09/25/15 – Andy Worthington – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, you guys, welcome back.
I'm Al Scalhorten.
It's my show, Al Scalhorten's Show.
One of the great heroes of the story of Guantanamo Bay is Andy Worthington.
He's a British journalist, and he's our best journalist on Guantanamo prison.
He wrote the book, The Guantanamo Files.
He did a movie called Outside the Law, and he's written 10 million articles all over the place, the Future Freedom Foundation and all over, about the inhumanity of the Guantanamo gulag, and is the expert on virtually every aspect of this controversy of this illegal, unconstitutional American prison down there in communist Cuba all this time.
Very happy to welcome him back to the show.
It's been way too long.
Hi, Andy.
How are you?
It's been a while, hasn't it?
Yeah, well, I mean, not much has been changing down there.
There's not too much news to cover.
Lots of misery, but nothing new.
Well, actually, we have had a problem in that for many months.
There hasn't been that much news.
Yeah.
I did actually talk to the lady from Newsweek who did this story about the kid that got released to Amman, who had been in there completely innocent and brutalized because he came from a town in Yemen called Al-Qaeda.
Exactly.
Unbelievable, right?
Yeah.
And that one, I mean, that story, I'd probably botch that interview, but the article that she wrote about it was just absolutely incredible.
But anyway, so we covered that, but other than that, there has not been very much.
But now, today, there's really big news, and this is something that you have made a real project of yours within the larger story of Guantanamo, and that is the man who's known as the last Brit in Guantanamo prison, Shocker Armour.
So tell us, you know, who is he, and what's the news?
Well, you know, Shocker Armour is this, by all accounts, extremely charismatic, intelligent guy who has fought against the injustice with which the prisoners have been treated ever since he was first picked up in Afghanistan nearly 14 years ago.
He'd gone there with his family to work on humanitarian aid projects for the Afghan people.
And he was first approved for release under President Bush in 2007.
That was when he was told, you know, we don't want to carry on holding you, we'll make the arrangements for you to leave.
And he wasn't released.
And then when President Obama got in, he set up fairly swiftly, you know, obviously, we all remember that he promised to close Guantanamo within a year.
And he fairly swiftly set up a Guantanamo review task force to review the cases of the prisoners to decide what he wanted to do with them, which was maybe what he should have done before he made the promise to close it.
Because these guys then spent a year meeting every week and going through the files of the prisoners, you know, which was obviously a good thing to do.
But it led to very little actually happening on the ground in those first few months, which enabled, you know, his opponents in Congress to really start, you know, acting as though he didn't know what he was doing.
But these guys went away and they reviewed the cases and they came back and they said, you know, such and such, basically, they said two thirds of the people that are held should be released.
They said that of the rest of them, there are, you know, several dozen people who should be put on trial, and the rest of them we think are too dangerous to release, but we haven't got the evidence.
Bad news to have that thing kind of committed to print, that they actually said, we think they're too dangerous to release, but we can't prove it.
But anyway, Shaka Amar was in the group of men to be freed.
And over the years, since the task force issued its recommendations, depending on how the ebb and flow of power within the US establishment as to whether President Obama's been pushed for things or whether Congress has been pushing back, many of these men have been released.
I mean, over 100 of these, these men that the task force said should be released have been released.
And, and all the while Shaka Amar wasn't released, even though it's obvious to me that the United States closest ally in the war on terror has been my home country, the UK.
And here's Shaka Amar, the last British guy there, still waiting while all the other British residents were returned.
And, you know, I talked to somebody at Reprieve.
It wasn't Clive, it was, you know, one of his assistants or associates there.
But they talked about how Obama personally, I think on TV had said to David Cameron, yes, I'm ordering him released to you, or, you know, something very long, very much along those lines.
And how it looked to them like just simple insubordination on the part of the military that they were refusing to comply with the president's order on that.
What did you make of that?
Well, what he actually, you know, what he did was that he raised, David Cameron raised it with Obama in January, and President Obama said that he would prioritize his case.
And, you know, we don't really know what that means that he said he would prioritize it.
