Today's Stories

June 12-14, 2009

Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Next Parlor Trick

June 11, 2009

Kathy Kelly /
Dan Pearson
Down and Out in Shah Mansoor: With the Swat Refugees

James Bovard
The Latest Torture Cover-Up Scam

Tristan de Bourbon
The Toy Makers of Chenghai: the Financial Crisis Seen From China

Dave Lindorff
The Wheels are Coming Off the Recovery Program

Kevin Zeese
The Case for Disbarment of the Torture Lawyers

Ralph Nader
The Craft of Sam Maloof: a Visionary Woodworker

Harvey Wasserman
The GOP's Trillion Dollar Reactor Plan Goes Radioactive

Nicole Colson
The Anti-Abortion Movement's Climate of Violence

Mark Weisbrot
Showdown Over the IMF

Dan Bacher
Big Water's Big Lie Unravels

Website of the Day
Top 10 Most Absurd TIME Covers

June 10, 2009

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Obama's Doublespeak on Iran

Jennifer Van Bergen / Douglas Valentine
The Dangerous World of Indefinite Detentions: From Vietnam to Abu Ghraib

Kathy Kelly
Visitors and Hosts in Pakistan

Paul Craig Roberts
Fear Rules

Rev. William E. Alberts
First the Torture of Truth ...

Peter Lee
Obama and North Korea: a Warm-Up in the Offing?

Carol Miller
Why We Need a Holistic, Cradle-to-the-Grave National Health Care System

Emily Ratner
Dreams of Flight in Gaza

Robert Weissman
The IMF's Accountability Moment

Dave Lindorff
The Sutra of the Crushed Volvo

Website of the Day
Starving in Gitmo

June 9, 2009

Winslow T. Wheeler
Back From the Dead: Pentagon Pork!

Mike Whitney
Is Hyper-Inflation Around the Corner?

Stan Cox
Biofuel's Drug Problem

Sibel Edmonds
The Battle Against the State Secrets Privilege

Jonathan Cook
Where the Victim is the Guilty Party

David Macaray
A Bad Time for Unions

Robert Jensen
In South Africa, Apartheid is Dead, But White Supremacy Lingers On

Nadia Hijab
The Obama Difference

Mark Weisbrot
Vulture Funds Descend on Argentina

Website of the Day
Waging Non-Violence

June 8, 2009

John Ross
Mexico: Politics as Drugs / Drugs as Politics

Paul Wright
Deconstructing Gus: How a Former Prisoner Took On and Took Down Corrections Corporation of America's Top Lawyer (and Cheney Pal)

Paul Craig Roberts
Long-Term Economic Memory Loss

Franklin C. Spinney
"Natural Growth:" Israel's Demographic Hogwash

Franklin Lamb
Lebanon's Elections: Return to the Status Quo

Uri Avnery
The Tone and the Music

Jonathan Cook
Israeli Loyalty Oaths

Eric Toussaint
/ Damien Millet
The Partisans of Capitalism Have Lost All Credibility

Jim Goodman
The Dairy Oligarchy

Norman Solomon
Words and War

Reza Fiyouzat
When Accusations Fly: the Spectacle of the Iranian Elections

Website of the Day
Latino Jobless Rate Soars

June 5 -7, 200

Alexander Cockburn
High Words, Low Truths

George Galloway
Our Convoy to Gaza

Paul Craig Roberts
Obama in Cairo

Jennifer Loewenstein
How Much Really Separates Obama and Netanyahu?

Franklin Lamb
Watching Obama's Speech in Lebanon

Mike Whitney
The Biggest Rip Off Ever?

Andy Worthington
Death at Guantánamo

Missy Comley Beattie
Peace Be Upon You?

