Guantánamo Bay
A federal judge disallowed a US government appeal to extend the delay in seeking an independent medical review for Saudi prisoner Mohammed Al-Qahtani due to his delicate health situation, stating that the “risk of delay to the prisoner “far outweighs” any potential harm to the government from dispatching a team of doctors to evaluate him.”
Al-Qahtani, who suffers from schizophrenia, was tortured in secret CIA detention before arriving at Guantanamo and thus the US government is unlikely to want to have him meet independent doctors who can verify parts of his ordeal and order his release. His lawyers are seeking “a Mixed Medical Commission, consisting of one doctor chosen by the government and two others from neutral third countries, to confirm the health condition of the prisoner. and eventually secure his release to Saudi Arabia for treatment.” Saudi Arabia has agreed to have him return. He remains a "forever prisoner" at Guantánamo.
https://apnews.com/502cee9c4bf01073d3ca7276aeb89bbf
More scheduled pre-trial hearings and prisoner reviews set for October and November this year have been cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The CIA has unredacted parts of a memoir by a former high-profile counterterrorism official about the CIA’s torture program following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. According to The New York Times, the intelligence agency has relented almost 10 years after blocking the release of much of the sensitive information in former FBI official Ali Soufan’s 2011 book The Black Banners: How Torture Derailed the War on Terror After 9/11. The book’s publisher, W.W. Norton, plans to next month print the original uncensored version, which paints a raw and highly skeptical first-person picture of the CIA’s torture program. According to the Times, the newly declassified bits include detailed information about the agency’s brutal interrogation techniques of now infamous detainees including Abu Zubaydah and Ramzi bin al-Shibh.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/29/us/politics/ali-soufan-memoir-cia-torture.html
LGC Activities:
With the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, the London Guantánamo Campaign’s monthly Shut Guantánamo! demonstration will be held virtually at 12-2pm on Thursday 3 September. To take part, please email a photo/video of your banner to us at london.gtmo@gmail.com before 12pm on 3 September or share your picture/video to our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/London-Guantánamo-Campaign-114010671973111/ or via Twitter (or just a message – some possible messages available through the link below) @shutguantanamo between 12 and 2pm on Thursday 3 September. More details here: https://www.facebook.com/events/792008441567984/
London Guantánamo Campaign
http://londonGuantánamo campaign.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/London-Guantánamo-Campaign-114010671973111/
http://twitter.com/shutGuantánamo