The fact is that, you know, a prisoner approved for release from Guantanamo by the task force is, is, you know, is acting on behalf of the president.
Now, you know, it's not legally binding in any way that, that these decisions, you know, have to be followed through on, you know, as the Yemenis, there are dozens of Yemenis in Guantanamo who were told in 2009, 2010, that the US didn't want to hold them.
They're still held because the entire US establishment is terrified of releasing Yemenis, because they, you know, they fear for this Al Qaeda offshoot in Yemen.
And now, of course, with the country descending into hell, then, you know, they're, they're absolutely refusing to release any Yemenis.
Now, the issue with Shakaama was that here you have this high level review board, which had suggested that Shakaama should go home.
And you know, the country in question is America's closest ally, the UK.
There's no question of anybody saying, but we don't trust the UK, they're not in a position to be able to, you know, to look after this guy when he comes back.
And it's been insulting to the UK from the very beginning.
Now, you know, the only other issue going on here is that we've heard rumors and whispers over the years that actually one of the reasons for the delay was that because Shakaama's so outspoken, and because he's seen and heard about so many things over the years, everybody wanted to keep him shut up.
And the best way for them to do that, apart from keeping him in Guantanamo, would be to release him to Saudi Arabia, his home country, where, of course, he would be silent.
But, you know, that was never practically an option, because he's a permanent legal British resident, his British wife is here, his four British children are here.
And you know, what we also have in Britain, I'm very glad to say, Scott, is many, many people with, you know, with principles and loud voices who would make sure that there's no way that that kind of sneakiness could be achieved.
But you know, I'm sure that over a period of some time, that was a kind of hidden stumbling block to his release.
But essentially, it's, you know, it's always been insulting that here we are in the UK, every other UK person in Guantanamo has been freed, and yet Shaka wasn't.
And now, what all do you know for a fact about his treatment in CIA and or military custody here?
Or the worst aspects of it?
Sorry, what do we know about it?
Yeah.
I mean, presumably, he's got a story to tell, they don't want him to tell.
Is it about stress positions and worse?
Well, I don't know exactly what it is, you know, I mean, over the years, there have been stories about, you know, I mean, he raised a case in the UK about how British agents were in the room when he was being, you know, violently abused by the US authorities in Afghanistan.
And, you know, that's certainly true.
There are other stories about him knowing about things that have happened that, you know, the three men who died in Guantanamo, for example, in June 2006, that he was treated appallingly that night.
The main thing that's happened to Shaka Rama over all these years is that he spent an enormous amount of time in solitary confinement, because they've kept him, and it must be said, every other prisoner who's capable of agitating in any way, separate from the rest of the prisoners to try and make sure that, you know, that they don't cause trouble.
And you know, and that's been the case with Shaka that I don't, I don't know quite how many years he spent in solitary confinement, but a huge amount of time.
And it's, I think, you know, obviously, a testament to his strength of will that he's, by all accounts, you know, pretty much survived this, these many, many years on and off that he's been held in isolation.
But you know, he's physically, he's got a catalog of physical complaints.
And I'm sure like, you know, like everybody who's still there in Guantanamo after 13 years, you know, the mental checklist isn't going to be so great either as to quite in what ways they're suffering.
Well, you know, there's this piece today at Al Jazeera, yesterday at Al Jazeera America by Joseph Margulies, who's a lawyer representing some of these guys, and he talked about how they published Majid Khan's book, and how he's trying to get permission to publish Abu Zubaydah.
And you know, this is the guy who underwent the worst of the CIA torture.
And then it turned out that, oops, he wasn't the number three guy in Al Qaeda after all.
I made a single word of it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, um, you know, it seems like they really are worried about these stories coming out.
They're working very hard to prevent Margulies from, from publishing any more of these type memoirs.
So it'll be very interesting to see what Amr has to say when he finally, you know, can get his act together a little bit and, and, you know, figure out what kind of statement he wants to make, or if he wants to publish a book, something like that.
Well, in a way, I would think that there's probably nothing that we haven't heard before, to be honest.
Yeah, that's all right.
