Tag Archives: Guantanamo

Yvonne Ridley interviews now published

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A series of interviews with British journalist, broadcaster and human rights activist, Yvonne Ridley has now been published on the Spectacle website.

To watch them, please visit our Guantánamo archive pages.


Please note that these interviews were conducted during a screening, hence the occasional background noise.

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Guantanamo Remembered: 10 years, event tonight!

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Today marks the 10th anniversary of the first batch of prisoners entering the infamous US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay. Tonight an event will be held in London’s Conway Hall to mark the occasion, where speeches can be heard from a number of specialists on the subject, not least ex Guantanamo detainees themselves.

Spectacle will be present at the event filming as part of our Shaker Aamer project.

Visit the Cage Prisoners website for more details.


 

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“Ten Hours for Ten Years” – A demonstration for Shaker Aamer, Trafalgar Square – Sat 8 Oct

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Coinciding with tomorrow’s Anti-war Mass Assembly in Trafalgar Square tomorrow, there will be a demonstration marking Shaker Aamer’s 10 year incarceration in Guantanamo.

“Ten Hours for Ten Years”  – Demonstration for Shaker Aamer will be staged by The Save Shaker Aamer Campaign’s (SSAC) where a Guantanamo cage will be set up for ten hours from 10am to 8pm in the south-west corner of Trafalgar Square.

The Shaker Aamer Campaign urges the UK Government to demand the immediate release of British Resident Shaker Aamer to the UK as a matter of great urgency. Shaker is a UK resident and was originally cleared for release in 2007.

Shaker Aamer is the last British Resident still held in Guantanamo without charge or trial – a victim of US aggression following 9/11.

For more details on Shaker Aamer and the demonstration, visit the SSAC’s website and their Facebook page.

For more information on the Anti-war Mass Assembly please visit the Stop the War Coalition’s website and/or the Anti War Mass Assembly’s dedicated site.

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USA Congress to vote for “outside the law” detainees to remain in Guantanamo forever

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USA Amnesty International  calls for action to stop Guantanamo detention centers being open permanently. This is a response to the US Congress having to decide soon whether the rights of those kept in custody in Guantanamo would be yet again weakened significantly. Now congress will vote for “outside the law” detainees to be forever denied freedom and kept in indefinite detention.

This Human Rights organization asks American citizens to either sign their online petition or directly call congress representatives, and to help in doing so Amnesty International provides detailed instructions.  Among them there are such steps to follow as:

* I am calling to urge the Senator to oppose provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 (H.R. 1540) that would keep Guantanamo open.
* The Guantanamo detention facility must be closed. Indefinite detention and military commissions must end.
* Detainees must either be charged and fairly tried in US federal courts, or be released to countries where their human rights will be respected.
* I don’t want our government to sacrifice human rights in the name of security.

In its online petition Amnesty International says: “Indefinite detention, denial of due process and the unfair military commissions are violations of human rights and contravene international law. There is a better way to ensure justice and security for all of us.”

Amnesty International puts forward a solution for US Congress, which could release the detainees to countries which respect human rights or charge and try those individuals in US federal court.

The Guantanamo Bay detention camp is far and wide known for abusing human rights of “prisoners” from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Human rights organizations claim that those centers resemble concentration camps. This is because of the interrogation techniques used on prisoners, such as “stress positions”, “sleep deprivation” and other.

Spectacle is running a series of projects on Guantanamo detention centers, and you can find them in Guantanamo section on Spectacle’s blog. Also, you can order “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantanamo” documentary also produced by Spectacle, by visiting Projects section on Spectacle’s website.

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Guantanamo: If The Light Goes Out, Letters to Omar

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‘When you are suspended by a rope you can recover but every time I see a rope I remember. If the light goes out
unexpectedly in a room, I am back in my cell.’

Binyam Mohamed, Prisoner #1458

Photographer Edmund Clark, author of ‘Guantanamo: If the Light Goes Out, Letters to Omar’, has been awarded the Hood Medal by the Royal Photographic Society and been shortlisted for Photographer of the Year at the International Photographic Awards/The Lucies.

