as soon as you see russia as an adversary has virtually tripled in 3 years, maybe it has something to do with german foreign minister. and alina barack, saying that european countries are at war with russia before then, having to walk that comment back. european leaders are also constantly talking about the need to ramp up defense spending using russia as a pretext for diverting boatloads of taxpayer cash to their own. busy baterri industrial complexes following the u. s. model, it's a slippery slope that even has some officials worried like former italian prime minister, giuseppe conte. we were told that we would bring russia to sneaks with sanctions then that military support would have bathed the way for a decisive victory. the truth is that step by step armaments after armaments. we are falling ourselves totally immersed in this war without all government and europe attempting to strategy to follow and negotiating path and arrive at

a be solution. okay, so there's no doubt that shifts in public opinion dictate the options that governments can pursue in any given situation. and it looks like european leaders through their militaristic rhetoric have effectively been able to manipulate european public opinion in favor of a greater tolerance for a prolonged conflict in ukraine against russia. hungarian prime minister, victor, or bon, is now sounding the alarm on the recklessness demonstrated by european leaders. unfortunately, europe is suffering from a psychosis of war. the continent is drifting into war day by day. it is important for the voice of peace to compete with the powerful voice of war. and it is important to make it clear that the global majority wants peace. if anyone might be wondering how it's possible to drift incrementally into war day by day, as or bon says, you don't really need to look any further than this shift underscore in these pause

in such a short amount of time. well there are some news our john kitty, our cool is on a whistle. rose, thanks will be here again that of them ah ah ah. 2 reporting on and investigating the lawless u. s. military prison at one ton of obey cuba is an important endeavor. thanks to a number of whistleblowers. we know what has happened at guantanamo, and we have a feel for the war, crimes and crimes against humanity that have taken place there. but what the human rights community, and indeed the public in general, really need, is a historian to lay out all the details for future generations. and to make sure that revisionists don't try to change the truth of that history. i'm john curry.

aku, welcome to the whistleblowers. ah we're all aware of whistleblowers who have served at the u. s. military prison at guantanamo, thanks to people like joseph hickman and brandon neely, we know of some of the atrocities that have taken place there in the name of us security policy. thanks to the attorneys representing guantanamo detainees. we know about the utter lack of due process, about torture and degrading an inhumane treatment that continues to take place there. but much of what we knew in the earlier part of guantanamo as existence was fragmentary. our next guest changed all that using his background as a researcher and an investigative journalist, he sought to document what happened to every single prisoner who passed through guantanamo, as well as those who will likely spend the rest of their lives there. and beyond

that, he has cultivated sources outside of guantanamo that have allowed him to report on us covert action operations and capture and render people around the world who in the end have never been charged with a crime. andy worthington joins us today and be, is a british historian, author investigative journalist and filmmaker. he's the author of the book, the one ton of files, the stories of the 774 detainees in america's illegal prison. he's also published a myriad of articles about one ton of mo, and he's the director of the documentary film outside the law stories from guantanamo, and the welcome to the show. it's great to have you. thank you, john. thank you for inviting me to our pleasure, eddie. let's start with how you got involved in guantanamo and in human rights. you already had of sterling reputation as the author of 2 fascinating historical nonfiction books, one on modern celebrations at the stonehenge archaeological site,

and the other on a confrontation between police and new age celebrants. at stonehenge on june, 1st 1985. i remember that i was actually living in the u. k at the time. how did you know? it was a lot of fun kind of a strange event. how did you make that transition to guantanamo and to human rights? and when did that happen for you? well, you know, the civil liberties in human rights are very closely connected. i'm sure i've always interested in the oppression of and adults. so i think you know, the grand panama was kind of a classic case. really, you know, and if you look at grand panama history, the 1st lawyers that became involved michael ran the senate right to human rights lawyer. and then to death penalty. lawyers who were immediately on the story of guantanamo because they represented people. they were particularly treated as big

tomorrow. so you know, several that human rights issue. they're always been important to me that one of my story i think was probably more pulling through lots of non americans from the beginning. but i was to people in the us to were encouraged to be in this this the state of vengeance towards the people who caused the 911 attacks. whereas around the world, people were looking at these parameters, furniture, when the people in the orange jumpsuits were always on the ears covered kneeling in the gravel and shouted that by the god david that was, that was shocking for people around the world. and in britain, the right wing daily newspaper ran, ran a headline of torture when, when the prism opened. but it took me when it took most people time to be able to really delve into the grand panama story because of the secrecy. and in fact,