You know, make it new again, because, you know, it's still shocking stuff.
It's always shocking to hear the details.
But now that the time has passed, in a way, you know, it's a double edged sword.
They're like, yeah, that was a long time ago.
But also, people are not so invested in identifying themselves with the American right who accomplished this, the Bush government and, and all their political acolytes.
So maybe it's a little bit, you know, easier now, after a little bit of time to go ahead and say, hey, the law is the law, and I don't care if you really prosecute these guys.
Whereas before, I think, you know, you'd had just too many American citizens, you know, in on it, basically, in spirit with the Republicans and would want to defend them.
So, Well, you know, I mean, I think so much has come out, I mean, you know, so much, so much came out, despite the redactions in the executive summary of the torture report.
So, you know, the issue is, the issue, I think, is still, I mean, there's a book just come out by three former CIA chiefs and various other people, I don't know what you've heard about this.
I'm about to interview Phil Giraldi about the book next, because he wrote a review of it for the American Conservatives.
They're desperate to, to keep insisting to the public that what they did was legal and useful when you know, it turns out that we've had absolute confirmation from the Senate Intelligence Committee, that it wasn't legal and that it wasn't useful.
So, you know, what Shakarama has to say, it's sure, it's all part of that story.
But what I what I find, as time has gone on, is that we know a huge amount, you know, the case for the prosecution against these guys is massive, but nobody's allowing it to actually happen.
And, you know, Shaka, this, this wonderful, eloquent man who fought against the injustice and, you know, refused to be, to be beaten.
I'm sure he has a fantastically eloquent tale to tell, but there will be nothing in there that will be, you know, the smoking gun that will end up, you know, getting Bush and his cronies in the dock.
You know, we have, we have evidence, we have so much evidence, but nobody wants to act on it.
Yeah.
Yeah, no, that's true.
But at least at the very least, it's it's moving the ball forward in terms of the narrative and getting more people to understand, you know, other Scott Horton, the heroic anti-torture human rights lawyer, has pointed out that, you know, hey, man, don't be too pessimistic about the future.
The truth is that there are a lot of torturers in the world who do end up being held to account.
Even if it's 10, 20, 30 years later, you know, they this does happen.
And so the law is the law and it will come back and bite you in the ass, even if your last name is Bush.
At least it's possible.
You know, I don't know.
That's a little optimistic for me.
But, you know, I could see maybe a case against some of the lawyers or some of the leaders of the CIA program, if not the principals.
But anyway, well, we have to hope, you know, I mean, I think I think at some point, you know, I don't think it's all going to go away.
So I'm hoping that at some point there'll be a weak there'll be a weak link.
You know, I hope this guy Shocker Armour gets out there with a nice British accent and gives a lot of speeches.
You know, well, you know, I think at the moment what I want for him more than anything else is to get out of there, because, of course, you know, unusually, the U.S. government has told the British government.
And I think that's because at a high level, the British government has been complaining about being snubbed by by their American friends.
So, you know, we've had a parliamentary group here with cross-party support.
They came to a delegation of MPs, including, you know, Tory MPs, our conservatives, our Republicans came to to Washington in May to ask why Shocker wasn't being released.
Then they wrote a very critical op-ed in The New York Times about how their treatment was a slap in the face for Britain.
So, you know, we've had this unusual notification, apparently, that, you know, the U.S. government ringing up the British government and saying he's coming home.
But it's from what we understand, it's the beginning of the 30-day process where Congress, you know, insisted that they have the right to hear 30 days before a prisoner is released that a prisoner is going to be released.
So he won't be back for several weeks.
But you know, this is this is this is great news.
And it's you know, it's it's so long overdue.
Absolutely.
All right.
So that is the great Andy Worthington.
He's at Andy Worthington dot co dot UK.
Check out the movie Outside the Law, Stories from Guantanamo and the book The Guantanamo Files.
The stories of seven hundred and fifty nine detainees in America's illegal prison.
Thanks so much for your time again, dude.
Hey, that's great to talk to you, Scott.
Thanks so much.
I sure appreciate it.
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