who were present.

"The guards came into Camp 5 with guns, and beat up the detainees," another prisoner recalled. "Other soldiers surrounded the camp. [The Officer in Charge] came and told detainees, 'You are extremists and I'm going to deal with you in a harsh way. You intend to kill our soldiers; we'll do the same thing to you.'"

While the New York Times pushes a narrative that links Latif's death to judicial decisions that happened many months before, I'd suggest that you don't have to be a fan of the mystery genre to know that if someone is threatened with being killed and then ends up dead in mysterious circumstances only a few weeks later, you've got something that needs investigation. But such investigation should not come from the same institution whose personnel made the death threats.

In fact, the seven alleged suicides at Guantanamo, and nine deaths overall since 2002, call out for an independent investigation. (I'd note that I also revealed evidence in a government document that there were earlier deaths of detainees at Guantanamo in early 2002. These, too, should be investigated.)

As reported in my Truthout story on two earlier Guantanamo "suicides," that of Abdul Rahman Al Amri in May 2007 and Mohammad Ahmed Abdullah Saleh Al Hanashi in June 2009, like Latif both men died in Camp 5. The circumstances of their deaths were also strange. Al Amri was discovered with his hands tied behind his back. Al Hanashi's ligature (the means whereby he supposedly strangled himself) was never provided to autopsy doctors. It took years to get the autopsy reports on these prisoners, and the NCIS investigations have never been released.

In January, 2010, Scott Horton published a lengthy exposé at Harpers that seriously questioned the government's narrative about the deaths of three detainees on June 9, 2006. Like Al Amri, these detainees were also found with their hands tied behind their backs. They had cloth rags stuck down their throats in what UC Davis researcher Almerindo Ojeda has speculated could have been a form of "dryboarding." Yet the government still claims these deaths were suicide, and much of the mainstream media has defended the government's position.

The New York Times should be calling for an independent investigation into the death of Adnan Latif and the other supposed Guantanamo "suicides," and not constructing a dubious, unsourced narrative that discourages further inquiry.

Guantanamo Prisoners Protest on 10th Anniversary of US Gulag

A report from Democracy Now on a protest and hunger strike by prisoners at Guantánamo on this 10th anniversary of the opening of the detention center.


Other stories and reports about Guantánamo are widely available on this depressing anniversary, including:

"It was a sunny day" - an article by Jason Leopold at Truthout, who interviews former Guantánamo guard Brandon Neely on his experiences in the early days of the camp's opening.

Live From Guantánamo - Truthout op-ed by Center for Constitutional Rights Senior Staff Attorney, Wells Dixon, who is currently in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba visiting one of his clients.

“Close Guantánamo” Campaign and Website Launches: Retired Military Personnel, Lawyers Call for the Closure of Guantánamo After 10 Years - Article by Andy Worthington, who has reported more on Guantánamo than just about anyone else.

What's Ahead for Guantanamo Camps in New Decade? - by McClatchy reporter Carol Rosenberg, who has covered Guantanamo since the detention center's opening

This Gitmo Anniversary Needs to Be about Bagram, Too - by blogger Marcy Wheeler, who reminds us that the fate of Guantanamo is inextricably tied to other US detention sites where indefinite detention has become the new normal.

Guantanamo Bay: A Wound We Won't Let Heal - article by Andrew Cohen at The Atlantic, chronicling the story of one of the prisoners, Mustafa Ait Idr. (I wrote about the water torture inflicted on Idr at Guantanamo in an article at Truthout last August.)

The Guantánamo facility at 10: an assault on our constitutional government - an op-ed by Todd E. Pierce at the National Law Journal

“None of these cleared [Gitmo] prisoners is likely to leave any time soon..." - by Gotta Laff at The Political Carnival, highlighting a LA Times op-ed on the case of Guantanamo prisoner Fayiz al-Kandari (see also the Facebook page, "Free Fayiz and Fawzi")

An Innocent Man in Guantanamo - an ACLU podcast interview with Lakhdar Boumediene, who spent over 7 years without charges or trial in the Guantanamo hell. (See also ACLU's new webpage, Close Gitmo.)

