Free Nabil Hadjarab From Guantanamo

[annm4peace]

To add your voice to others calling for the French government to demand his return to France, please sign the Change.org petition (in English), http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/11-years-in-guantanamo-for-no-reason-bring-nabil-hadjarab-back-to-france

and please also watch the recently released short animated video below, in which Nabil’s words are spoken by the British actor David Morrissey. In the video, Nabil talks about the hunger strike and the force-feeding:

(and please share with others, DU isn't that big so we need to expand so there are more signatures)



Guantánamo hunger strike: Nabil Hadjarab tells court, “I will consider eating when I see people leaving this place"

Despite promising to resume releasing prisoners in a major speech on national security issues on May 23, which he can do through a waiver that exists in the legislation passed by Congress that otherwise makes it all but impossible to release prisoners, the President has not released a single one of these 86 cleared prisoners since that promise was made.

As well as being cleared prisoners and hunger strikers, both Ahmed Belbacha and Nabil Hadjarab are currently being force-fed, along with 42 others out of the remaining 166 prisoners.

This is a sad account, as Nabil, who was barely out of his teens when sent to Guantánamo, has not been a hunger striker before, and has never previously been force-fed. His despair is indicative of that of many of his fellow prisoners, after eleven and half years without justice, and the ongoing failure of President Obama to, at the very least, release the men that his own task force said should no longer be held three and a half years ago — some of whom, like Nabil, were also cleared for release under President Bush.

I told Nabil’s story last year, in an article entitled, “Nabil Habjarab, the “Sweet Kid” in Guantánamo, Was Cleared in 2007 But Is Still Held,” and I refer you to that for the explanation of his broken family background, and how he ended up in Afghanistan, and then Guantánamo. Though Algerian by birth, he is an orphan, and the closest members of his extended family are in France, where he spent much of his youth.

[annm4peace]

1. to learn more check out Cageprisoners website

http://www.cageprisoners.com/learn-more/articles/item/6646-guant

and also

the Gitmo Clock. this is something you can send the White house and to your Senators and Reps

http://gtmoclock.com/

[midnight]

2. K&R.

[annm4peace]

3. what we can do

Of the 166 men still held at Guantánamo Bay, 86 were cleared to leave in January 2010 by an inter-agency task force established by President Obama. 56 of these men are Yemenis. In a major speech on national security on April 23, 2013, President Obama promised to begin releasing these prisoners and lifted a ban on releasing Yemenis that he imposed after a failed bomb plot hatched in Yemen in December 2009. He also promised to appoint two senior officials to deal specifically with transfers from Guantanamo -- one at the State Department, and one in the Pentagon.

President Obama has appointed one envoy, to the State Department, and has notified Congress of his intention to release two Algerian prisoners cleared for release since January 2010. But we call on him to fulfill his other promises, and we also call on him to urgently review the cases of the 80 other prisoners still held, and to put them on trial or release them. President Obama designated 46 of them for indefinite detention without charge or trial in an executive order in March 2011, when he also promised that there would be periodic reviews of their cases. In July 2013, it was announced that these reviews -- the Periodic Review Boards -- are being established. This is good news, but it is imperative that the boards' analysis of the prisoners' cases will be fair and objective.

What You Can Do Now
Call the White House and ask President Obama to release all the men cleared for release, and to make sure that reviews for the other men are fair and objective. Call 202-456-1111 or 202-456-1414 or submit a comment online.

Call the Department of Defense and ask Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to issue certifications for other cleared prisoners: 703-571-3343.