‘If the Light Goes Out…’, a collection of photographs, essays and letters including texts by former Guantanamo detainee Omar Deghayes, has also been awarded Best Book Award at the International Photographic Awards/The Lucies and the New York Photo Awards, a Nomination for Best Books of the Year at the International Photobook Festival, Kassel, and Best Personal Work from PDN Annual.

Described as a ‘study of home’, Clark looks at the lives of both the American community on the naval base and detainees during and after incarceration to illustrate the different ideas of ‘home’ existing at Guantanamo Bay.

For more information about the project click here.
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Guantánamo – 10 years on

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The London Guantánamo Campaign is marking the illegal detention centre’s first 10 years’ existence with a series of actions in January 2012.

Including a candlelight vigil outside the US embassy in London on 12th January, these actions have been designed to highlight a decade where over 800 prisoners were detained, most of them without charge or trial and subjected to torture and abuse.

The US Embassy can be found on Grosvenor Square, London W1A 1AE (nearest underground: Bond Street/ Marble.)

The LGC has also launched an e-petition which will be forwarded to the US ambassador to the UK, Louis Susman, on 11th January 2012 calling on the US government to repatriate UK prisoners Shaker Aamer and Ahmed Belbacha.

Click here to add your name to the e-petition.

Anyone wishing to get involved or obtain further information in any of the LGC’s planned events can email london.gtmo@gmail.com

Further details on the LGC can be found here

 

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SSAC urges people to write to Cameron & Obama

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The Save Shaker Aamer Campaign (SSAC) is urging people to write to David Cameron, Barack Obama, Hilary Clinton  and William Hague to demand the immediate return of Shaker Aamer to his family in London. Aamer is the last Briton still in the Guantánamo concentration camp but was originally cleared for release in 2007.

The addresses to write to are:

David Cameron, Prime Minister, 10 Downing Street, London, SW1A 2AG;

William Hague, Foreign Secretary, King Charles Street, London, SW1A 2AH;

President Barack Obama, The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington DC, 20500, USA

Hilary Clinton, USA secretary of State, 22o1 C Street NW, Washington DC, 20301, USA

Further information can be found on the SSAC’s official website or their Facebook page.

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Gibson Detainee Inquiry to go ahead but key witness still in Guantanamo.

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Shaker Aamer was detained in Bagram 2002 - a period under investigation by the Gibson inquiry into detainee torture by British agents.

The panel leading the Gibson inquiry into the government’s involvement in torture since 2001 has claimed it will go ahead despite NGOs and lawyers required for the inquiry rejecting its protocol due to a breech of Human Rights law. Though many expect very little in the way of justice resulting from the inquiry, it should remind us that the issue of torture is far from being a thing of the past.

Organisations such as Amnesty International, Liberty and Human Rights Watch refused to take part in the independent inquiry due to the lack of ‘credibility or transparency’. In a letter to the Inquiry panel, 10 non-governmental organisations claim that the protocol for the inquiry ‘would not comply with Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights’ – the absolute ban on torture. Once more, former detainees requested for testimony will not be allowed to hear the key evidence as this will be discussed in secret sessions leading lawyers of the detainees to also pull out of the inquiry.

One such detainee, Shaker Aamer, could be called as a witness to MI5 and 6 complicity into torture in Bagram 2002. However Shaker is currently still being held in Guantanamo Bay detention facility where he claims he also suffers torture at the hands of American security companies and officials. The British government will have to obtain permission from the American security services in order to interview Shaker inside Guantanamo, a fact that has also cast doubt on the ability of the inquiry. Shaker was given clearance for release by the United States in 2007 and his continued detention has led some to think he may have key evidence against the British government’s actions that could be exposed through the Gibson inquiry.

In December 2011, Shaker will have remained in American custody for 10 years without charge or trial. As a British resident with a British wife and children living in London, the Save Shaker Aamer Campaign believe he deserves British protection and call upon the government to secure his release. Spectacle Productions are working on a documentary on Shaker’s story following on from their film Outside The Law: Stories from Guantánamo  which has been screened across the UK and distributed in the USA. The London Guantanamo Campaign will be holding a protest outside the U.S embassy on Friday 2nd September from midday to call for the release of Shaker and over 100 other detainees still held in Guantanamo. Spectacle will be joining them to document this continued struggle to end torture, extraordinary rendition and other illegal practices conducted by US and UK forces. Get in touch with the London Guantamo Campaign if you would like to attend.

