Guantanamo Day – eleventh January. It was on January 11, 2002 that George W Bush arrange the detention camp on the disputed US Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, after he had been suggested by legal professionals that the US courts could be unable to supply detainees held there the traditional authorized safety that detention within the US would have enabled.
Camp X-Ray, a brief facility, started with 22 detainees on that day, and others had been quickly filling this and the opposite camps which make up Guantanamo the biggest of which was Camp Delta. At first the main points of these despatched there have been saved secret, however finally the US Division of Protection was pressured to reply to a Freedom of Data from the Related Press and to say that 779 prisoners had been being held there.
The world bought to know significantly extra about what had been occurring contained in the torture camp in 2011 with the publication of paperwork by Wikileaks together with 779 secret information on the prisoners. Amongst different revelations was “that greater than 150 harmless Afghans and Pakistanis, together with farmers, cooks, and drivers, had been held for years with out costs.”
The US authorities asserted that these held there weren’t entitled to any of the protections of the Geneva Conventions, although later they misplaced the case within the US courts which discovered that they had been entitled to safety below Widespread Article 3 which applies to armed conflicts “not of a global character”.
From the beginning the US had claimed to be treating “all detainees constantly with the rules of the Geneva Conference.” This was in fact a whole lie. Guantanamo was arrange as a torture camp and detainees had been routinely abused and tortured, humiliated and saved below inhumane situations in what an Amnesty Worldwide report ‘referred to as the “Gulag of our occasions.“‘ As varied experiences by them and others together with the Pink Cross state it was a human rights scandal. There’s way more about this within the Wikipedia article.
When President Obama got here to energy he had promised to shut the camp, however his efforts to take action in 2009 had been opposed by the army at Guantanamo and funds to switch or launch the prisoners had been blocked by the US Senate. Additional opposition from the US Congress in opposition to transferring prisoners to the US for detention or trial prevented Obama from clearing the camp, however by the top of his administration solely 41 males remained detained there.
By the top of 2023, 30 males had been nonetheless being held at Guantanamo, with over half having been cleared for launch. 11 of them have been charged with battle crimes and are awaiting a army trial and 1 has been convicted. Some are nonetheless there as a result of if despatched to their house nation they’re more likely to be topic to additional imprisonment or demise regardless of their innocence.
British curiosity in Gunatanamo decreased sharply after the discharge in October 2015 of Shaker Aamer, the final British resident there. A Saudi nationwide who had permission to remain within the UK he was ready ultimately to return to his spouse and youngsters in Battersea after having been held and tortured since 2002. He had by no means been charged or confronted trial.
The Guardian reported following the publication of the e-book ‘The Secret Historical past of the 5 Eyes‘ by Richard Kerbaj in 2022, that in 2004 “Tony Blair’s authorities was given particular entry to US intelligence information on Guantánamo Bay which revealed there was no credible proof in opposition to the British detainees“. But Aamer was held for one more 11 years.
Since Aamer’s launch protests on the anniversary of the organising of Guantanamo have continued, however on a relatively smaller scale as you’ll be able to see from Vigil marks 17 years of Guantanamo torture in 2019. The photographs on this put up are from 2008 once I photographed 4 completely different occasions in London on January eleventh.
Six years of Guantanamo: Amnesty
London Guantanamo Marketing campaign / Cageprisoners
Guantanamo – London Catholic Employee
Guantanamo – Parliament Sq. Rally
Tags: abuse of detainees, Amnesty, Amnesty Worldwide, Cage Prisoners, Cageprisoners, cleared for launch, detainees, Geneva conference, George Bush, Gitmo, Grosvenor Sq., Guantanamo, Guantanamo Bay, human rights, London, London Catholic Employee, London Guantanamo Marketing campaign, Obama, parliament sq., peter Marshall, protest, Pink Cross, Regents Park Mosque, Shaker Aamer, torture camp, US Embassy, vigil, Wikipedia
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