i started looking in to try to find out who's at the prison in the fall of 2005. and that was when a couple of speculative lists to put together by writing composed and by the case, prisoners there in the u. k. but nobody really knew who was there because the u. s . government hasn't told the world who they were and that didn't happen until the spring of 2006. they lost freedom of information low suits and were required to tell the world who they were holding their as well as to release thousands of pages of documentation supposedly about who these people were. and that's what i began analyzing. and it turned out that no one else attempted to construct a coherent narrative. so ready in the process of researching and writing my book, my panama, i kind of became the custodian of the men stories that lots of people have written

about one time over the years. but nobody has done as thoroughly and deliberately as you have. what made you write a record of every person who's been through guantanamo, what was your ultimate goal in taking on that job, which is a huge task? well, you know, there's a, there's a point of kind of statistical analysis that you can do with the grand panama, to establish as the whole low school gave that very few of the people who were cold there was, there was at guantanamo, were actually in the west the west and, you know, and they, they managed to get a lot of media interests, which they please. and i, you know, my research study is the same thing. very few, very few percent of the people that have been held at guantanamo 779 men held by the us military for when the prison opened nearly 21 years ago. you know,

a few percent of those are accused of having any significant involvement without kite or other talent. but statistics is one thing. another thing is, is who all these people and actually you know, what i found in my and that was based all the documentation that was made publicly available by the transcripts of basically these mickey mouse tribunals that they'd held attempt basically as a way of insulting the supreme court africa simply hold, granted the prisoners have this corpus writes. they held the combatants, that's as review tribunal and panama, where they want a lot of legal representation where they threw a whole lot of allegations that people with no, not saying why, why these allegations came from very vague. so many of them. and then the men had to try and you know, i'm sounds of these. and what happened was that you could,

i could see through looking at the transcript, quite often translated from arabic, even with all the obstacles that were in the way, the personality. some of these people and actually, you know, one of the crucial things that the us government did it went from the beginning was to be humanized. the man help, that's what i say to the people was the worst. doesn't bother thinking about who they are. we're looking at the sleep sam's at night, and actually these are all individuals, even if some of them are a small number of these people, maybe what you would like to call the bad guys. they have stories, but you know, my sympathies lay in particular with the many, many hundreds of people how it works. and clearly we're not terrorists actual, you know, what my research indicated with that large number of people were rounded up by mistake. quite optim through intelligence failures and sometimes because the u. s.

was paying bank payments to the allies. but also, you know, many of the hundreds of men held once animal with soldiers. they had many of them come from the gulf or other countries to help the taliban to establish a p. o is landing state by fighting an ancient muslim civil war against the northern alliance before 911. and these are people who are all branded as terrorists, but again, these are people who have their own individualized, their own individual stories. and so i've, over the years, you know, try and tried to tell the stories of people how these are human being. and i hope i hope to do that medication. i'm very interested also to know what kind of pushback you faced as you were doing this work. certainly the american government couldn't have liked what you were researching or that you were talking to former guantanamo

detainees. we know from other whistleblowers that the u. s. government is not friendly to freedom of information act requests related to guantanamo. so what was the american government's reaction like, did the government try to stop you or to impede your, your research, your writing, your filmmaking? and what about the british? it's interesting actually, i mean the only anytime i got any sign that they were paying any attention really was when there was a story about 2 more italians being really. so i'm going back years news report to the various of the media outlets picked up on and and i reported as well and it turned out that it was completely untrue. and then somebody who worked in publicity sent me emails attacking me for not being a proper journalist at which i started to makes jamie about all the ways in which the pentagon had lied back. and you know,

and that was the end of that story. but it made me aware that they were paying attention and certainly some people somewhere when needed by what i was doing. the thing with the grand panama is that you can argue with how i have piece together. what looks like a credible narrative about the people who are held it, but i have used information that was made publicly available by the authorities for so much of that. so it's an interpretation. you know, i, in that sense, i haven't cross the line where what i was guessing was information that they didn't want to be available. what i've done is that i've analyzed it and given the taishan of their own information, they may not like we are speaking with author, journalist and filmmaker, andy worthington, about the u. s. military prison at one time of a cuba. we're going to take a short break and come right back. so stay tuned. ah.