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England’s Guantanamo?

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Save Shaker Aamer campaigner at the US embassy.

Nick Hardwick, Chief Inspector of Prisons, highlighted serious concerns of terror suspects being held indefinitely in his report on HMP Long Lartin. The report noted that two men had been held for more than 11 years in what Hardwick describes as a ‘legal limbo’.

The report reiterated that “We have previously raised concerns about holding a small number of detainees, who already inhabit a kind of legal limbo, in a severely restricted environment for a potentially indefinite period.”  However, although the prison had made some changes the recent unannounced inspection revealed that this had not made enough of an impact.

Ultimately the report concedes “The risks to the mental and physical health of detainees of such lengthy, ill-defined and isolated confinement are significant.” In addition the extra restrictions imposed on their movement only compounds the impact of detention without time-limit. HM Prison service will not appreciate the  comparison to Guatanamo Bay detention facility where Shaker Aamer, a British resident, still remains after eight years detained without charge or release date along with hundreds of others. The issue of torture at such facilities abroad (soon to be publicly discussed in the Metropolitan Police Inquiry into torture at Bagram prison) has revealed the disregard of the United States for international law when it suits.

Physical torture may not happening at Long Lartin but doctors at Medical Justice who document the physical and mental health of immigration detainees liken detention without time limit to mental torture. As long as the prison service continues their ‘war on terror’ with measures defying habeous corpus the basic human rights which the British government purport all over the world seem blindingly hypocritical.

Please join the Save Shaker Aamer Campaign

Watch video- Omar Deghayes, former Guantanamo Bay detainee, describes his interrogation by British Intelligence agent, “Andrew”, and others (MI5 and MI6) while held illegally in Pakistan.

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Shaker Aamer: 10 Years on

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The Independent has drawn attention today to the “decade in detention without trial” of Shaker Aamer, cleared for release in 2007. The article emphasised Shaker’s current declining health and concerns about the amount of time he has endured in solitary confinement.

As a British resident, Shaker looks to be spending his tenth year in Guantanamo Prison where his recent hunger strike draws ever more concern about just exactly what it means to have been “cleared for release” in the United States of America. While this is a case that has drawn minimum media attention in the past ten years, what seems to be lacking is not just a public awareness of the issue but an informed public response to it.

One reader’s comment on the Independent article, with more than 10 ‘likes’, has expressed hostility about the idea of British taxpayers money being used on “lawyers looking after his interests” with a reluctance to accept Shaker as a British resident. This kind of prejudice dominating the response to the Independent article is disconcerting, especially given that we know of the torture received by Shaker in Guantanamo Prison and the trauma that has befallen his family for ten years now, particularly his son, who has never seen him. Shaker was abducted while residing in Afghanistan to build wells and a school for children as a charitable act. The real issue here is one of humanity and a huge injustice in the legal system of America – not one to do with terrorism or a bigoted gripe about who is paying for Shaker’s lawyers, who he has only had very little contact with anyway. He is a British citizen, it must be remembered.

The article brings little more to light than a reminder and a vague description of a decline in Shaker’s situation. Perhaps more prominent are the superfical and racist comments brought about by the article from an audience that seem unaware of the plight of Shaker, Omar Khadr and others suffering the injustices of Guantanamo.

It is interesting that fifty years after Stanley Milgram‘s experiment into obedience to authority; there has been no shift in human development. We still believe in upholding the justice system even when it is killing innocent people and destroying lives. We need to stop putting our trust in Government actions simply because it is easier to ignore them. Progress comes with education, so if you want more information about the save Shaker Aamer campaign, spend just five minutes getting to know his case and just why we need to call for his release today.

Please join the Save Shaker Aamer Campaign

Watch video- Omar Deghayes, former Guantanamo Bay detainee, describes his interrogation by British Intelligence agent, “Andrew”, and others (MI5 and MI6) while held illegally in Pakistan.

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