Shut Down Guantánamo on its 10th Anniversary! - Center for Constitutional Rights, who was in the forefront in providing legal representation to Guantanamo prisoners, has a webpage up with news and actions, meeting, etc.

Guantanamo Remembered - the UK charity, Reprieve, which has also been instrumental in providing legal representation to Guantanamo prisoners, has posted videos of former Guantanamo detainees speaking about their memories of those still imprisoned there, like the last British man held there, Shaker Aamer, who has never been charged with an offense, and who was tortured at Bagram and Guantanamo. (The video is embedded for viewing below.)



See also the UK schedule of events surrounding the 10th anniversary at the Cageprisoners website.

Cyptome.org has also posted a number of photos of Guantanamo's detention facilities in a nod to the 10th anniversary.

And this late addition (h/t Jason Leopold), Dahlia Lithwick at Slate, "The Great Gitmo Blackout":

In the foreign press they are saying that the camp “weighs heavily on America’s conscience” and that “the shame of Guantanamo remains.” But most Americans are experiencing the anniversary without much conscience or shame; just with the same sense of inevitability and invisibility that has pervaded the entire 10-year existence of the camp itself: inevitability in that we somehow believe the camp was truly necessary and nobody ever really expects the conflict to be resolved; and invisibility in that nobody really knows what’s happening there, or why....

It’s hard to say anything new about 10 full years of Guantanamo, beyond the fact that most of what we wrote two, four, and seven years ago still holds mostly true. But given that Americans have an increasingly hard time thinking about the camp, and the rest of the world can think about little else, perhaps we can agree that pretending it isn’t there probably isn’t the answer.

An Open Letter to the US Congress From Members of the British Parliament About Guantanamo

Reposted from Truthout

Thursday 1 December 2011

 

by: Jeremy Corbyn, John Leech, Caroline Lucas and 

Michael Meacher

A photograph of UK citizen and Guantanamo detainee Shaker Aamer with his two children. (Photo: Family photo released to Clive Stafford-Smith, legal attorney for Shaker)

As a group of elected members of Parliament (MP) from all the main parties represented at Westminster, we are outraged by the current position of the US Congress which, apparently, means that Guantanamo Bay prison will never be closed, and, of particular concern to us, that a British resident who was cleared for release more than two years ago, cannot return here.

The US official document given to him states, "On January 22, 2009 the president of the United States ordered a new review of the status of each detainee in Guantanamo. As a result of that review you have been cleared for transfer out of Guantanamo.... The US government intends to transfer you as soon as possible...."

Mr. Shaker Aamer, who has a British wife and four children, has now been held for nine and a half years, despite the fact that officials in the US governments of both President Bush and President Obama have been aware for several years that there was never a case for him to answer.

During this period Mr. Aamer has been tortured by US agents - for example, by having his head repeatedly banged against a wall - and has witnessed the torture of another UK resident. 

In January of this year, with eight other prisoners, Mr. Aamer started a new hunger strike to press for his release. In a scribbled note to his lawyers on the official paper saying he could be released, he urged them to work fast and get him home to his wife and kids "before it's too late."

In recent days, new evidence has emerged via a legal representative who has visited Mr. Aamer about his fragile state of health, including extreme kidney pain and serious asthma problems. He is clearly in urgent need of an independent medical assessment.

The British foreign secretary has raised this appalling case with the US secretary of state, stressing its high importance to the UK government and to many people in Britain who are shocked by the painful injustice Mr. Aamer and his British family have suffered at the hands of our ally.

In Britain, we have seen nine UK citizens and five UK residents returned from Guantanamo, after prolonged negotiations and court action, and the UK government took the responsibility for those men's conduct on their return. All have been exemplary members of our society ever since. There is no reason to believe Mr. Aamer would be any different, and the UK government is responsible for verifying that.