Farzana Versey
Walk Like an Egyptian: the Oprahfication of Obama

Stanley Heller
Obama's Non-Starter

John V. Whitbeck
Nothing Comes From Nothing

Robert Weissman
GM: the Path Not Taken

Lee Sustar
The Fall of GM: Why Workers Will Pay the Price

Dave Lindorff
What a State-Run GM Could Do

William Blum
The Great, International, Truly Demonic Iran Threat

Ernest Callenbach /
Harvey Wasserman
A Green-Powered Trip Through Ecotopia

Greg Moses
By George! Austin Leads the National Recovery

Ron Jacobs
The Meaning of Yasser Arafat

David Yearsley
Art Set in Concrete:
the Desolate Urban Landscape of High Culture

Tim Stelloh
Pot Home Invasions: Bud and Blow Torches

Belén Fernández
The Joksters: Obama and Thomas Friedman

David Ker Thomson
The Academics

Karyn Strickler
Clean Coal: a Dirty Joke

Christopher Brauchli
Judicial Amnesia and the Federalist Society

Charles R. Larson
Leaving Tangier: Exile and Exploitation

Kim Nicolini
"Hunger:" Art With a Punch

Lorenzo Wolff
Good Head (Or Why the End of Hand-Crafted Music Isn't (Necessarily) the End of Music)

Poets' Basement
Jenkins, Orloski and Willson

Website of the Weekend
Tankman

June 4, 2009

Arno J. Mayer
The Future of Israel and the Decline of the American Empire

Mike Whitney
Bond Market Blowout

Gareth Porter
Report Ties Dubious Iran Nuke Documents to Israel

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
Clearing Misconceptions on Pakistan's War in Swat

Mouin Rabbani
Paradigmatic Progress?

Jordan Flaherty
Life in Gaza

Adam Turl
Is Card Check Dead?

Nikolas Kozloff
Iran's Elections: the Latin America Factor

Yifat Susskind
Obama's Double Standard

Website of the Day
Pink Floyd's Roger Waters Slams Israel

June 3, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
As the Dollar Falls Off the Cliff...

Kathy Kelly
A Weaver's Welcome to Pakistan

Alan Farago
Bailing Out the Land Speculators

Franklin Lamb
Israeli Spies and Fake IDs

Bill Hatch
Why Congressman Cardoza Stiffed Michelle Obama

Nadia Hijab
A Stifling Embrace

Dean Baker
Reporters With Pom-Poms: Cheerleading the Recovery

Binoy Kampmark
Whither GM?

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
What Happened to Air France Flight 477?

Remi Kanazi
Oslo Redux?

Behzad Yaghmaian
The End of Idealism in China?

Website of the Day
A Time Comes: the Story of the KingsNorth Six

June 2, 2009

Uri Avnery
Racists for Democracy

Robert Weissman
Bankrupt Thinking

Conn Hallinan
Shadow Wars

Gideon Spiro
Obama and Israel's Nuclear Arsenal

Roger Burbach
US-Cuba Policy: "Still Stuck in the Past"

Dylan Quigley
My Experience with Dr. Tiller

Dave Lindorff
The American Taliban Claim Another Victim

Ray McGovern
Navy Vet Honored, Foiled Israeli Attack

Belén Fernández
Israel's Newfound Concern for UNIFIL

Martha Rosenberg
Give It Up, Wyeth

Willie L. Pelote, Sr.
GOP: California's for the Rich (Poor People Should Move)

Website of the Day
You Bet Your Health

June 1, 2009

Pam Martens
Wall Street Braces for New Cops on the Beat

Yitzhak Laor
Washington's Mirror

Mark Weisbrot
More Stimulus, Not Deficit Reduction

Ramzy Baroud
Netanyahu's New Quest

Saul Landau
Dancing the Afghan Jig

Eugenia Tsao
Smug Toronto Seethes as Tamils "Go Too Far"

Afshin Rattansi
Women in Darfur: "We Saw No Evidence of Genocide"

Debra Sweet
The Murder of Dr. Tiller

Abdul Malik Mujahid
Obama's Trip Egypt and American Muslims

Bill Quigley
Haiti's Revolutionary Priest Gerard Jean-Juste: Presente!

