Friday, January 09, 2015

MEDIA RELEASE: Activists in London to Mark Thirteenth Anniversary of Guantánamo Bay with Demonstration outside US Embassy, Sunday 11 January 2015, 2-4pm

For immediate release: Friday 9 January 2015

Activists will gather outside the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square, London, to mark the 13th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo Bay prison camp.

The London Guantánamo Campaign [1] will host the demonstration, which will include:
·         a street theatre performance on Barack Obama’s many broken promises to close the Guantánamo Bay prison camp over the years (at 2:30pm)
·         speakers, including Louise Christian, solicitor for former prisoners [2]  

Aisha Maniar, organiser from the London Guantánamo Campaign, says, "Torture and the arbitrary, lawless regime at Guantánamo Bay have become defining features of our century. Barack Obama’s question posed rhetorically in 2013, “Is this who we are?” [3] received an emphatic, affirmative answer in the redacted US Senate report into CIA torture published at the end of 2014.

"The report also revealed the complicity of numerous US allies, including the United Kingdom. The British government must now take serious measures to investigate and prosecute all allegations of wrongdoing and torture complicity by UK agencies. It must also seize the opportunity presented by the recent drive to release Guantánamo prisoners held for 13 years without charge or trial, and cleared for release. It must use the opportunity to demand the release of the last British resident held in Guantánamo Bay, Shaker Aamer.”
 
ENDS

NOTES TO EDITORS
1. The London Guantánamo Campaign was set up in 2006 and campaigns for justice for all prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, for the closure of this and other secret prisons, and an end to the practice of extraordinary rendition. http://londonguantanamocampaign.blogspot.com     


3. Among remarks made by Barack Obama on the Guantánamo hunger strike on 23 May 2013 http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/05/23/remarks-president-national-defense-university

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