Trump plans to send ISIS to Guantánamo

Dear friends and supporters,

Three weeks into the Trump presidency, and we have already been subjected to a blizzard of disgraceful executive orders. One in particular — his outrageous immigration ban, preventing anyone from seven mainly Muslim countries from visiting the U.S. at all for an initial period of three months — has already led to serious legal challenges, with a judge in Washington State blocking it last week, and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals backing that decision just two days ago.

However, other executive orders are not being subjected to similar scrutiny — with widespread reports of deportation raids across the country happening right now, for example, as a result of an executive order threatening all undocumented immigrants with deportation — and on Guantánamo, unfortunately, Trump also has malevolent intentions.

In Trump’s first week in office, a draft executive order was leaked, in which he was seeking advice regarding proposals to resume torture, via CIA “black sites,” and also proposed to keep Guantánamo open, to suspend any further releases, and to send new prisoners there to face trials. Our co-founder Andy Worthington wrote about that here, and we also discussed it in our last newsletter.

This week, Andy wrote a new article, Senior Democrats, Rights Groups Tell Trump Administration There Must Be No Return to Torture, and Call for the Closure of Guantánamo, which we hope you have time to read. In it he shares a letter written to defence secretary James Mattis and CIA director Mike Pompeo by the ranking Democratic members of five Senate Committees, calling for the U.S.’s torture ban (definitively passed by Congress in 2015) to be upheld, and also for Guantánamo to be closed. 

Andy also makes reference to a letter to Trump from numerous NGOs, and discusses a revised plan for the closure of Guantánamo that Barack Obama left for his successor. As we went to press, there was an update, which Andy reported, as the New York Times noted that Trump had now backed down on torture and his “black sites” plan, but had not backed down on his plans to keep Guantánamo open.

The day after, Andy provided an update on his own website, Donald Trump Reportedly Close to Finalizing Executive Order Approving Imprisonment of Islamic State Prisoners at Guantánamo, as the new draft executive order mentioned by the New York Times was leaked, which revealed that Trump “is close to telling defence secretary James Mattis to bring Islamic State prisoners to Guantánamo,” despite warnings from numerous experts that doing so is fraught with difficulties — primarily, because there is no clear legal basis for doing so.

We hope you have time to read Andy’s update, and we would like to ask, if we may, for your financial support to keep us working to oppose Donald Trump’s plans, and to keep on calling for the closure of Guantánamo. You can donate via the PayPal “Donate” button on the top right of the website. All donations are welcome, but if you can become a monthly sustainer that will be particularly appreciated. To do so, please tick the box marked, "Make This Recurring (Monthly)," and fill in the amount you wish to donate every month.


Close Guantánamo co-founder, the attorney Tom Wilner, who represented the Guantánamo prisoners in their Supreme Court cases in 2004 and 2008, which established their right to habeas corpus, calls on Donald Trump to close Guantánamo once and for all. “You’re a businessman," Tom says. "Please look at the cost of running Guantánamo. It’s a bad deal for America.”

We are also continuing to promote our new poster, which Tom is holding. This initiative follows on from last year’s Countdown to Close Guantánamo, and we hope you will take a photo with it, and send it to us, with a message to Donald Trump, if you wish, and your location, so we can gauge the extent of support for the closure of Guantánamo across the country and around the world. We have already begun posting photos on the website, and on our Facebook and Twitter accounts, and we’re posting just one photo every few days to maximize the coverage of each person standing up to Donald Trump.

With thanks, as ever, for your ongoing support.

The "Close Guantánamo" team

P.S. Please, if you will, also ask your friends and family to join us -- just an email address is required to be counted amongst those opposed to the ongoing existence of Guantánamo, and to receive updates of our activities by email.