John Wright
The Tragedy of Susan Boyle

Website of the Day
Young Neo Con Anthem

May 29-31, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Sotomayor and the Last of the WASPs

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq: The Mother of All Corruption Scandals

Vijay Prashad
Reeling Republicans

Gary Leupp
The Destabilization of Pakistan

Ray McGovern
The Impossible Rehab of Colin Powell

Rannie Amiri
Spies, Lies and Mr. Lebanon's Demise

Bill Hatch
The Mechanic's Tale: a Short Chapter in the History of Foreclosures

Chellis Glendinning, Stephanie Mills and Kirkpatrick Sale
Three Luddites Talking ... on a Computer!

Phyllis Pollack
Dosed, But Not Spiked: an Interview with Grace Slick

David Yearsley
Eros and Susan Boyle; Fakery and Simon Cowell

Jean-Christophe Servant
A River of Acid: Mined Out in Zambia

Dave Lindorff
Sotomayor's Problem Isn't That She's Too Latina

James McEnteer
Straw Dogs: the Media and Sonia Sotomayor

Missy Beattie
A Place Called Despair

James C. Faris
On Evolution: a Critique of Darwinism

David Macaray
When Workers' Rights Go Unenforced

Harvey Wasserman
The Catastrophic Economics of Nuclear Power

Adam Federman
Drilling the Marcellus Shale Through the Halliburton Loophole

David Ker Thomson
Turtle Island: Adventures in Recycling

Mark Seth Lender
Great Egrets Return

Stephen Martin
Big Trouble in Little Britain

Joseph Nevins
Sin Nombre is Only Part of the Border Story

Sophia Mihic
Star Trek and the Continuing Mission of American Imperialism

Lorenzo Wolff
Dylan Kelehan Gets What He Needs

Poets' Basement
Fleming, Shields and Greer

Website of the Weekend
Petition: Grant Parole to Leonard Peltier

May 28, 2009

Joan Roelofs
The Philanthropies and the Economic Crisis

Paul Craig Roberts
Torture and the American Conscience

Ralph Nader
Corporate Frankensteins

Mouin Rabbani
The Dangers of False Optimism in the Middle East

Joe Bageant
Plain Truths From Appalachia: a Redneck View of Obamarama

James McEnteer
America Held Hostage

Dedrick Muhammad
Obama and the Harsh Racial Reality

Richard Morse
On Speaking Out in Haiti

David Macaray
Have We Turned Into Sheep?

Harvey Wasserman
The 8 Green Steps to Solartopia

Website of the Day
Col. Peters: Just Kill the Gitmo Detainees

May 27, 2009

Joanne Mariner
Military Commissions, Round Three

Paul Craig Roberts
Doublespeak on North Korea

Walden Bello
Can China Save the World From Depression?

Dave Lindorff
Recidivism and Guantánamo

Brian M. Downing
Along the Durand Line

Carlos Villarreal
Separate But Equal Just Fine in California?

Nadia Hijab
Israel's Next Move: Armageddon Now?

Adam Federman
The PCBs of the Hudson River

Laray Polk
RadWaste and Texas' Future

Isabella Kenfield
The Fall of a Brazilian Financier

David Michael Green
Overcoming the Poverty of Ambition

Website of the Day
The Case Against Shell

May 26, 2009

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Fearful Pride: North Korea's Second Nuclear Test

Mike Whitney
The Next Leg Down: When Deflation Becomes Entrenched

Sharon Smith
Obama and Abortion Rights: What We Learned at Notre Dame

Marjorie Cohn
The Gitmo Appeasment Plan: Obama Buckles on the Constitution

Dean Baker
Waterboard the Fed

Deepankar Basu
Was the Indian Election a Debacle for the Left? If So, Why?