2 2 ah, ah well, memory loss is unusual forgetfulness. a form of memory loss is and ability to recall past events.

with can be general were concerned, some specific events solely. in some cases, the memory loss can extend back in decades with start an intensive course of memory recovery on r t. a . welcome back to the whistle blowers i'm john kerry. aku, were speaking with british author, journalist and filmmaker, andy worthington, about the u. s. military prison at guantanamo. andy, welcome back. thanks again for being with us. that's all right. nice to be here. i wanted to talk about the kinds of people who have been held at guantanamo and who have undergone, in some cases unspeakable torture. i've developed

a friendship with mohammed, would sly, he known as the more attaining and the subject of the award winning film of the same name mohammed like so many other people. hundreds of them held at guantanamo was never guilty of any crime, but he was held there for well over a decade. he was one of the lucky ones. he was released, he wrote a best selling book. his experience was made into a movie and he was re settled finally in the netherlands. but what about other innocent people? how have their lives been impacted by their kidnappings and incarceration at guantanamo? well i think, you know, it's, it's difficult to know in so many cases because, you know, most of the people at guantanamo have been read, been sent back to their home countries. and then it becomes a matter of what kind of home governments they have. and clearly, you know, i would say that, you know,

people who are returned to western european countries have generally fed quite well not, not necessarily in terms of a certain amount of harassment and surveillance, but in terms of being able to go on with their lives and having access to try to support that, it's not available to, to people in so many other countries so, so much of it is down to the kind of governments that people have. i don't, i don't generally think that it's been very good from a human rights point to be to been a savvy citizen in guantanamo, for example, and being sent back right aside here a bit. i think that's been a law harassment, the former prisoners. and i think one of the more difficult aspect of this story is people who, for one reason or another, couldn't be sent back to their home country. this is primarily involved geminus because there's a ban in post by congress on releasing any em. and he's back to their home country because of the war and the security situation. and for these prisoners,

3rd countries had to be found that were paid to resettle. and again, in some cases, this has been successful, i would say in western european countries, in particular, there was a resettlement program under obama, where people were sent oman, which i think it's been very successful because it was in the country. and they've been able to rebuild their lives. there are other cases where it is a, when shockingly wrong. the most extreme example is that, you know, 2 dozen men were sent to the united arab emirates where they were promised rehabilitation. and then being had to rebuild their lives in their fact ended up in prison arbitrarily under circumstances at least as bad as 1 10 am. and that was never adequately result. i mean most of this was taking place on trumps. and i was literally no one in the u. s. government dealing with grand panama issues like this . but the yemen is all forcibly repatriated t,

m. and in the end some of them subsequently disappeared. i'm not sure if they are all still safe and that was an absolute disaster. and you know, there have been other cases where the, the resettlement just has not been helpful. it has not worked out well for the men who were settled in countries where, for example, the governments may not have been sympathetic. a toll where there is no little knowing muslim presence. and. ready what i find particularly shocking, john, is that all of these arrangements that were made between the united states government and these host nations are a secret and be not something that is, that conforms to any recognizable standards of rights and of human rights. that arbitrary secret decisions taken by the us about the status of these people. and i

think they really, fundamentally, you know, haven't escaped from the situation that has always apply to them since they request these incent grand panama, which is the, you know, the united states determined at the beginning that they were holding people without any rights whatsoever, as human beings, and i think that's something that needs to be resolved when we can hopefully get the position where, where one day guantanamo is. close, that needs to be accountability and redress for the situation that these people have been put. i think you're exactly right we, we don't know thanks to the freedom of information act for example that, that bradley burke and fell, the u. b. s. whistleblower was arrested in exchange for the government of switzerland agreeing to take 2 weaker detainees from guantanamo for example. we only know that things to wiki leaks. so i think you're exactly right that we really don't know much of what the,

what the u. s. government has negotiated with other governments. it's still secret . what do you eventually? i'm sorry, go read quite fund mental that they, that they literally don't have any rights. literally, they are there at the whim of the united states government, all the house government, coal jurisdiction, making go to clarify what they're right. you know, and you see everywhere else around the world as well. john, when, when governments either under the pressure of the us government or from their own governments come under any kind of suspicion they can be harassed, they can be arbitrarily detain. i mean, most bank, for example, the british citizen had, is the passport taken off him was imprisoned for a while. and then you know, when it came, you're putting in my trial, they miraculously didn't have any charges. that's what i meant to be given as possible back on what basis and this is amanda. it was held at guantanamo without

charging a trial. it thanks. so don't worry. we're going to get to that in a minute. i have a personal connect as a bag that i'm excited to talk to you about. first i want to ask you, what do you see eventually happening to those few dozen prisoners who are still at one cono my. my own personal position is that they have a constitutional right to face their accusers in a court of law and to be judged by a jury of their peers. if they've committed a crime, then they should be tried for it and have the opportunity to defend themselves. that has never happened and it likely never will happen. in the case of, i was a beta whom i was responsible for capturing. if we're not going to charge him with a crime, then he must be released. in the case of allergic mohammed, for example, if he truly was the mastermind of the $911.00 attacks, then charge him with that crime and put him on trial. how do you see all of this playing out in the end? well, you know, this again is quite a long story. the prison that is in 2008,