Mr. Aamer was not returned with the others during the Bush period, perhaps because he knew too many terrible stories from the prison. As a Saudi citizen, educated in the US, with a warm and outgoing personality, he had language and social skills that made him a chosen leader in several negotiations with the US authorities in Guantanamo Bay prison - notably over ending earlier hunger strikes. The negotiations failed when the prison authorities did not keep the bargains made, according to lawyers familiar with that period in the prison. Mr. Aamer's prominence among the prisoners has been reported by former prisoners, by several US guards and a number of lawyers with experience in his case.

We understand that the US government at one point planned to return him, against his will, to Saudi Arabia. Once there, he would have entered a re-education program, and it is likely his British family  - who do not speak Arabic - would not have had the necessary status to be able to join him. He has told his family - in two phone calls in the entire period - his wish is to return to them in London and recover from his ordeal by living a quiet family life.

For all these years, his family have kept as far as possible out of the public eye, maintaining their privacy and dignity in very difficult times, without husband and father. This unimaginable pain has gone on longer than anyone should have to bear. It is difficult for us to understand this is going on in our country because of the attitude of the elected leaders of US friends and allies.

The loss of their father came after the family was living quietly among aid workers in Kabul where Mr. Aamer was building schools and digging wells. When the US bombing of Kabul began a month after 9/11, he took his family to Pakistan for safety and returned to look after their home and effects in Kabul. We do not know how he then came to be in US custody, but we know enough about the bounties paid then by the US for foreigners to be extremely uneasy about what may have triggered his long incarceration - unprotected by the Geneva Conventions, which are the common heritage of our nations that fought together in World War II to defend a world free of fascism and injustice.

We know that the National Defense Authorization Act 2011, which came into force in January of this year, means that detainees from Guantanamo must be "certified" before being transferred, and that new draft legislation is currently being debated in the Senate for when this act lapses in September. What "certification" beyond the word of our foreign secretary do you need to send home a man your own military authorities have cleared as innocent?

We strongly urge members of Congress to take action on Mr. Aamer's case to end this intolerable situation, which casts a dark shadow over America's reputation here.

Jeremy Corbyn, MP
John Leech, MP
Caroline Lucas, MP
Michael Meacher, MP

House of Commons, London SW1

This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

U.S. Release Shaker Aamer! (Letter from his attorney to UK Foreign Secretary)

The following is reposted from Andy Worthington's excellent blog, where he has posted a heart-breaking update on the condition of the last of the British Guantanamo prisoners, Shaker Aamer. Aamer, who has a British wife and four British children, has been imprisoned and tortured, held for many years in solitary confinement, even though he has never been charged with any crime!

Aamer was brutally beaten on the same 2006 night when three Guantanamo prisoners were likely murdered at Guantanamo, their deaths covered up as suicides. Some believe, as Worthington notes, that Aamer, who was cleared for release from Guantanamo some years back, is being held because of what he knows about that ominous night's crime.

As Andy writes, "if you would like to add your voice to those pressing for Shaker Aamer’s return, you can email William Hague here or you can write to him at the following address: The Foreign Secretary, William Hague MP, The Foreign and Commonwealth Office, King Charles Street, London SW1A 2AH."

Clive Stafford Smith’s letter to William Hague regarding Shaker Aamer, November 18, 2011

Rt. Hon. William Hague
Foreign & Commonwealth Office
King Charles Street London

Re: Shaker Aamer & Guantánamo Bay

Dear Mr Hague:

I am writing to you urgently from Miami International Airport. I have just flown in from Guantánamo Bay where I visited Shaker Aamer yesterday. While there are aspects of that visit that I may not divulge due to US classification rules, I am permitted to relay my impressions, as well as detail the materials that were unclassified yesterday.

These give great cause for concern. Mr Aamer has suffered abuse that is unfathomable in the twenty-first century. One of the many areas of concern is his physical health.

Mr Aamer has now been held in isolation for more than two years. The US authorities may quibble about the term “isolation” (they have been known to do so in the past), but nothing can change the fact that Mr Aamer has been held in a solitary cell for that time, and much more over the past ten years. He has been thus punished because he continues to insist on the most basic elements of justice: that he be given a fair trial.

