Debra Sweet | March 10, 2023Each first Wednesday of the month, vigils will be held globally to demand the U.S. release the (now) 17 prisoners who have been cleared. On March 8, vigils were held in London, Mexico City, Washington, and NYC. An activist in Mexico City explains why she participated.
…in case you’d like to know, I first read about Guantánamo more than 10 years ago. I couldn’t (and still can’t today) understood how this was possible, how thiese men were tortured, how this place could exist and how it seemed so irrelevant to the world. I think people here in Mexico should care because we live in a country where torture is a common practice, where we don’t see justice very often, where innocent people disappear every day; we should care because men in Guantánamo are human beings tortured in ways that are unimaginable and unbelievable, because being silent about this is complicity, because we need to be the voices of the men that the world is trying to forget but some of us refuse to… but most of all, because how can we live in a world where this happens? We need stand up for justice, for human rights, with compassion in our hearts, and we need to demand accountability for the ones that ordered, planned, legalized, overviewed, covered, facilitated and executed torture in Guantánamo… Read more here.
Join in Wednesday April 5 and hold your own vigil in any visible place, especially those connected to the federal government. Find posters/flyers at CloseGuantanamo.org.
This week, a prisoner was returned to Saudi Arabia: Andy Worthington tells the story.
But, the Guantanamo story is not only not over, but continues to shape and define the U.S. Former prisoner Mansoor Adayfi and others remember Ron DeSantis when he was a military lawyer acting all friendly and reasonable, at first, with the prisoners: Ron DeSantis accused of illegal acts of torture against Guantanamo detainees when he was a Navy JAG officer.