Fred Gardner
The Vindication of Sgt. Northcutt

Jordan Flaherty
New Orleans for Sale

Josh Ruebner
Rethinking the Costs of Peace

Brian Cloughley
The Man Who Murdered Count Foulke Bernadotte

Website of the Day
The Montana Town That Wants to Become the New Gitmo

May 25, 2009

Diane Christian
Looking at Torture

John Ross
Mexico's Shock Doctrine

Kenneth Hartman
The Trouble With Prison

Uri Avnery
Netanyahu Goes to Washington

Fred Gardner
"War on Pot" Overrides "Support Our Troops": the Punishment of Sgt. Northcutt

Cindy Sheehan
Day of the Dead

Sen. Russell Feingold
Prolonged Detention and the Rule of Law: a Letter to Barack Obama

Sibel Edmonds
Two Sides of the Same Coin: From State Secrets to War to Wiretaps

Franklin Lamb
Der Spiegel Tries Again

Dave Lindorff
Memorial Day in the Land of the Weak and Wussy

Daniel Wolff
Learning to Read in the Pacific Northwest

Website of the Day
Decoration Day

May 22-24, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
How Long Does It Take?

Michael Teitelman
Obama, Torture and John Walker Lindh

Mike Whitney
Credit Default Swaps: the Poison in the System

Ray McGovern
Cheney Breaks the Taboo: Support for Israel Feeds Terrorism

Sonia Cardenas /
Andrew Flibbert
Why We Love to Hate Pirates

Clive Hamilton
Biblical Prophesy and the Iraq War: Bush, God, Iraq and Gog

Conn Hallinan
Swine Flu Fallout

Fred Gardner
Sgt. Northcutt's Homecoming

Carlo Cristofori
The Latest AfPak War

Dean Baker
A Friendly Financial Intervention

Rannie Amiri
King Abdullah's 57-State Solution

Andy Worthington
A Message to Obama: No Military Commissions; No Preventive Detentions

David Macaray
Democrats Betray Labor: Card Check is Pronouced Dead

Nadia Hijab
What Kind of State?

Franklin Lamb
How Not to Win Votes for Team USA

Ted Newcomen
The Forgotten Casualties

David Ker Thomson
Joy (Or How Hope, the Thing With Feathers, Gets Plucked)

David Rosen
Porn Wars

Mark Weisbrot
Climate Change and Intellectual Property Rights?

Robert Fantina
Gitmo, Democrats and Business as Usual

Heather Gray
Some Positive Directions in Public Health?

Farzana Versey
The Myth of Manmohan Singh

Chris Genovali
A Paler Shade of Green

Ron Jacobs
His Terrible Swift Sword: the Legacy of John Brown

Jay Diamond
Why the Left Should Cheer Hannity and Limbaugh

Dr. Susan Block
The Binds That Bond

Ben Sonnenberg
"Ballast": An Endlessness of Almost Ending

David Yearsley
Handel's Ghost ... Again

Lorenzo Wolff
My Problem with Led Zeppelin

Poets' Basement
Corseri and Bohm

Website of the Weekend
Bob Graham's CIA Notebooks

May 21, 2009

Jeffrey St. Clair /
Joshua Frank
The Politics of Bait-and-Switch: Obama and the Environment

Paul Craig Roberts
Morphing Dick Cheney

Chris Floyd
In Defense of George W. Bush

Gerald Paoli
Inside Iraqi Kurdistan: Life and Death in the Qandil Mountains

Zach Mason
Something's Gotta Give: Obama and the Hustler

Uri Avnery
A Quarrel on the Titanic

Andy Worthington
Out of Guantánamo

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
India: Two Funerals and a Wedding

Norman Solomon
The Afghanistan Escalation

Dave Lindorff
A Corporate Crime Wave of Labor Law Violations

Website of the Day
Swine Flu: The Panic That Wasn't

May 20, 2009

Michael Hudson
The Toll Booth Economy

Gary Leupp
Courting Hekmatyar: Obama and the Warlord

Michael D. Yates
Work is Hell

Jonathan Cook
Netanyahu Adviser Steps Out of the Shadows

Peter Lee
The World Doesn't Have a Pakistan Nukes Problem ... It Has a David Albright Problem

Binoy Kampmark
The End of the Tamil Tigers?