He has listed for counsel the following physical ailments that currently afflict him:

Arthritis in the knees and fingers, stemming from his abuse in custody;
Serious asthma problems (exacerbated, almost to the point of asphyxiation, when the US military sprays him with pepper spray during their periodic forcible cell extractions, or FCEs);
Heartburn and acid reflux exacerbated by the diet;
Prostate pain, with serious problems with urination;
Problems with his ears, including the loss of balance and dizziness;
Neck, shoulder and back pain resulting from the beatings that he has suffered;
Serious infection of his nails;
Ring worm and itchiness between his legs;
Constant haemorrhoids and rectal pain;
Extreme Kidney pain.

He also complains of E-N-T problems, serious insomnia, nerve problems in his right leg, and so forth. I can directly attest to various of these problems. For example, if the US insists that his food is of good quality, I can tell you that I tasted the lunch that he was given yesterday and it was revolting. I observed the infection of his left thumb, his right thumb, and his right index and middle finger nails, and it is like nothing I have seen before, rendering the nail soft and crumbling off the digit.

I do not think it is stretching matters to say that he is gradually dying in Guantánamo Bay.

This makes it all the more urgent that we get an independent medical assessment of him. However, ultimately there is only one solution, which is to get him out of Guantánamo Bay, home to his family in London. I should note that on February 14th he will have been in Guantánamo Bay for ten years; the anniversary coincides with the tenth birthday of his youngest child, who he has never met.

I remain,
Yours sincerely,
Clive A. Stafford Smith, Director

While Texas Dismisses Torture Charges Against James Mitchell, Other Investigations Under Political Pressures

Originally posted at Firedoglake/MyFDL, the story below represents the #1,001 posting here at Invictus

Danny Robbins at Associated Press reported last Friday that the Texas State Board of Examiners dismissed a licensing complaint filed by a Texas psychologist against former SERE psychologist James Mitchell. Mitchell was accused of "violating the standards demanded by the Psychologists‘ Licensing Act and the Board‘s Rules of Practice" (PDF). Specifically, the complaint cited Mitchell's role in the design and implementation of a torture program, "ignoring the complete lack of a scientific basis for the regime‘s safety and—assuming its safety—its effectiveness," as well as his actual participation in the torture of prisoners such as Abu Zubaydah.

The complaint against Mitchell was filed on June 16, 2010, and was signed by Texas psychologist Jim L.H. Cox. Attorneys Dicky Grigg and Joseph Margulies were also signatories to the complaint. Grigg and Margulies have also represented Guantanamo prisoners before the government.

According to the AP story, "The board said there wasn't enough evidence to prove Mitchell violated its rules," despite the fact that "thousands of pages of evidence, including sworn testimony, tying Mitchell to practices that violate professional ethics" were presented to the board. It is not known if Mitchell utilized in his board defense any of the $5 million "indemnity" defense fund set up by the CIA for use in legal defense for Michell and his CIA contractor partner, Bruce Jessen.

The hearing was held on February 10. Proceedings were held in secret session, and only Mitchell and his representative were present before the three board members. No complainants were at the hearing. Two days later, the board issued its finding of dismissal. Strangely, no reports of the Texas board decision surfaced for another two weeks.

As AP notes, the Mitchell decision follows the dismissal of other cases brought before boards in New York, Ohio, and Louisiana, concerning other military psychologists, Major John Leso and Colonel Larry James. Late last year, the Center for Justice and Accountability and the New York ACLU filed asked a New York court "to order the New York Office of Professional Discipline (OPD) to perform its duty to investigate a complaint of professional misconduct against Dr. John Francis Leso, who, as asserted in the complaint, violated professional standards when he designed and participated in the abusive interrogation program at Guantánamo."

Worldwide Actions to Hold the Torturers Accountable

The decision of the Texas state board also comes in the context of a number of legal actions worldwide to bring the Bush-era torturers to justice. Lawyers and international human rights activists and organizations continue to press for investigations and prosecutions of the torture of Abu Zubaydah and other "high-value" detainees held in CIA black site prisons around the world, or sent to foreign countries for torture as part of the U.S. "extraordinary rendition" program.

