Around 50 people attended a meeting outside the US Embassy in London on Sunday 11 Jan, 2008, to protest at the continued scandal of illegal detention and ill treatment by the US at Guantánamo Bay. Pictures copyright © Peter Marshall 2009, all rights reserved.
Demonstration at the US Embassy in London
The police made me photograph looking away from the Embassy
Mousa Brown - paintballer held 18 months in Belmarsh
Imam Shakeel Begg from Lewisham
The illegal detention of prisoners and their continued mistreatment at Guantánamo has rather moved away from the top of the agenda with the election of a new US president who takes over power in a few days. So the events to mark seven years of this blot on freedom were considerably low-key compared to previous years. However it is still far from clear if Obama will keep promises made to shut down the camp and Amnesty International have launched an international 100 day campaign calling on him do so without delay and launch a full enquiry into the abuses there.
But people are still held there, including two from London, Binyam Mohamed and Shaker Aamer. Many were seized on the flimsiest of suspicions and tortured before illegal rendition to Guantánamo, and some would be subject to further imprisonment and torture if returned to their native countries simply because they had been imprisoned at Guantánamo.
Pictures like the those I took including the US Embassy in the background resulted in a police officer coming over and warning me. Apparently they are a security risk. That's security spelt "E, M, B, A, R, R, A, S, S, M, E, N, T" and surely no proper concern of the British police.
In Britain we have our own 'Guantánamo Lite' at Belmarsh prison, where terrorism suspects are kept. One of these, Mousa Brown, a builder from Walthamstow, spent 18 months on remand there before being acquitted by a jury. His "crime" had been to go paint-balling with some friends ("military training") and to be a Muslim with a prominent beard. It was a chilling story of how ordinary, everyday activities could be interpreted as evidence of terrorist guilt.
But people are still held there, including two from London, Binyam Mohamed and Shaker Aamer. Many were seized on the flimsiest of suspicions and tortured before illegal rendition to Guantánamo, and some would be subject to further imprisonment and torture if returned to their native countries simply because they had been imprisoned at Guantánamo.
Pictures like the those I took including the US Embassy in the background resulted in a police officer coming over and warning me. Apparently they are a security risk. That's security spelt "E, M, B, A, R, R, A, S, S, M, E, N, T" and surely no proper concern of the British police.
In Britain we have our own 'Guantánamo Lite' at Belmarsh prison, where terrorism suspects are kept. One of these, Mousa Brown, a builder from Walthamstow, spent 18 months on remand there before being acquitted by a jury. His "crime" had been to go paint-balling with some friends ("military training") and to be a Muslim with a prominent beard. It was a chilling story of how ordinary, everyday activities could be interpreted as evidence of terrorist guilt.
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