Written by Palina Prasasouk
On the weekend of March 21, 2014 members of Witness Against Torture gathered in Baltimore for a strategic planning retreat. One of the ideas that came from the planning was the upcoming one year anniversary of President Obama’s National Defense Speech where he renewed his promise to close Guantanamo Bay Prison.
Continue reading MAY 23, 2014 Global Call to Close Guantánamo Review
Today, people in over 40 cities across seven countries will take to the streets calling on President Obama to make good on his commitment to close Guantanamo. One year ago on May 23rd, President Obama once again promised to close the detention facility in a speech at the National Defense University. One year later, with 154 men still remaining, 76 of whom have been cleared for release, Witness Against Torture, Code Pink, The Center for Constitutional Rights, World Can’t Wait, and more than 30 other groups are banding together to say “Not Another Broken Promise!”
There is no excuse for keeping Guantanamo open. The President has the power to shutter the prison and end this United States nightmare of torture and force-feeding. One year later, we continue to indefinitely detain “people who have been charged with no crime on a piece of land that is not a part of our country.” Today, we are asking you to join your voice with ours and say “Not another day in Guantanamo!”
There are three things you can do to participate in this global call to action to close Guantanamo:
Continue reading Three Things You Can Do Today!
For a full listing of the over 25 cities in 5 countries participating on May 23, click here. For a Tool Kit and Resources for planning your own May 23 event, click here.
Not Another Broken Promise! Not Another Day in Guantanamo! On May 23rd of last year, President Obama again promised to close the detention facility at Guantánamo. His pledge came in response to the mass hunger strike by men protesting their indefinite detention and to the renewed, global condemnation of the prison. One year later, far too little has changed: few detained men have left the prison and hunger strikes and forced feeding continue. Join us in over 25 cities across the US and around the world to urge President Obama and Congress to end indefinite detention and close the detention facility at Guantánamo. So far, demonstrations, fasts, and vigils are planned in Chicago, Raleigh, New York City, Washington D.C., Baltimore, Buffalo, and Boston. . Please email WitnessTorture@gmail.com if you are planning or hoping to plan an action in your community. The May 23rd Day of Action is being coordinated by Witness Against Torture in collaboration with Amnesty International, Blue Lantern Project, Center for Constitutional Rights, CloseGitmo.net, Code Pink, London Guantanamo Campaign, National Religious Campaign Against Torture, Torture Abolition and Survivor Support Coalition, Veterans for Peace, World Can’t Wait, September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows,No More Guantanamos, and others. Contact WitnessTorture@gmail.com if your organization would like to sign-on as an endorser. Find the Facebook event listing here. Click here to read Witness Against Torture’s full Call To Action.
Join Witness Against Torture June 27-30, 2014 as we gather together in Washington, DC to commemorate Torture Awareness Month. Our time together will include public witness with members of the Torture Abolition and Survivor Support Coalition (TASSC), community building, and planning for future events. Email witnesstorture@gmail.com if you are interested in participating and/or helping to organize the gathering.
Please consider joining WAT’s Friday Fast for Justice. If you join the fast, we would ask you to: · Fast on Friday, in any form you like; · Make three phone calls; (click here to see who we are currently focusing our call on) · Write to a prisoner at Guantánamo. (click here for instructions on how) If you are already participating in or are interested in participating in the Friday Fast for Justice,please sign up here. You can commit to fasting on a specific Friday, on May 23rd, the Global Day of Action to Close Guantanamo and End U.S. Torture; weekly for a particular time period; until Guantánamo is closed; or whatever works for you.
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Witness Against Torture is completely volunteer driven and run. We have no paid staff, but do have expenses associated with our organizing work. If you are able, please donate here.
Global Day of Action to Close Guantanamo and End Indefinite Detention – May 23, 2014
On May 23rd of last year, President Obama again promised to close the prison camp at Guantanamo. His pledge came in response to the mass hunger strike by men protesting their indefinite detention and to the renewed, global condemnation of the prison.