Most recently, the Spanish National Court announced it had the competent standing to proceed with the investigations into the torture of former Guantanamo prisoner Lahcen Ikassrien, since he had been a Spanish resident for 13 years. Center for Constitutional Rights said in regards to the decision:

Since the U.S. government has not only failed to investigate the illegal actions of its own officials and, according to diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks, also sought to interfere in the Spanish judicial process and stop the case from proceeding, this will be the first real investigation of the U.S. torture program. This is a victory for accountability and a blow against impunity.

Meanwhile, in Poland, where the U.S. constructed one of the CIA black site prisons, authorities were stymied in their efforts to secure U.S. cooperation into their country's investigation into the CIA activities at the black site near the Szymany air base in northern Poland. The Obama administration cited an international Agreement on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters, whereby "a country has the right to refuse to provide legal assistance if the execution of the request would encroach on this country’s security or another interest of this country." Requests for an investigation were forwarded by legal represenatives of former CIA prisoners Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri.

In a direct rebuff to the United States, a Polish state prosecutor last January became "the first state official to accept Abu Zubaydah’s claims that he was a victim of extraordinary rendition and secret detention in Poland." Zubaydah is being represented by Polish lawyer Bartlomiej Jankowski, who is working with the British human rights charities Interights and Reprieve, in addition to U.S. lawyers Joseph Margulies and Brent Mickum. Al-Nashiri was recognized as a "victim" of torture by Polish authorities last fall.

In Lithuania, where other black site prisons also operated, presumably near Vilnius, state authorities meanwhile have dropped investigations into torture, rendition and CIA activities. After initial support for an investigation of the prisons -- one of them constructed at a former horse riding club -- Prosecutor Darius Valys announced in January that the investigation was over. According to a report by Reprieve, Valys admitted "that three ex-security services agents had ‘abused their position’" but "oddly stopped short of addressing allegations of serious official crimes, including torture and illegal imprisonment." In addition, the Lithuanian prosecutor made a pro forma nod to expired statutes of limitation, and also a bizarre charge that NGO "lack of transparency" had harmed the investigation.

Attorney Joseph Margulies replied, “The Prosecutor is trying to deflect blame for the failure of his investigation onto NGOs and the media. It’s ironic that an official investigation into a secret torture facility should claim to be thwarted because the media is insufficiently transparent.”

UK State Investigation Blasted by Human Rights Groups

A British government investigation into UK complicity with U.S. torture programs, announced last July after revelations in the UK court case on Binyam Mohamed, has met criticism from almost the beginning. In particular, the decision to have Sir Peter Gibson, the Intelligence Services Commissioner, responsible for monitoring secret bugging operations by MI5, MI6 and GCHQ (Britain’s version of the NSA), lead the investigation was questioned from the very start.

At this point, a number of British NGOs are so concerned that the inquiry, according to the UK Guardian, “will fail to meet the UK’s obligations under international and domestic law,” that they are considering boycotting the proceedings. Nine of the NGOs -- Amnesty International, Cageprisoners, JUSTICE, Liberty, the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, Redress, Reprieve, the AIRE Centre and British Irish Rights Watch -- have written a letter to Gibson expressing their concerns.

The letter is substantive and detailed, and includes discussion of whether the inquiry as currently constituted can meet Article 3 (prohibition against torture) requirements of the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (ECHR) regarding promptness, independence, and thoroughness. In addition, the NGO signatories note the insufficiency of public scrutiny and victim participation, the lack of effective remedy and redress for victims, secrecy invoked over the material to be presented, and "the lack of any current powers to compel the production of documents or the attendance of witnesses."

Another outstanding issue facing the inquiry concerns the last British resident in Guantanamo, Shaker Aamer. As Andy Worthington pointed out in an article on the torture inquiry, due to begin this coming week, Aamer "is still held despite being cleared for release by a military review board in 2007, when President Bush was still in power." Aamer is the only British torture prisoner to directly claim "that British agents were in the room when he was tortured by US operatives in the US prison in Kandahar prior to his transfer to Guantánamo in February 2002." Worthington notes that the British inquiry "cannot legitimately begin while he is still held," as Aamer is a crucial witness as to UK participation, "whose testimony Sir Peter Gibson will need to hear if the inquiry is to have any credibility."

