The LGC is currently putting together its actions for January 2009 to mark the seventh anniversary of Guantánamo Bay opening up. It’s a real shame that it has come to this: that seven years later, Guantánamo Bay and other secret, illegal jails where people are held arbitrarily (imagine being locked up in a dark, narrow box for years on end with no end in sight…) and subjected to horrific psychological and physical torture are still up and running. What does it say about the state of the world and humanity in our day and our age? As the world moves towards celebrating sixty years of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on 10 December this year, will they be celebrating at Guantánamo Bay, Bagram, Abu Ghraib and elsewhere?
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba – A military judge struggled to begin Guantanamo's second war crimes trial on Monday after a former aide to Osama bin Laden refused to participate, and his Pentagon-appointed lawyer said he would remain silent in solidarity.
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – The Pentagon said Tuesday it has dropped war-crimes charges against five Guantanamo Bay detainees after the former prosecutor in their cases complained that the military was withholding evidence helpful to the defence
Birmingham Guantanamo Campaign in association with Repreive is showing the film Taxi to Dark side in Birmingham on thursday the 30th October 7.30 pm at the Birmingham Central Library.
Director Alex Gibney USA Duration 1 Hour 50 minutes
Winner of the Oscar for the documentary feature, Taxi to the Dark Side is a gripping investigation into the reckless abuse of power by the Bush administration
The film show will be followed by a discussion with Andy Worthington of Reprieve and released Guantanamo prisoner Moazzam Begg.
TIckets £ 3.50/£ 2.50 concession available from the library.
On 4 November 2008, the American people will go to the ballot boxes to vote for a new president, heralding a change for the first time in 8 years. Pitched against each other in a battle of words, both the main candidates have stated their commitment to change and to closing down Guantánamo Bay. The messages given out to the American people and the international community on the issue of US foreign policy has been more of a mixed bag.
FBI admit to detention of Aafia Siddiqui five years after disappearance
In response to the FBI admission that disappeared Aafia Siddiqui is in custody in Afghanistan , alive but injured, Asim Qureshi, Senior Researcher for Cageprisoners, issued the following statement:
There are many questions that the FBI and the Pakistani government need to answer in light of this admission. Where is Aafia currently held, and in whose custody? Where are her children? How has she been injured and does she have sufficient access to medical care? Why has she never been charged with any crime, and why have the FBI continued to pretend to be seeking her while all the while knowing of her detention in Afghanistan ? Is Aafia indeed Prisoner 650 whose screams was heard by former Bagram prisoners?
Aafia Siddiqui is a woman who has been plagued by a number of problems in her life, none of which have anything to do with involvement with Al Qaeda. During the years the US claim she was working as an operative for the organisation, she was in fact the victim of domestic violence at the hands of an abusive husband. Community members in Boston declare that she was incapable of any violence, let alone being involved with a terrorist group.
Whilst we welcome this disclosure from the FBI, it has only come after mounting international pressure, and five years of detention and abuse. Siddiqui’s case represents the problem of disappearances in Pakistan in the most tragic way. The acceptance by the FBI that Siddiqui has been in custody in Afghanistan raises important questions which must be answered by the Pakistani and US governments. Siddiqui must be returned to Pakistan in order to faces charges for any crime she may have committed or released along with her children. British human rights organisation, Cageprisoners has led the campaign for Aafia Siddiqui for the past three years. Since her disappearance in March 2003 in Karachi , along with her three young children, the FBI has continually denied reports of her detention and that she was in their custody. In July 2008, Cageprisoners patron Yvonne Ridley and Director, Saghir Hussain, highlighted the case with the launch of their report, Devoid of the Rule of the Law, at a press conference organised by Imran Khan in Pakistan . The press conference sparked an international storm of outrage, with calls for the identification of Prisoner 650 and the release of Aafia Siddiqui.
Venue & Time Friday the 8th August 8.00 pm Lightwaves Leisure Centre, Lower York Street, Marsh Way, Wakefield WF1 3LJ
Moazzam Begg is one of nine British citizens who were held in Guantanamo Bay by the government of the United States of America. Begg was labelled an "enemy combatant" by the US government and imprisoned without charge or trial for a crime he did not commit. In the three years he spent in custody, much of it in solitary confienement, he was subjected to over 300 interrogations, as well as beatings, death threats and torture, witnessing the killings of two detainees. Since his reelase he has been working with the human rights organisation, cage prisoners, campaigning for those who remain in Guantanamo.
