Andy Worthington

On December 11, the Senate Armed Services Committee issued a compelling report into the torture and abuse of prisoners in US custody (PDF), based on a detailed analysis of how Chinese torture techniques, which are used in US military schools to train personnel to resist interrogation if captured, were reverse engineered and applied to prisoners … Continue reading “The Ten Lies of Dick Cheney”

Hit Me Baby One More Time There’s an ambiguous undercurrent to the catchy pop smash that introduced a pigtailed Britney Spears to the world in 1999 – so much so that Jive Records changed the song’s title to "… Baby One More Time" after executives feared that it would be perceived as condoning domestic violence. … Continue reading “A History of Music Torture in the ‘War on Terror’”

The repatriation from Guantánamo of Salim Hamdan, a former driver for Osama bin Laden, to serve out the last month of his sentence for providing material support for terrorism in Yemen, will surely hasten the demise of the prison, as promised by President-elect Barack Obama, even though the circumstances of Hamdan’s departure were as furtive … Continue reading “The End of Guantánamo”

In a previous article, Andy Worthington, author of The Guantánamo Files, examined the reasons why Barack Obama must stick to his election promise to close the "War on Terror" prison at Guantánamo Bay, focusing on the Bush administration’s callous disregard for domestic and international laws, its pursuit of unfettered executive power, the disturbing effects of … Continue reading “How Guantánamo Can Be Closed: More Advice for Barack Obama”

On Sunday, in his first television interview since winning the presidential election, Barack Obama repeated his campaign pledge to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay and to ban the use of torture by U.S. forces. Speaking on 60 Minutes, he explained, “I have said repeatedly that I intend to close Guantánamo, and I will follow … Continue reading “Why Guantánamo Must Be Closed”

The case of Binyam Mohamed just gets weirder and weirder. For the last six months, the British resident and Guantánamo prisoner, who was seized in Pakistan in April 2002, has been engaged in a transatlantic struggle to secure evidence relating to his "extraordinary rendition" and torture, by or on behalf of the CIA, which involved … Continue reading “Guilt by Torture”

In any credible court system, the eve-of-election conviction of an associate of Osama bin Laden for producing promotional material for al-Qaeda, which directly encouraged impressionable young men to join a violent jihad against the United States, would be a resounding victory for the Bush administration. It would stand, however belatedly, as a last-minute acknowledgment that … Continue reading “Life Sentence Fails to Justify Gitmo Trials”

Now here’s a problem that anyone with half a brain could have seen coming. On Monday the second trial by military commission at Guantánamo – in other words, the second U.S. "war crimes" trial since the Second World War, following the underwhelming trial of Salim Hamdan this summer – opened not with a bang, nor … Continue reading “An Empty Trial at Guantánamo”

Hardly a day goes by without some extraordinary news from the military commissions, the system of "terror trials" conceived in the office of the vice president in November 2001, and their days now seem to be as numbered as those of the Bush administration itself. Following the outspoken resignation of former prosecutor Lt. Col. Darrel … Continue reading “The Collapse of Omar Khadr’s Guantánamo Trial”

When is a child not a child? Apparently, when he is Omar Khadr, a 15-year-old Canadian who was shot in the back after a firefight in Afghanistan in July 2002. Omar has been in U.S. custody ever since, first at a prison at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan, and for the last six years in Guantánamo. … Continue reading “When Is a Child Not a Child?”