What Is to Be Done?

It is perhaps unavoidable that the efforts to establish investigations and promote accountability have been led by attorneys and human rights activists (most of them attorneys, too, by the way). As a result, the movement for accountability appears to rise and fall based on the legal decisions of governments, administrative boards, military commissions, and non-U.S. governmental prosecutors. While these legal actions are necessary, and the lawyers and NGO personnel involved deserve our thanks, at the same time the anti-torture movement suffers from an over-reliance on legalism at the expense of social struggle to end the use of torture.

On the other end of the spectrum, groups that promote local activism to bring justice to torture victims or accountability to war criminals like John Yoo, tend to get lost in overly parochial approaches, which when they fail, as in the case of the defeat of a Berkeley, California measure to endorse resettling cleared Guantanamo detainees in that city, promote demoralization and/or endless rounds of campaigning, with little or no progress. While such activists also deserve praise for their efforts, behind the scenes they too express frustration over what course of action might bring greater success.

The underlying problem is political, and lies in a refusal to take on the legitimacy of the so-called "war on terror," which the U.S. uses as an excuse for the extension of its power abroad in support of corporations that seek to extend their economic influence and power, and which are interpenetrated with the U.S. military and intelligence establishment in that effort. It is apposite to notice, too, the efforts of the government to interdict and obstruct the work of anti-government critics, as the recent revelations surrounding FBI abuse and HBGary make abundantly clear.

In addition, effective action means taking on the misleadership and perfidy of both political parties, both Democratic and Republican. The Obama administration's refusal to investigate war crimes, and its implication in ongoing war crimes (abuse of prisoners, assassination, use of drones) has not seriously been challenged by the liberal establishment.

The issue of U.S. or British torture is not really separable from issues of war abroad and domestic crackdown on civil liberties at home. Nor is it separable from the economic policies of the United States, which under both political parties has favored the enrichment of a privileged class over the immiseration of large portions of the population.

Nothing demonstrates the bankruptcy of the current ruling elites than the use of torture and assassination. The fight against torture must mean a full political assault against the legitimacy of a state apparatus and its defenders, who use such horrific means as torture as a bulwark against those who they fear challenge their rule and privileges. It must also involve the full use of the social power of civil society (unions, churches, professional organizations), which thus far have remained wedded to leaderships that will not challenge the electoral mastery of a morally and politically bankrupt two-party system.

Torture and Political Alienation

Cross-posted from Firedoglake

There are times when the general political discourse just sails right by me. The perspective of living with the torture issue, and assisting torture survivors, transfers the day-by-day fray of partisan politics into a gray zone inhabited by half-sensible humans, whose actions and passions seem unreal. The following testimonies are what seem real to me, taken from the testimonies gathered by the good folk at the Refugee Media Project, who are producing a video documentary on immigrant survivors of torture who have settled in the United States:

R. had been imprisoned and tortured by Uganda’s Idi Amin. “When you’re thrown in military detention,” he says, “you are there to be killed. They did a lot of bad things, a lot of castration. They cut people up and all kinds of stuff. Those still alive – your job was to clean it up.”

C. was a pediatrician and a softball player – on her national team in Guatemala: “On my way to a game I was intercepted by a couple of cars. They crashed my car from the back and stopped me with guns…. “They had broken a couple of my ribs, and had kept me with handcuffs the entire time, but they didn’t touch my face. They beat me in my thighs – my thighs were by then the color of eggplant, but they were very careful not to beat me in the parts that could be visible.”

A. was only eighteen when he was arrested in his west African country. “I was tortured, you know. Sometimes they make you stand for hours. Beatings…I went through all that. They tried to get information that I don’t even know. It’s like telling somebody to find a nail in the ocean, because you don’t know what they are talking about. Do I have to lie? Sometimes, yes, you have to lie, just for them to stop the pain.”