Since Obama’s speech, only 12 men have been released. 154 remain, nearly all of whom have never been charged with a crime. 76 were cleared for release by the US government years ago. 56 men are from Yemen, the largest national group at Guantanamo, but they remain subject to an effective moratorium on their release based on their nationality. No one from Yemen has been freed since the May speech.
Up to 40 prisoners continue to hunger strike, and many are being subjected to forced feeding — a practice condemnedby international human rights organizations, medical associations, and members of the US Congress. New lawsuits in US courts lay bare the extreme cruelty of the forced feeding at Guantanamo. To quell the public outcry against the prison, the US military in December 2013 stopped reporting the numbers of hunger strikers. More recently, it has classified their protest, in Orwellian fashion, as “long term non-religious fasting.”
During his May, 2013 speech, President Obama asked the American people: “Look at the current situation, where we are force-feeding detainees who are being held on a hunger strike . . . Is this who we are?”
Sadly, as we face yet another broken promise, this is what the United States remains — a country that continues to indefinitely detain and brutalize the men at Guantanamo.
Grassroots activists, human rights organizations, and advocates for the detained men call on people throughout the United States and the world to hold President Obama to his promise by taking action. Together, we say “Not another broken promise! Not another day in Guantanamo!”
Check out a full list of actions on our events page. Click here to view our toolkit for planning your own action!
Written by Marie Shebeck
Jonah House filled up over the course of Thursday, March 21 as friends and fellow activists flew, drove, bused, and trained into Baltimore for our second annual strategic planning retreat. On Friday, after Jonah House residents Ted, Amy and baby Eli welcomed us to their new home, we spent the morning reflecting at four stations created by Beth B., Chrissy N., and Chris K. Each station had a question and various images and objects, such as artwork created by the men at Guantanamo, dismal pictures of the prison, and an empty orange jumpsuit. The questions were:
These questions stayed with us through the weekend as we met, discussed, ate, and spent time with one another. We invite you to reflect on them as well.
We then jumped in to the strategic planning. Matt D. and Jeremy V. gave in-depth updates about the political and legal status of Guantanamo. Topics ranged from the number and pace of releases from the prison; to the ongoing hunger strikes and legal challenges to forced-feeding; to the upcoming NDAA authorization; to current media coverage of Guantánamo. Matt and Jeremy also relayed what our allies identified as their priorities for the coming year.
The Agenda Team (Helen, Jeremy, Beth, Jerica, Matt) facilitated several incredibly stimulating sessions to help us redesign Witness Against Torture’s structure so that the group can be more unified and effective. These included small group conversations, as well as drawing and writing exercises. These activities led us to think about our own roles in WAT and how we wish to improve its design. They also encouraged us to name our thoughts around power dynamics and what might keep us from participating wholeheartedly. It was energizing to think about how we can all share in the work that WAT does in a way that best honors our talents, intentions and shared vision.
On Saturday, we met at Viva House — a Catholic Worker house in Baltimore depicted in the TV series The Wire — to continue our redesign conversation and start planning for the coming year. It was during these sections that we decided on the focus of the year.
What decided to focus on for 2014:
On Sunday, many attended a liturgy at Jonah house led by Liz McAllister. The whole group then shared brunch and a closing reflection with the art from the men detained at Guantánamo. As we recommit to this crucial and desolate advocacy, we remember the journeys of these men and the justice they seek.
Written by Jeremy Varon
After thorough discussion of WAT’s structure and how it both enables and sometimes holds us back, those at the retreat unanimously voted to establish a WAT Organizing Team. Nine volunteers — Jerica, Matt, Beth B, Marie, Chrissy, Beth A, Palina , Chris K, and Jeremy — agreed to join the team. Their commitment to this role was acknowledged and celebrated by all at the retreat.
