WarCriminalsWatch Events

Close the US Torture Camp at Guantanamo NOW!
Stand with Shaker Aamer, Fahd Gazy & all the Prisoners Unjustly Held

On January 11, the US torture camp at Guantanamo will have been open 13 years.  More than 100 men are still held, the majority of whom were cleared for release years ago.  They suffer not knowing if they will be released, held indefinitely.  Some are still on protest hunger strike, and being force-fed by the U.S. military.

Shaker Aamer, the last held British subject, has been a leader among prisoners.  He was cleared for release from Guantanamo in 2007 under Bush -- yet remains, inexplicably held.  We will learn about a new campaign for his release, Stand with Shaker. We will also view a new short film Waiting for Fahd, which tells the story of Fahd Ghazy through moving interviews with his family in Yemen. Fahd was detained at 2002 when he was only 17 years old, and despite being cleared since 2007 he remains imprisoned.

Doors open 6:30 pm for light refreshments
Presentation 7:00 - 8:30 pm
Good will offering

Andy Worthington is a British freelance investigative journalist. He has been researching and writing about Guantanamo since 2006, and has worked with the United Nations as a consultant and was a media partner to WikiLeaks to prepare for the release of its files pertaining to Guantanamo. He is the co-founder of the Close Guantanamo campaign, authored the book  The Guantanamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America's Illegal Prison, and co-directed the documentary Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo. His website, featuring regular blogs about Guantánamo, receives half a million page views per month and has been archived by the British Library.  In 2013, in recognition of his work on Guantánamo, he was short-listed for the prestigious Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism. He is the co-ordinator of the new campaign StandwithShaker.

Ramzi Kassem is Associate Professor of Law at the City University of New York where he directs the Immigrant & Non-Citizen Rights Clinic.  He is part of a legal team representing Shaker Aamer, and other prisoners in Guantanamo, at Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan, at so-called "Black Sites," and at other detention sites worldwide.  He supervises the Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility (CLEAR) project, which primarily aims to address the legal needs of Muslim, Arab, South Asian, and other communities in the New York City area that are particularly affected by national security and counterterrorism policies and practices.

Omar Farah is a staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, representing Guantanamo prisoners in habeas corpus challenges and in resettlement efforts, focusing on Guantanamo's predominantly Yemeni population. He is counsel in Al-Hamiri v. Obama, the case of a Yemeni man wrongfully arrested in Pakistan while seeking medical treatment, but who remains at Guantanamo despite being cleared for transfer. He is counsel in /Ba Odah v. Obama/, the case of another uncharged Yemeni man who has been on a hunger-strike since February 2007 to protest his imprisonment. He is counsel to Fahd Ghazy, one of the last remaining men at Guantanamo to have been detained as a juvenile.  CCR's new film Waiting for Fahd premiered this month.

Debra Sweet is the Director of World Can't Wait, an organization which has been leading people in the U.S. to "stop the crimes of your government" because "humanity and the planet come first."   World Can't Wait, since its founding in 2005, has organized campus and community protests against war criminals including Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, and torture lawyer John Yoo; held many substantive events and published ads calling for the closing of Guantanamo and the end of U.S. torture and indefinite detention.