S. was betrayed by a friend who had invited him for tea…. It was three years and two months that I was in prison, and it was solitary confinement for three whole years…. They just kept me isolated and they wouldn’t let me sing or say anything. If I said anything they would come and threaten physical punishment. So it was not that bad compared to what happened to other people; it was not that bad… I say it was not bad, but it ruined me. It ruined me in many ways. It disabled me.”

What a contradiction that the same country that takes in torture survivors more than any other, the United States, should also run their own torture prisons. (Certainly, too, I could have gathered stories from within the prisons and jails inside the United States, where the most cruel conditions often prevail, from beatings and killings to soul-crushing solitary confinement.) The following is from the 2005 testimony of Shaker Aamer, a Saudi-born British resident who was cleared for release from Guantanamo two years ago, but the United States refuses to release to British custody, most likely because he acted as a moral leader among the detainees, and refused to turn informer.  . . .

I am dying here every day, mentally and physically. This is happening to all of us. We have been ignored, locked up in the middle of the ocean for many years…I have problems many problems from the filthy yellow water…I have lung problems from the chemicals they spread all over the floor…I am already arthritic at 40 because I sleep on a steel bed, and they use freezing air conditioning as part of the interrogation process. I have ruined eyes from the permanent, 24-hour fluorescent lights. I have tinnitus in my ears from the perpetual noise…I have ulcers and almost permanent constipation from the food. I have been made paranoid, so I can trust nobody, not even my lawyer. I was over 250 lbs. I dropped to 130lbs in the hunger strike. I want to make it easy on everyone, I want no feeding, no forced tubes, no ‘help’, no ‘intensive assisted feeding.’

Today, while researching an article I’m writing for Truthout, which I’m writing with the journalist Jason Leopold — we’re going to publish an exclusive investigatory report in a few days on the use of a particularly harmful drug on the detainees at Guantanamo — I noticed that the SOP for the Behavioral Science Consultation Teams (BSCTs) at Bagram included the following sentence, as it described the BSCTs’ duties: “BSCs can assist in ensuring that everything that a detainee sees, hears, and experiences is a part of the overall interrogation plan.”

Such a totalistic environment is constructed by two psychologists and two psych techs, the members of the BSCT team (psychiatrists having opted out some years back, when their professional association wouldn’t allow them to participate). It is purely evil the way that psychological and medical knowledge is put to use for such destructive ends. The BSCTs supposedly ensure safety for the detainees, but eight years of revelations shows that to be a complete lie.

I became involved in writing about torture because of the shame and anger I felt, as a psychologist, at seeing the field and work I loved, to which I had dedicated a large portion of my life, and around which I had formed a crucial piece of self-identity, deformed and utilized for inhumanity and military-political gain.

Unbeknown to much of the country, there has grown in recent years a huge network of torture treatment centers, assisting survivors with their medical and psychological needs, while also helping, when they can, with the onerous asylum process in this country. (See list of such agencies here.) Such work is satisfying to those who do it, and necessary. I do some of this work myself. But we, as a country, cannot be satisfied with this. Already the torture virus eats through every social institution it touches, debasing ordinary human discourse and means of association, brutalizing some and defeating others.

The Obama administration has been shown to be lying about torture, but nothing is done. The Democratic Party-led Congress showed itself morally bankrupt in more ways than one, done in by political opportunism and accomodationism, by its adherence to the war aims of the Bush-Cheney clique and the manifold military, scientific, healthcare, and industrial interests that grow rich off the “war on terror” and its various campaigns. The Democrats share rule with the awful GOP in Congress, tolerated only because the populace sees no other alternative, as political discussion in this country is limited to discourse between these two bankrupt political parties. I cannot engage in that kabuki, though I understand it.

The voices of the tortured keep speaking to me. They will not be quieted. They will continuing speaking long after I am old and gone. Will they be heard, or buried again in a spiritual dungeon built out of human indifference, ignorance, and fear?

New Video Trailer for Powerful Documentary -- "Outside the Law: Stories from Guantanamo"

I'm thrilled that Andy Worthington has posted links to a YouTube video trailer for the powerful documentary he did with Polly Nash on Guantánamo. (See the video below.)