The WAT community functions with tremendous energy, cooperation, and shared responsibility when large numbers of us gather, fast, and organize together every January in Washington, DC. (January 11 is the “anniversary” of when the prison opened in 2002, and a time for anti-Guantanamo protests worldwide.) But during much of the year, when we are dispersed, too few people in the group set the strategic vision, and plan and scramble to organize protests and other initiatives. This limits how much we take on, threatens some of us with burn-out, and makes poor use of the talent and energy WAT members possess. It also focuses our activities in a small number of geographic areas.
At the retreat, we decided that we want a new structure so that WAT can mobilize actions and respond to developments in Guantanamo with greater frequency, reach, and power. To make this happen, we set up an Organizing Team, compromising members from different regions and with diverse skill sets. Some of the core tasks of the Organizing Team are: to think of strategic ways — year round — that WAT can serve its goals of closing Guantanamo and ending torture; to mobilize people and other resources to take effective action; to devise rapid responses to particular crises at Guantanamo and shifts in the political landscape; and to build and maintain relationships with allies.
But that’s only part of it. Equally important, the Organizing Team exists to help WAT members nationwide bring their own actions and campaigns to fruition by directing resources to them and providing, as needed, assistance with particular tasks (eg, media work, demo design, getting materials onto our Website and into our social media). The Organizing Team, that is, works in two directions: it directs energy out to WAT nationwide; and it receives ideas, input, and instruction from WAT members everywhere to facilitate local action.
The Witness Against Torture community is built on trust and commitment to a common vision. The Organizing Team model likewise has trust at its foundation: that the Team itself will serve the best interests of the larger group and our shared cause, and that WAT members everywhere will both respect the Team and hold it accountable to its purpose.
The Team will meet face-to-face again in June, and we will assess as a larger group how it is working, as well as its composition, in January of next year.
Dear friends,
We are in the process of recovering from a powerful day on January 11th, looking towards the breaking of our fast, and planning for the future. We continue to experience the power of community in a profound way. On January 11, we gathered with our WAT family and coalition partners, we brought the presence of the men imprisoned at Guantanamo into our midst, and in a beautiful, synergistic way, we were able to open our circle to join with a whole museum full of tourists, security guards, and park police.
Continue reading Fast for Justice 2014: Days 6, 7
Saturday, January 11, 2014: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
PRESS CONTACTS:
Jeremy Varon, 732-979-3119, jvaron@
Frida Berrigan, 860-389-8566, frida.
Vowing to “Make Guantanamo History,” human rights advocates from around the country marked the beginning of the thirteenth year of torture and indefinite detention at the prison camp with a dramatic protest at the National Museum of American History. 150 activists occupied the atrium of the crowded museum for more than two hours, speaking out against torture and calling for Guantanamo to close.
The activists hung banners, stood in stress positions in hoods and jumpsuits, spoke to the tourists, and with their bodies and voices revised the museum’s “Price of Freedom” exhibit to include twelve years of torture and indefinite detention as the bitter cost of the United States’ misguided pursuit of “national security.”
In a booming chorus, members of Witness Against Torture and other groups read from a statement that closed with the lines: “to honor freedom and justice and the struggles of Americans for these things, we must end torture, close the prison and make Guantanamo history.”
Chantal deAlcuaz, a Witness Against Torture activist from Anchorage, Alaska spent the two hours in an orange jumpsuit and black hood. She reflected that: “We came here today because we want to see Guantanamo relegated to a museum — to be shuttered and condemned, but also understood as an example of where fear, hatred and violence can take us.”
The museum protest followed a robust and spirited rally at the White House that featured speeches from grassroots activists, Guantanamo attorneys and representatives of national human rights organizations.
“It was so great to see the spirit of hope at the White House, in the streets of DC and at the museum,” said Chris Knestrick, a divinity student form Chicago. “We definitely moved closer to our goal of closing Guantanamo today. And the work will continue!!”
Since Monday, January 6, Witness Against Torture activists from throughout the country have gathered in Washington, D.C. to engage in street theater, demonstrations, fasting and direct action to demand that Guantanamo be closed immediately. There were also anti-Guantanamo protests and vigils throughout the country, including in Los Angeles, CA, Boston MA, Chicago IL, Santa Monica, CA Erie, PA, and Cleveland, OH.