Peter Zinn
Eulogizing Lawyers

William Loren Katz
Tortured Reasoning; Tortured Results

Gary Lapon
Why Women Need Single Payer

Trudy Bond
Torture, Shrinks and a Groundhog's Day Moment

Website of the Day
Meet the Climate Change Lobby

May 19, 2009

Kristoffer Rehder
Check Point Iraq: a Soldier's Tale

Mike Whitney
The Real Lesson of the Financial Crisis

Ray McGovern
How Colin Powell Got Duped by the CIA

Vijay Prashad
The Indian Elections: a Game Changer?

Mirjam Hadar Meerschwam
Intimidation and Interrogation in Tel Aviv

Mustafa Barghouthi
Is Obama Up to the Challenge of Dealing with Netanyahu?

Andy Worthington
Gitmo: A Prison Built on Lies

Binoy Kampmark
Britain's Speaker Crisis

John Walsh
John Kerry vs. Single-Payer

David Macaray
Alcohol as Metaphor: Zero Tolerance in the Workplace

Website of the Day
So You Think That Veggie Burger is Organic...

May 18, 2009

Dave Lindorff
The US is Using White Phosporous in Afghanistan

Abdul Malik Mujahid
Thirty Years of Tragedy in Afghanistan

Jonathan Cook
How Many Secret Prisons Does Israel Have?

Ben Rosenfeld
Police Violence: How Many Kicks to the Head Does It Take?

Patrick Cockburn
These Killings Will Only Strengthen the Taliban

Ralph Nader
They Want It All: New Tricks From the Old Energy Lobby

Stephen Soldz
Psychologist Bryce Lefever Clarifies Defense of Torture

Eugenia Tsao
On the Devaluation of Labor

Walter Brasch
Cheney's Magical Mystery Media Tour

Roberto Rodriguez
War and Torture

Charlotte Laws
Politics and American Idol

Website of the Day
Disbar the Torture Lawyers

May 15-17, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
King of the Hate Business

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Case of the Missing H-Bomb

David Rosen
Sexual Torture: What is Acknowledged and What Remains Unknown

Mike Whitney
From My Lai to Bala Baluk: Obama Picks Up Where Bush Left Off

Bruce Page
A Real History of Rupert Murdoch

Jeremy Scahill
The Black Shirts of Guantánamo

Fred Gardner
Tortured Reasoning: Judge Bybee Rules Against Brian Epis

Tom Barry
Fighting the Drug War at Homeland Security

Mats Svensson
On the Beach in Tel Aviv

Ramzy Baroud
The Drones Are Coming

Mark Engler
Science Fiction From Below

Mark Weisbrot
Stealth Move by IMF to Get $100 Billion Without Congressional Debate

Farzana Versey
Of Scapegoats and Separatists

Ron Jacobs
It's Up to You to Save Troy Davis

Hannah Wolfe
What to Tell the Children

Cal Winslow
Fresno, the New Ground Zero in the Battle Between the SEIU and NUHW

David Macaray
Labor Needs a Southern Strategy

Christopher Brauchli
Involuntary Baptism

Mark Seth Lender
The Lion Tamer's Story

Robert Fantina
Lapel Pins, Arugula and Mustard

David Ker Thomson
Last Man Walking

Stephen Martin
Lipstick Nightmare for Spin Merchant

Charles R. Larson
Double Exile

Chase Madar
"Angels & Demons" and the Extraordinary Power of Imaginary Heretics

Kim Nicolini
Vaginas From Outer Space! Boldly Sitting Through Star Trek

David Yearsley
Handel's Ghost

Lorenzo Wolff
Killer Virtues

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Jordan and Moser

Website of the Weekend
Catch F-22

May 14, 2009

Michael Hudson
Where Russia Went Wrong

Andy Worthington
The Poisoned Mosaic: Judge Condemns Guantánamo Evidence

Paul Craig Roberts
The Impotent President

Jonathan Cook
The Pope's Pilgrimage: Legitimizing Netanyahu?

