Reading the story about Sufyian Barhoumi, prisoner at Guantanamo, on Andy Worthington’s website has affected me far more than I imagined I could be affected after all the years of reading about these prisoners. I feel anger and outrage at the US government and its leaders for causing this man to have lost so many years of his life in that loathsome prison.
The title of the article on Andy’s website is “Sufyian Barhoumi, the Peaceful Algerian Cleared for Release But Still Trapped in Guantanamo.” This poor man, pictured above, is, like nearly all of the prisoners who have been incarcerated in that dreadful place, completely innocent of any aggression against the United States or anyone.
A young lawyer, new to working with the prisoners at Guantanamo, Noor Zafar, has written of her experiences on Andy Worthington’s site. She writes,
“The jurisprudence that has crystallized in the Guantánamo detainees’ cases is so deferential to the government that it ensures no detainee may be set free as the result of a court order. Beyond embodying the failure of the rule of law, Guantánamo is a testament to what three years of legal education did not teach me: the powerful can twist the law beyond recognition to validate unjust outcomes. There is no other way to explain why Sufyian is still detained today.”
Noor Zafar published her narrative of a first trip to the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay in Mother Jones, July 14, 2017. It was re-posted on Andy’s site where you can read the entire horrific story as well as Andy’s remarks.
http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/
As always when I read about these prisoners and the horrible injustices done to them, even the few who unlike Sufyian Barhoumi actually were involved in violence, I am outraged that the United States is still engaged in this brutal and inhumane repression of human rights and of justice.
Donald Trump, as ignorant of the known truth about the remaining prisoners at Guantanamo as he is about so many things, brags about sending more people to the torture camp.
As an American citizen, I am horrified at the prison at Guantanamo, at the torture committed there. What can we do to stop it and close that disgraceful prison camp down?