No one has done more than Andy in bringing the truth about what has happened to every one of the prisoners held at Guantánamo since the United States opened the torture camp to its first prisoners at Camp X-ray in January 2002.

“Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” is a new documentary film, directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, telling the story of Guantánamo (and including sections on extraordinary rendition and secret prisons) with a particular focus on how the Bush administration turned its back on domestic and international laws, how prisoners were rounded up in Afghanistan and Pakistan without adequate screening (and often for bounty payments), and why some of these men may have been in Afghanistan or Pakistan for reasons unconnected with militancy or terrorism (as missionaries or humanitarian aid workers, for example).

The film is based around interviews with former prisoners (Moazzam Begg and, in his first major interview, Omar Deghayes, who was released in December 2007), lawyers for the prisoners (Clive Stafford Smith in the UK and Tom Wilner in the US), and journalist and author Andy Worthington, and also includes appearances from Guantánamo’s former Muslim chaplain James Yee, Shakeel Begg, a London-based Imam, and the British human rights lawyer Gareth Peirce.

Focusing on the stories of Shaker Aamer, Binyam Mohamed and Omar Deghayes, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” provides a powerful rebuke to those who believe that Guantánamo holds “the worst of the worst” and that the Bush administration was justified in responding to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 by holding men neither as prisoners of war, protected by the Geneva Conventions, nor as criminal suspects with habeas corpus rights, but as “illegal enemy combatants” with no rights whatsoever.

Throughout the tour, Omar, Andy and Polly (and other speakers) will be focusing on the plight of Shaker Aamer, the only one of the film’s main subjects who is still held in Guantánamo, despite being cleared for release in 2007, and despite the British government asking for him to be returned to the UK in August 2007.

“Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo”was launched in October 2009, and has already been screened as part of the Human Rights, Human Wrongs Film Festival in Oslo in February. It is a featured film in the forthcoming London International Documentary Festival in London at the end of April (date tbc), and is currently on a UK tour, with Andy and former prisoner Omar Deghayes (who are both featured in the film) travelling to the venues for post-screening Q&A sessions.

Forthcoming screenings are as follows (and a more detailed list can be found here):

Monday March 22, 5.30 pm: University of Dundee, Dalhousie Building, Old Hawkhill/Balfour Street, Dundee.

Tuesday March 23, 6 pm: University of Aberdeen, Lecture Theatre Fraser Nobel 1 (FN1), King’s College, Aberdeen.

Wednesday March 24, 7.30 pm: Augustine United Church, 41 George IV Bridge, Edinburgh.

Thursday March 25, 7 pm: Adelaides, 209 Bath Street, Glasgow.

Monday March 29, 5.45 pm: London South Bank University, London.

Wednesday March 31, 6.30 pm: The University of Nottingham, Room B63, Law and Social Sciences Building, University Park, Nottingham.

Tuesday April 20: Cardiff University.

Tuesday April 27, 6 pm: The University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester.

Tuesday May 4: Aston University, Aston Triangle, Birmingham.

Wednesday May 5, 6 pm: Birmingham Library Theatre, Paradise Place, Birmingham.

Tuesday May 11, 5.30 pm: Newcastle University, Lecture Theatre 3, Herschel Building, Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

Further dates will be added. Please bookmark the main tour page to keep up to date.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files. “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” is a Spectacle Production (74 minutes, 2009), and copies of the DVD are now available. 

“Outside the Law” is essential viewing for anyone interested in Guantánamo and other prisons. The film explores what happens when a nation with a reputation for morality and justice acts out of impulse and fear. To my mind, Andy Worthington is a quintessential force for all things related to the journalism of GTMO and its inhabitants. As a military lawyer for Fayiz al-Kandari, I am constantly reminded that GTMO is ongoing and that people still have an opportunity to make history today by becoming involved. “Outside the Law” is a fantastic entry point into the arena that is GTMO.
Lt. Col. Barry Wingard, attorney for Guantánamo prisoner Fayiz al-Kandari