Ray McGovern
See No Evil: Ugly Questions for General Myers

Lance Selfa
The Limits of Liberalism

David Green
The Deportation of Demjanjuk

Dave Lindorff
Obama Channels Cheney

Frida Berrigan
Nuclear Options

Sue Udry
The Bybee Question

Website of the Day
Our Bombs: Tracking US Air Strikes

May 13, 2009

Brian M. Downing
The Road Out of Iraq

Gareth Porter
Gen. McChrystal and Afghanistan

Robert Sandels
Obama and Latin America: No Light, All Tunnel

Ricardo Alarcón
Cuba: Measure of a Revolution

Eric Walberg
NATO in Georgia: Fun and Games

Dave Lindorff
The Sinking of GM: When Captains of Industry Don't Go Down with the Ship

Deepak Tripathi
A Culture of Abuse

William S. Lind
Back to the Balkans: Hillary and the Sleeping Dragon

Kevin Zeese
A Populist Health Care Rebellion

Franklin Lamb
Lebanon: From Perdition to Redemption?

Website of the Day
Beth McIntosh: The Wild Ride

May 12, 2009

Gary Leupp
The Bomb Iran Faction

Richard Neville
The AfPak Blues: Corpses of the Kids by the Truckload

Wajahat Ali
Obama Chooses a Reliable Dictatorship

Dean Baker
The Banker Boys Are Alright! Time to End the Bailouts

Franklin Lamb
What Palestinian Refugees Need From Lebanon's Elections

Norman Solomon
A Progressive Challenge to Jane Harman

Paul Craig Roberts
Beware the Hate Crimes Bill

Lisa M. Hamilton
Let's Grow a New Crop of Farmers

Bob Fitrakis /
Harvey Wasserman:
Why Isn't Obama Turning to Credit Unions?

David Macaray
Wading Through the Grassroots

Website of the Day
Electronic Police States

May 11, 2009

Andrea Peacock
No Justice for Libby

Michael Hudson
Gordon Brown Spills the Beans on the IMF

Patrick Cockburn
Who Killed 120 Civilians?

Ralph Nader
The Single-Payer Taboo

John Kelly
Pseudoscience and Wrongful Convictions in the War on Drugs

Saul Landau
Cuba's Biggest "Crime"

Dave Lindorff
Blaming the Dead Victims

David Michael Green
Get Obama

Anthony Papa
Gov. David Paterson Does the Right Thing

Paul Krassner
Jon Stewart and Truman, the War Criminal

Website of the Day
Generational Homelessness

Weekend Edition
June 12-14, 2009

Gitmo's Youngest Prisoner Sent to Chad

The Long Ordeal of Mohammed El-Gharani

By ANDY WORTHINGTON

The long ordeal of Mohammed El-Gharani, Guantánamo’s youngest prisoner, has finally come to an end. Reprieve, the legal action charity that represents him, reported yesterday that he has been sent back to Chad.

A Saudi resident and Chadian national, El-Gharani was just 14 years old when he was seized by Pakistani forces in a random raid on a mosque in Karachi, but was treated appallingly both by the Pakistanis who seized him, and by the U.S. military. I provided a detailed explanation of the abuse to which he was subjected in an article last year, “Guantánamo’s Forgotten Child,” which I condensed for an article in January, when I explained:

As with all but three of the 22 confirmed juveniles who have been held at Guantánamo, the U.S. authorities never treated him separately from the adult population, even though they are obliged, under the terms of the UN’s Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (on the involvement of children in armed conflict) to promote “the physical and psychosocial rehabilitation and social reintegration of children who are victims of armed conflict.”

Instead, El-Gharani was treated with appalling brutality. After being tortured in Pakistani custody, he was sold to U.S. forces, who flew him to a prison at Kandahar airport, where, he said, one particular soldier “would hold my penis, with scissors, and say he’d cut it off.” His treatment did not improve in Guantánamo. Subjected relentlessly to racist abuse, because of the color of his skin, he was hung from his wrists on numerous occasions, and was also subjected to a regime of “enhanced” techniques to prepare him for interrogation -- including prolonged sleep deprivation, prolonged isolation and the use of painful stress positions -- that clearly constitute torture. As a result of this and other abuse, including regular beatings by the guard force responsible for quelling even the most minor infractions of the rules, El-Gharani has become deeply depressed, and has tried to commit suicide on several occasions.