Witness Against Torture is a grassroots movement that came into being in December 2005 when 24 activists walked to Guantanamo to visit the prisoners and condemn torture policies. Since then, it has engaged in public education, community outreach, and non-violent direct action. January 2014 is the eighth year the group has gathered annually in Washington, DC to call for justice and accountability. To learn more, visit www.witnesstorture.org
Press Advisory – For Immediate Release, January 10, 2014
Press Contacts: Matt Daloisio, daloisio@earthlink.net, 201-264-4424
Jeremy Varon, Jvaron@aol.com, 732-979-3119
Make Guantanamo History: Activists Fast & Rally in Washington, D.C. to Close the Torture Prison
WASHINGTON, D.C. — January 11 marks the beginning of the thirteenth year of the operation of the US detention detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. Activists from throughout the country have gathered in Washington, D.C. this week to engage in street theatre, demonstrations, fasting, and direct action to demand that Guantanamo be closed immediately.
As part of these activities, Witness Against Torture will gather today, Friday, January 10, at 12 noon at the White House.
Furthermore, a larger coalition of human rights and grassroots groups will rally at the White House on Saturday, January 11 at noon, followed by a “detainee procession” through the streets of Washington.
Responding to the hunger strike of the men at Guantanamo and global solidarity with their plight, the Obama administration has at last resumed the transfer of innocent men from the prison and renewed its pledge to shutter it. Nevertheless, the administration remains far from fulfilling its promise. The torture of indefinite detention without charge or trial and the force-feeding of hunger strikers continues daily.
Since the hunger strike started in February, members of Witness Against Torture have participated in a rolling fast in solidarity with the prisoners. This week in Washington, we participate in anti-torture activities, which include a group fast of several dozen people, a national solidarity fast, and street protests in the nation’s capital. On January 11, anti-Guantanamo protests and vigils will take place throughout the country, including in Los Angeles, CA, Boston MA, Chicago IL, Santa Monica, CA Erie, PA, and Cleveland, OH.
“Through their hunger strike the prisoners in Guantanamo have again made the prison a matter of broad public concern and presidential action,” says Chris Knestrick, an organizer with Witness Against Torture. “But indifference or even hysteria can again set in. We need to close Guantanamo, without delay, and we’ll keep saying that to the President until he fulfills his promise and it’s done.”
“We know that Guantanamo is a crime and a sin,” says Chrissy Nesbitt, a faster from North Carolina. “We need to make Guantanamo history. We can do this by both closing the prison and facing up to torture as part of the U.S. national experience. In doing so, we must demand accountability and restitution to the victims of torture.”
Witness Against Torture is a grassroots movement that came into being in December 2005 when 24 activists walked to Guantanamo to visit the prisoners and condemn torture policies. Since then, it has engaged in public education, community outreach, and non-violent direct action. January 2014 will be the eighth year the group has gathered annually in Washington, DC to call for justice and accountability. To learn more, visit www.witnesstorture.org
Dear Friends,
This has been a day full of emotion — “day 5 of a fast is often my crying day,” shared one long-time faster in our morning reflection. (He then spoke about the nine men who have died while imprisoned in Guantanamo, moving many in the circle to tears.) Our emotion is not unaccompanied by resolve.
Continue reading Fast for Justice 2014: Day 5
Dear friends,
It began as a relaxing day. After a very moving morning reflection, we did some leisurely planning, caught up with friends, wrote letters to detainees, and had our pulse and blood pressure graciously checked by Helen and Ellen to make sure our bodies are handling the fast okay. Some of us caught a much-needed nap.
Then in the afternoon, we went into high gear! We performed our street theater piece at four locations spread across the city, all of them new to us. Throughout the day, our throng of traveling orange jumpsuits filled metro cars, sidewalks, buses, and public spaces. When we all piled in the free van to the Kennedy Center together, we filled so much of the vehicle that a casual observer would have thought that WAT had chartered a private van to go and enjoy a concert together. And enjoy a concert we did! We actually caught a performance by the WPAS Men and Women of the Gospel Choir before performing our own last round of street theater.
