Last week, I had an email out of the blue from Jeremy Varon, a Professor of History at the New School for Social Research in NYC and a member of Witness Against Torture, the campaigning organization that screened the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (directed by Polly Nash and myself) at the start of an 11-day fast and vigil outside the White House in January this year, to mark the eighth anniversary of the prison’s opening. Jeremy had just shown the film to a group of students, and I thought his comments — and those of his students — were worth posting below ..
On our 14th outing, the ever-indignant Scott Horton of Antiwar Radio and I discussed my “Guantánamo Habeas Week” project (now expanded as “Guantánamo Habeas Fortnight”), in which I put together an interactive list of the 47 cases decided in the last 19 months (34 of which have been won by the prisoners), since the Supreme Court granted the prisoners constitutionally guaranteed habeas corpus rights back in June 2008, and have been examining, in detail, the unclassified opinions made by judges in these cases in recent months.