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Held for 900 Days Since Being Approved for Release from Guantánamo: Sanad Al-Kazimi, a Yemeni Torture Victim, by Andy Worthington:
The ninth article in my ongoing series about the 16 men approved for release from Guantánamo, noting how long they have been held since those decisions were taken, telling their stories, and tying publication of these articles into significant dates in their long ordeal. This article focuses on the case of Sanad al-Kazimi, seized in the UAE in January 2003, and held in Emirati custody and CIA “black sites” until September 2004, when he was flown to Guantánamo, where he has been held ever since without charge or trial. He was finally approved for release in October 2021, after over 12 years of tortuously slow review processes that began under President Obama.
Good to see Jeremy Kuzmarov, the editor of Covert Action magazine summarize Biden’s continuation of Guantanamo in Twenty-Two Years After It Was Created, Guantanamo Bay Prison Remains a Monstrosity.
Biden has not only failed to close the Guantánamo Bay prison but has upgraded it, financing a $4 million courtroom for secret military hearings even though lawyers argued that the end of the war in Afghanistan invalidated the legal basis for keeping Guantánamo Bay open.
In June, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, a law professor at the University of Minnesota and at Queens University in Belfast, issued a 23-page report which concluded that inmates at Guantánamo had been subjected to “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment” that “may meet the legal threshold of torture.”