In January, over seven years after his initial capture, El-Gharani finally had his case reviewed in a U.S. court, following the Supreme Court’s ruling, in June 2008, that the prisoners had habeas corpus rights; in other words, the right to ask a court why they were being held. Judge Richard Leon, who had granted the habeas petitions of five Algerian prisoners in November, ruling that the government had failed to establish a case against them, was, if anything, even more dismissive of the claims against El-Gharani.

In his habeas petition, El-Gharani insisted, as he had throughout his detention, that he “traveled to Pakistan from Saudi Arabia at the age of 14 to escape discrimination against Chadians in that country, acquire computer and English skills, and make a better life for himself,” and that he “remained there until his arrest,” although the government claimed that he “arrived in Afghanistan at some unspecified time in 2001,” and was “part of or supporting Taliban or al-Qaeda forces,” for a variety of reasons, including claims that he received military training at an al-Qaeda-affiliated military training camp, fought against U.S. and allied forces at the battle of Tora Bora, and was a member of an al-Qaeda cell based in London.

Noting that the government’s supposed evidence against El-Gharani consisted of statements made by two other prisoners at Guantánamo, and that, moreover, these statements were “either exclusively, or jointly, the only evidence offered by the Government to substantiate the majority of their allegations,” Judge Leon stated that “the credibility and reliability of the detainees being relied upon by the Government has either been directly called into question by Government personnel or has been characterized by Government personnel as undermined,” and dismissed all the claims, reserving particular criticism for the claim that El-Gharani had been a member of a London-based al-Qaeda cell.

As I wrote in January,

This was, indeed, the most extraordinary allegation, as El-Gharani was just 11 years old at the time, and, as his lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, explained in his book The Eight O’Clock Ferry to the Windward Side: Seeking Justice in Guantánamo Bay, “he must have been beamed over to the al-Qaeda meetings by the Starship Enterprise, since he never left Saudi Arabia by conventional means.”

Leon’s verdict was marginally less colorful, but no less devastating. “Putting aside the obvious and unanswered questions as to how a Saudi minor from a very poor family could have even become a member of a London-based cell,” he wrote, “the Government simply advances no corroborating evidence for these statements it believes to be reliable from a fellow detainee, the basis of whose knowledge is -- at best -- unknown.”

Despite this long-overdue court victory, El-Gharani’s suffering in Guantánamo did not come to an end. In April, he was finally allowed to call one of his relatives in Chad, but took the opportunity to call the Arabic broadcaster al-Jazeera instead, telling them, as Reuters described it, that “he had been beaten with batons and teargassed by a group of six soldiers wearing protective gear and helmets after refusing to leave his cell.” He explained, “This treatment started about 20 days before Obama came into power, and since then I've been subjected to it almost every day,” and added, “Since Obama took charge he has not shown us that anything will change.”

El-Gharani’s return to Chad is not without its problems. He is currently being held by the security services, although they have stressed to his lawyers that it is just a formality and that they fully understand the horrors he has been through. More troubling is the fact that, although he has extended family in Chad who will take care of him, he cannot be reunited with his parents, because they live in Saudi Arabia. Representatives of Reprieve are expected to fly out to Chad this weekend, to help with his rehabilitation, but in the meantime El-Gharani himself has said only that he is, of course, delighted to be free, and is looking forward to undertaking an education, to make up for the lost years and lost opportunities while he was held in Guantánamo.

As Zachary Katznelson, Reprieve’s legal director, explained to me in a telephone conversation yesterday, “Reprieve is delighted that, after seven long years of unjust, illegal incarceration, Mohammed is finally out of Guantánamo Bay. A federal judge looked at his case in January, and found that there were never any valid grounds to hold him. He should have been released long ago, but we’re glad that justice has finally been served.”

Andy Worthington is a British historian, and the author of 'The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America's Illegal Prison' (published by Pluto Press). Visit his website at: www.andyworthington.co.uk He can be reached at: andy@andyworthington.co.uk

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