Guantánamo: the source of so much of the 21st century’s depravity

Photos from the monthly global vigils for the closure of Guantánamo on August 5 and 8, 2026. Clockwise, from top left: Cobleskill, NY, Washington, D.C., London and New York.

My new article on my website, Photos and Report: The 43rd Monthly Global Vigils for the Closure of Guantánamo, the Source of So Much of the 21st Century’s Depravity, which I hope you have time to look at, features 22 photos from, and my report about the latest monthly global vigils for the closure of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay, which took place across the US and worldwide on and around Wednesday August 5, 2026.

In the accompanying text, I summarize the history of the vigils, and discuss the significance of Guantánamo beyond its shamefully enduring manifestation as the last bastion of the Bush administration’s hideous “war on terror” — as a barbaric affirmation of Israel’s post-Oct. 7 regime of torture prisons for Palestinians, and as the inspiration for the sickening mass abduction and imprisonment of immigrants under Donald Trump and Stephen Miller, in which versions of Guantánamo have proliferated across the US mainland, and which I describe as “a national scandal on an almost unimaginable scale.”

Here’s the main body of the text — but please click through to the article to see all the photos!

At the time our vigils began, in February 2023, Joe Biden was the president, the genocide in Gaza had not yet begun, and 34 men were still held at Guantánamo, mostly without charge or trial, and all in varying states of fundamental lawlessness. Our efforts throughout 2023 and 2024 helped to keep a flicker of interest in Guantánamo alive, and to secure the release of 19 of these men before Biden left office, even though those successes were completely overshadowed by the “ironclad” support for Israel that he clung to as his ailing mind collapsed.

Since last January, when Donald Trump returned to the White House, the 15 men still held at Guantánamo have almost entirely fallen off the radar. Trump, as in his first term, has no interest in releasing any of them, even though six of them are still held without charge or trial. Instead, he briefly used Guantánamo as a grotesque prop in the “war on immigrants” that he declared when he took office, holding hundreds of hapless migrants there until he was challenged in court, and lawmakers began noticing how absurdly expensive it was to use Guantánamo as a largely symbolic theater of cruelty.

In January, the prison at Guantánamo Bay will have been open for 25 years — a quarter of a century — and, despite Trump’s lack of interest in it, it continues to cast a shadow over the whole of the 21st century.

It is the last bastion of the global “war on terror” that the Bush administration declared after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 (whose 25th anniversary is just a month away), when the entire world was declared to be a battlefield, and when transnational kidnapping, the use of torture and indefinite imprisonment without charge or trial became normalized.

All of the above has had disturbing ramifications that can be seen most clearly in the actions of the State of Israel, whose torture prisons for Palestinians — held in vast numbers without charge or trial under “administrative detention” or as “unlawful combatants” — echo Guantánamo, with its own forms of “administrative detention” and its insistence that those held were “unlawful enemy combatants”, as well as the CIA’s “black site” torture prisons, and whose contempt for borders, and for any kind of limits on military action, is as marked as that of the US.

Guantánamo has also provided a baleful template for Trump’s “war on immigrants”, extending far beyond its temporary use for migrants last year. The entire model of the mass abductions of immigrants on US soil, by unaccountable ICE agents, and their imprisonment in facilities from which they may, or may not ever be released, designed and driven by the horrific Nazi-like Stephen Miller, Trump’s Homeland Security Advisor, is turning the whole of the US mainland into a venue for proliferating Guantánamos.

This is a national scandal on an almost unimaginable scale, as 400,000 people have been detained and “disappeared” since Trump took office, 500 times as many people as have been held at Guantánamo throughout its history. The majority of these people have been deported, but 68,000 are currently held, and a problem that no one in the administration wants highlighted is what will happen if their home countries refuse to cooperate in taking them back, or if lawyers and the courts manage, against the odds, to establish in some cases that it is unsafe for them to be repatriated.

The administration has, in some cases, as happened with Guantánamo prisoners, sought to send some of these immigrants to third countries, but that is absurdly expensive, and also runs the risk of failing foul of the US’s obligations, under torture legislation, not to send anyone anywhere where they face the risk of torture, disappearance or even death.

In London, campaigners hold up my posters, one marking the recent 250th anniversary of the US Declaration of Independence, and the other showing the 15 men still held at Guantánamo.

As we continue to raise our voices not only for those held at Guantánamo, but also for the Palestinians, and for the victims of ICE, we’ll be marking 9,000 days of Guantánamo’s existence on September 1, via the Close Guantánamo campaign’s ongoing photo project. Do join us if you can, by taking a photo with the 9,000 days poster and sending it to us at info@closeguantanamo.org. All this year’s photos to date can be seen here.

The day after, Wednesday September 2, will mark the 44th global monthly vigils for Guantánamo’s closure, and we’re also beginning to prepare for the 25th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo on January 11, when I hope to finally launch a long-planned project, the Guantánamo Accountability Project, to serve as a focal point for efforts to eventually hold the US government to account for its quarter-century of crimes at its shameful offshore gulag.

Please also read my Substack Notes

Just a reminder that, in between posts, I regularly post Notes here on Substack, which you can find here.

Over the last week, I marked a vile, murderous attack on civilians in Gaza by Israel, posted the closing speech of the lead defence lawyer in the latest trial of Palestine Action activists in the UK, highlighted a report that Israel is seeking to erase evidence of its genocide in Gaza, and marked the mass funeral for 112 civilians, from two extended families, whose remains have only just been recovered, 33 months since they were murdered when their homes were destroyed.

I also posted the latest shocking news about Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, posted my latest radio interview, amplified a crucial article by the filmmaker Adam McKay about climate collapse, posted a banging dance tune from Gaza, and also remembered Anas Al-Sharif, the fearless and tireless Palestinian journalist who was targeted and murdered by Israel a year ago today.

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