What a day! Matt characterized it with a phrase from Gandhi, often quoted by Liz McAlister: it was an adventuresome “experiment in truth.”
Peace-
Witness Against Torture
www.witnesstorture.org
**********let us know if you are interested in joining a fasters reflection conference call, scheduled for 8pm DC time on Friday – email witnesstorture@gmail.com with ‘conf call’ in the subject line, and we’ll send you the call in information***********
1. Morning Reflection Recap by Chrissy N.
2. Creative Witness: An overview of day by Chandra R.
3. Letter from faster Beth Brockman
4. Profile of Shawali Khan by Len Goodman
5. Profile of WAT member, Justin Norman
6. How to make a donation
7. Link to article by faster Josie S. – Absurdity meets hope as Guantanamo marks 12 year
by Chrissy N.
Today Luke helped us start off our morning by sharing with one another the gratitude we feel for each other. Our circle these past few days has strengthened us, nurtured us, and given us the energy and courage with which to act. After each person in the circle shared their gratitude, Helen and I brought two pieces to the group for reflection: a short excerpt from John Dear’s The Nonviolent Life, and a piece by Beth Brockman that she wrote upon her arrival home, after having been called away from our circle.
John Dear’s words reminded us that if we are to be loving and compassionate, we must be awake, we must be mindful. Beth’s reflection was the fruit of her own mindfulness. Her reflection is included below — it is powerfully written and deserves to be read in its entirety. In it, Beth shared about her decision to return home to North Carolina less than 24 hours after arriving in DC. She shared how difficult it was to contemplate leaving this group that means so much to her, and then she shared how hearing Shaker Aamer’s words moved her deeply and convinced her that home was where she needed to be.
We in turn were moved by Beth’s words. We reflected on the work we do on behalf of people we may never meet in person, and how it is not contradictory but rather complementary work to give our care to those people we can reach out and touch. Chris reflected that in his eyes, Beth’s choice and the love that motivated it was in fact a deep and profound action to close Guantánamo.
We read Beth’s description of her connectedness to her family, to Shaker Aamer, to undocumented immigrants, and all of us who seek one another’s embrace. Tom shared that, like Beth, he participates in Witness Against Torture precisely because he can hug his family and it makes him feel the injustice of imprisoning others so that they cannot hug their children. Deb shared her belief that connectedness is essential for our survival, and her grief at how impossible it seems, even in the span of many lifetimes, that we will ever overcome the prejudice, privilege, and racism that separate us from one another. Mark reflected that in part it is grief and despair that drive him to form community with others, to live out the truth that despair and separation is not our ultimate reality, not our origin or our destiny.
So even as we mourned the loss of Beth’s nurturing, grounding presence in our circle, we gave thanks for the gift that she gave us in withdrawing.
by Chandra R.
What moves people? What sustains a movement? What do people hold onto when faced with the despair of injustice?
The plan today was ambitious, one person even called it “audacious.” Making a few adjustments to the street theater piece that was designed and performed on Wednesday, we aimed to take on four different actions: start at the metro stop closest to St. Stephens; then head to the American Portrait Museum with our huge, beautiful image of Shaker Aamer’s face; continue to the metro stop at Foggy Bottom, right next to George Washington’s Medical School; and then make our way to the Kennedy Center concert venue. This last part was the most ambitious– we planned to do our final action inside the Kennedy Center as people were walking into the evening’s free concert.
Once again, a decent handful of passersby stopped to watch at each outdoor venue. Many took pictures and video. Some asked us questions. One WAT member trenchantly observed tonight that these actions are really just long conversations. Indeed, each action allowed those of us handing out flyers to have more extended dialogue with the public.
