50 days of Trump - and his latest lies about Guantánamo

Dear friends and supporters,

Today Donald Trump has been president for 50 days, and what a turbulent seven weeks it has been. On Guantánamo, he has not yet acted upon his ill-advised draft executive orders on Guantánamo, promising to keep the prison open and to send new prisoners there, which our co-founder Andy Worthington wrote about here and here, but earlier this week he issued a monstrously untrue tweet about 122 men released from Guantánamo who have allegedly “returned to the battlefield,” claiming that they had all been released by President Obama, when, in fact, only nine had been released by Obama and the other 113 had been released by George W. Bush. 

We hope you have time to read Andy’s article about this latest scandal, Donald Trump’s Latest Outrageous Guantánamo Lie, which also includes Andy’s analysis of other lies about Guantánamo told by Trump’s press secretary, Sean Spicer, and by his poisonous advisor, Sebastian Gorka, a noted Islamophobe, whose opinions are always untrustworthy. 

Please also note that we do not endorse the figure of 122 prisoners who have allegedly “returned to the battlefield,” as Andy explains in the article, because the source of the figures — the office of the Director of National Intelligence — has never provided any evidence to back up its claims. The ODNI’s recidivism figure is 16% of the total number of released prisoners, but New America, which reviewed the publicly available evidence three years ago, suggested that a more realistic figure was just 4%.

To mark 50 days of Trump’s presidency, we’d also like to encourage you to send in a photo for the “Donald Trump No! Please Close Guantánamo” initiative we launched on the day of Donald Trump’s inauguration. 

Please see below for a recently published photo — of Larry Siems, the editor of torture victim Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s extraordinary memoir, Guantánamo Diary. Please also note that Slahi’s first major interview since his release in October will be broadcast by CBS’s 60 Minutes program this Sunday at 7pm ET.



As we have stated, “Let's show Trump that we know the difference between right and wrong, and demand that he closes this wretched prison that does so much damage to America's reputation, and its ability to claim that it is a nation founded on the rule of law, both at home and abroad.”

Please print off a poster, take a photo with it, and send it to us at info@closeguantanamo.org — and please note that all the photos we’ve published to date are here.

In closing, 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.

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. Please also join us on  Facebook and Twitter.