An investigation by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has revealed that former detainees at the U.S. Bagram airbase in Afghanistan were beaten, deprived of sleep and threatened with dogs. The BBC’s conclusions are based on interviews with 27 former detainees who were held at Bagram between 2002 and 2006. None of these men were ever …
Continue reading “Bagram Detainees Treated ‘Worse Than Animals’”
At the end of a hectic week at Guantánamo, which saw the Obama administration overcome its previous inability to release prisoners (just two were released from January to May), it was announced that, following the release of four Uighurs to Bermuda, the return of Guantánamo’s youngest prisoner, Mohammed El-Gharani, to Chad, and the repatriation of …
Continue reading “Empty Evidence”
Robyn Blumner cries into her Yes We Can mug
When the Abu Ghraib photos were released in 2004, it seemed that most Americans were shocked by such novel and horrific images, but at least one was not. I’m talking about Alfred McCoy, who had been following the Central Intelligence Agency since the early 1970s, when it unsuccessfully tried to stop the publication of his …
Continue reading “Pioneers of Torture”
Andy Worthington on what Obama didn’t mention
Ivan Eland says the imperial mentality lives on
Moazzam Begg on a recent Gitmo suicide
William Fisher on Obama’s “unprecedented level of openness”
In a move that seems to open up a route out of Guantánamo for prisoners accused of having an active involvement with international terrorism that does not involve reviving the much-criticized system of trials by military commission, the Justice Department announced today that Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian, one of 14 "high-value detainees" transferred to …
Continue reading “Out of Guantánamo and Into Court”
Andy Worthington on the cases that should be dropped now