We all know that final adjustments in our action plans are par for the course. This was certainly the case today, especially as we arrived at our final destination, the Kennedy Center. We were a bit early and, upon entering the building, security were clearly anxious about our presence, demanding we stop right away. It was decided that we should wait until after the concert to take on the final action. We made our way in to enjoy the Kennedy Center a bit and then listen to the evening’s show: the WPAS Men and Women of the Gospel Choir.
I certainly can’t say I expected to go enjoy a concert in Washington D.C. during the week of action. And yet as we sat in the audience, most still in orange jumpsuits, it seemed so appropriate, so meaningful, that this is where we would end up at dusk on Day 4. Indeed, our day’s journey seemed filled with synergy.
Let me back up to earlier in the day. During the morning reflection, one member of our group expressed her profound grief at the intractability of U.S. racism, a sentiment that others validated. We talked about what sustains hope in the midst of despair. One person pointed up and then around him, gesturing to his faith and the collective of our group. Another mentioned finding solace in the fact that desperate social injustices are sometimes overcome quite speedily when not expected. Heinous racist institutions have been overturned and, even as they haunt the present, are distinctly different in form then they once were- American slavery and South African Apartheid, for instance.
And then, come 6pm, we sat watching a gospel choir concert at the Kennedy Center, one of the most beautiful traditions of creative witness borne of one of the most gruesome injustices of our country’s history. The Black gospel choir sang songs that testified to faith and hope, songs cultivated on plantations, sustained through the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, and still sung today.
As we made our way out to undertake our final action, an action that ends in song, we held to our message and our witness. Ours is not so different than the message and witness of slaves and their allies, of the students from Freedom Summer, and the people around the world who fought Apartheid. Guantanamo still holds men without charge, cleared for release. Let us bear witness to this travesty, invite the Guantanamo prisoner’s words and actions into our streets, our communities, our homes. Let us cry for their pain, pray and sing in hope. Let us be moved to make this atrocity, like slavery, like segregation, like apartheid, a part of our history.
“I worry that when I come home that my children will call for ‘Daddy’, and I will sit unmoving.” I hear these words from The Guardian article spoken in the mic-check during the dress rehearsal of the street theater this past morning, and stare at the banner of Shaker Aamer’s face that Deb painted. I remember my situation at home, the precarity with my 17-year old daughter, a senior in high school, who is going through a very rough time right now.
I had been a bit ambivalent about coming up to DC from my home in North Carolina for WAT’s Fast for Justice, but decided to come on anyway. It was obvious from the moment I stepped into the doors of St Stephen’s that I felt divided—here I was with the community of resistance I loved and felt devoted to, but had left behind my beloved family of husband, son and daughter. I had begun my liquids-only fast back home, had packed my bags with warm clothes for the freezing DC temperatures, and looked forward to seeing the friendly, familiar faces. I had longed to reconnect with old friends and was excited to meet new people and form new relationships in the WAT community, a community who has over the years come to mean so much to me. But as I gazed at Shaker Aamer’s face and heard his words from The Guardian article, I knew that I had a choice that Shaker Aamer did not. Namely, I do not have to sit unmoving; I have not forgotten my role as Mama to my children. I can go to my children when they call to me. So, when I got word from my husband on the way to the Supreme Court for the first action that he was sick and that my daughter was having an especially difficult morning, I made the tough decision to return home. I missed the street theater in front of the Supreme Court and at Union Station, as I frantically made phone calls to arrange for transportation back home. I had been in DC less than 24 hours.
On the one hand, I was devastated about leaving. But on the other hand, I was relieved to be able to do the right thing, to return to my family when they needed me. Something that Shaker Aamer, a fellow human being on this big, beautiful earth of ours, has desired for 12 long years and not been able to do. Aamer writes further in the article, “At best, we are numbers… I am 239. I even refer to myself as 239 these days. I am not sure when I will ever be anything else. It is much easier to deny human rights to those who are not deemed to be ‘human.””