Venue & Time Friday the 8th August 8.00 pm Lightwaves Leisure Centre, Lower York Street, Marsh Way, Wakefield WF1 3LJ
A Panel Discussion and Q&A on the CIA’s Extrajudicial Programme of Extraordinary Rendition with
Zachary Katznelson, Legal Director, Reprieve Phil Shiner, Public Interest Lawyers Gareth Peirce, Birnberg Peirce Solicitors
On Wednesday 30 July 2008 at 7-9pm At Garden Court Chambers, 57-60 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London WC2A 3LS (nearest tube: Holborn)
Introduced in 1995 by Bill Clinton’s administration, the use of the CIA’s extralegal system of extraordinary rendition has accelerated since 2001 and has resulted in the kidnap, transfer to third countries and torture of tens of thousands of individuals. Covering a global network of secret prisons and places such as Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, detainees are held incommunicado and without access to legal or medical professionals. A system of detention and cruel and inhuman forms of punishment has grown up outside of the known confines of international law, leaving detainees vulnerable and exposed to the caprices of their captors and without access to due process, even after their release. With international complicity, including that of the British government, a whole new system of lawlessness has come into being and has been sanctioned by international silence. Come and learn more from lawyers who have represented individuals caught up in what the Council of Europe has described as the “spider’s web” of “detentions and transfers” with the “collusion” of its members.
Organised by the London Guantánamo Campaign and Peace and Justice in East London Supported by Reprieve, Public Interest Lawyers, the Association of Muslim Lawyers and the Students Human Rights Programme (UCL)
This is a free event, however as spaces are limited, please contact Aisha on 07809 757 176 or email
to book your place.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. (American Declaration of Independence, 4 July 1776)
“Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains”. (J.-J. Rousseau, The Social Contract, 1762)
McDonald's at Guantánamo: McTorture and Freedom Fries on the menu!
Ladies and Gentlemen,
We invite you to join us on 4 July 2008, in solidarity with Binyam Mohamed, a victim of CIA abduction, torture and illegal detention, and now the last Londoner still detained in Guantánamo Bay. Binyam currently faces the prospect of the death penalty in a kangaroo court. His rights and freedoms have been trampled on by the US state, and we demand his freedom and that of other victims of US neo-imperialist policies.
We invite you to share food and your thoughts on freedom with us. Much cherished but much undermined in our times, isn't it time we declared independence from the undemocratic and oppressive structures of rule in the US, UK and EU, and the aggressive large corporations whose sole interests they promote? We think so, and through this simple act of sharing food in public, we hereby call upon the good, free people of the world to show a better way, a new way forward for us all and all our freedoms.
Please join us for our picnic with the London Guantánamo Campaign (regularly demonstrating outside the US Embassy on Friday evenings) and others, in Grosvenor Square, WC1 (nearest tube: Bond Street), from 6-8pm on Friday 4 July, or why not hold your own? Your freedom or theirs?
Project 2012 is a grassroots coalition aiming for human rights compliancy and a democratic EU by 2012.
Declare your independence and reclaim your freedom! Best wishes Project 2012 and the London Guantánamo Campaign
Please call Mark for more details 07854 390 408 or email
Please call Mark for more details 07854 390 408 or email
We invite you to share food and your thoughts on freedom with us. Much cherished but much undermined in our times, isn't it time declared independence from the undemocratic and oppressive structures of rule in the US, UK and EU, and the aggressive large corporations whose sole interests they promote? We think so, and through this simple act of sharing food in public, we hereby call upon the good, free people of the world to show a better way, a new way forward for us all and all our freedoms.
We invite you to share food and your thoughts on freedom with us. Much cherished but much undermined in our times, isn't it time declared independence from the undemocratic and oppressive structures of rule in the US, UK and EU, and the aggressive large corporations whose sole interests they promote? We think so, and through this simple act of sharing food in public, we hereby call upon the good, free people of the world to show a better way, a new way forward for us all and all our freedoms.