the 2nd time secure would have is corpus right. that led to the own only time in guantanamo history, where the little actually applied and in a number of coal herrings over 3 dozen of these men, had their release ordered by judge rule that the u. s. government had failed to demonstrate that these people were involved in any meaningful sense without hired or the taliban on other groups. and then the appeals court got hold all the decisions and then they started making life difficult. and eventually they, they passed a number of rulings reducing the prison as ability to successfully secure these have yes rulings. and eventually, you know, came to the ruling where they said everything that the u. s. government saves must

be treated as present to be accurate unless men who held with rights in this place can somehow demonstrate the best. we should have that. but the supreme court then failed to to take the culture of appeal. so the culture appeals, we wrote that have a decision that was taken by the supreme court. and since then, only one prison that had the heaviest petition. granted. so the little failed party by a bomber came up with the administrative process. but as i was saying that missed your process and the legal weight and the government can say that they are going to release someone from grandchild. and if they've been done, there is no legal avenue that their lawyers can use to to force them to be released . what i think will happen by that, and i think the pressure will eventually be if the men who have been approved for release will end up being released. because although it doesn't have a legal right,

legal weight, it absolutely has a moral and ethical way. and i would say that the difference that we've had over the years between republican and democratic governments is that there are always people within the democratic government to understand fundamentally some nation of right and wrong when it comes to panama. the sonia issue, john, these are basically the men who have been charged crime. right. and they are of course, called up in this terrible groundhog day of the military commissions, which simply are not fit for purpose. and the problem, of course, with that is that these member told you what the united states government should in the beginning, the bush administration is that if you torture people, you basically inextricably separate them from the ability for justice to be in, in a recognizable court. what's gonna happen?

i don't know. i mean, i think what's been encouraging you lately is a plea deal being under way to attend, to negotiate that way at this with the men who are charged with the 911 attacks and various other crimes. because the united states further complicated the fact that it had told you these people by and 15, i'm having these cases be capital cases. and as you will know, john leo, your people who are watching will know as well the, the level of defense that is required for a system or a death penalty is much higher than if you were not taking the death penalty off the table. trying to negotiate some kind of plea deal with these men. i mean that they're not going free. no, but to, to, you know, to bring in some kind of conclusion. things would be, be the way that it can end. but i don't know this gonna happen. well,

i'd like to thank our guest today, author, journalist, and filmmaker, andy worthington and things to our viewers for joining us today as well. remember the words of the great american thinker, howard zinn, who said imprisonment is a way of pretending to solve a problem. it does nothing for the victims of crime, but perpetuate the idea of retribution, thus maintaining the endless cycle of violence in our culture. it is a cruel and useless substitute for the elimination of the conditions that caused crime in the 1st place. poverty, unemployment, homelessness, desperation, racism, and greed which are at the root of most punished crimes. while the crimes of the rich and powerful go mostly unpunished. thanks for joining us for another episode of the whistle blowers i'm john kerry. aku, we'll see you next time with

ah with the discovery of the new world at the end of the 15th century, there appeared at atlantic slave dre. the slave traders from european countries started building forts on the western coast of the african continent to transport the african inhabitants to america, to be forced into hard labor. until the middle of the 17th century. portugal had played the main role in this atrocious business. then great britain, france and the netherlands took the leadership for the span of 400 years of legal and illegal slave trade. about 17000000 people were forcefully shipped across the

atlantic. not including those who died on the way due to unbearable living conditions. modern historians estimate that for each slave ship to america, there were 5 who died while captured during transportation, and cruel obliteration of rebellion. this ruthless people tre practice by the leading european countries, took away tens of millions of african lives. the organisation of united nations classifies that trans atlantic slave trade as one of the gravest human rights abuses in the history of humanity. this is the biggest act of deportation of people ever seen by mankind. ah, ah, the chinese president's visit to russia is historic for

a number of reasons. first to accent, the growing russia, china strategic partnership, and 2nd, to demonstrate what both countries publicly advocated the transition to a multi polar world beyond american hegemony. ah, the u. k. as a now it's not only the supply of tanks to crane, but also shells with depleted uranium. it seems that the west has really decided to fight russia to the last ukranian. moscow was the u. k. will be violating international law. it sounds talk to you and me, and i'm you, nation to grain changing thing, wrapped up a 3 day visit to moscow saying that china and russia are spearheading changes that the world haven't seen in that 100 years.