Marco Saavadra, a Dreamer who lives in Brooklyn writes, “In order for us to survive and transcend the terrible days ahead of us, the country will have to turn and take me in its arms. Now, this may sound mystical, but at the bottom that is what has got to happen, because it is not a matter of giving me this or that; it is not yours to give me…The real problem is the price. Not the price I will pay, but the price the country will pay. The price a white woman, man, boy, and girl will have to pay in themselves before they look on me as another human being. The metamorphosis is what we are driving toward, because without that we will perish—indeed, we are almost perishing now.”
And so it is for Shaker Aamer, a fellow human being, a Daddy, that I respond to my children’s call, “Mama, we need you to come home.” And when I do, not only do I take them in my arms, I wrap those same arms around Shaker Aamer and Marco Saavadra, and so many others our society has referred to by number. And despite the physical distance, I will remain in spirit with the WAT community I have grown to deeply love and to call my own as we continue to fast and act during this Fast for Justice.
by Len Goodman
Shawali Khan is one of 155 men being indefinitely detained at Guantánamo Bay. He has been there now for more than nine years. He has never been charged with a crime. Moreover, the evidence against Khan is so weak that if this case were in the U.S. court system, this evidence would be insufficient to even support an arrest warrant. Yet, because Khan is alleged to be al-Qaeda, the U.S. Courts have found that the government may detain him indefinitely.
Khan is an Afghan man in his late forties who grew up on a pomegranate farm outside of Kandahar. About a year before 9/11, after a drought destroyed their crops, Khan moved with his father and brother to Kandahar City where he found work as a shopkeeper. In November of 2002, Khan was captured by Afghan warlords and sold to the Americans. At this time, the Americans were paying bounties of about $10,000 to Afghans who turned in al-Qaeda fighters. No actual evidence or corroboration was required.
Khan was subsequently sent to Gitmo based on the word of a single informant that he was an al-Qaeda fighter. The fact that Kandahar in 2002 was considered “Taliban Central” and had no known al-Qaeda presence was overlooked or ignored by American intelligence officials who were eager to fill empty cages at Gitmo.
Khan was finally granted a habeas corpus hearing in the spring of 2010, his eighth year of captivity. The government called no witnesses but merely introduced “intelligence reports” which indicated that an unidentified Afghan informant had told an unidentified American intelligence officer that Khan was an al-Qaeda-linked insurgent. Khan had been cleared for release by an Administrative Review Board at Guantánamo under the Bush administration, and had also been approved for release by the Guantánamo Review Task Force, but, when it came to his habeas petition, Judge John D. Bates refused to follow suit, allowing the Circuit Court’s instructions to persuade him that Khan’s appeal should be denied. This was in spite of the fact that the three Afghan informants relied on by the government to prove its case were no more reliable than they had ever been, and their claims were included in reports compiled by Army intelligence collectors, one of which, in Judge Bates’ words, was “perhaps the most redacted report in history.”
On September 6, 2011, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia affirmed denial of Khan’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus.
Justin grew up in the small town of Van Meter, Iowa, where he was home schooled with his three younger brothers. He taught himself to create web sites when he was growing up — a skill which he continues to use both for WAT and for work today.
Five years ago, after watching a documentary called, “The Ghosts of Abu Ghraib,” he decided to get involved in anti-torture activism. Having been raised a Christian, he thought churches would easily see the connection between the tortured, innocent Christ and tortured, innocent victims at Guantánamo. So he and his friend, Kirk Brown, wrote a presentation about two cleared detainees (Dilawar and Ahmed Errachidi) and visited over a hundred churches, offering to educate people on the torture issue for free. After the vast majority of those churches refused the presentation, Justin turned to public demonstrations as an alternative way of reaching people. His favorite of these involves a muppet and balloons.
Currently living in Des Moines, Iowa, he spends most of his free time creating short films, performing live comedy, and writing music for his bands, The Twelve Canons and Make-Believe Machines.
Witness Against Torture is completely volunteer driven and run. We have no paid staff, but do have expenses associated with our organizing work. If you are able, please donate here.