Held Indefinitely and Without Charge: The Guantánamo Bay Prison
With Frank Panopoulos, a human rights attorney. A talk on Human Rights Day. Dec.10. Thank you for joining us at this talk.
45 Min. talk & slides. Followed by question period. Join our Rally Saturday, Jan. 14, 2023 at the Augusta Armory. 1-2 pm, snow date Jan 15.
Introduction by Mary Kate Small of Pax Christi Maine
Frank Panopoulos is a human rights attorney. His work includes representing prisoners held at the Guantánamo Bay Prison, and in Florida state prisons; foreign individuals in proceedings to delist them from the terrorist list maintained by the U.S. government; and refugees and stateless persons held in detention camps in the Northeast Autonomous area of Syria. Frank has worked on Peace and Social Justice issues since 1979, and has spent time in prison for acts of non-violent civil disobedience, including two Plowshares Actions in the 1980s (AVCO and Quonset Point). Bring your signs from last year! Event organized by: Witness Against Torture and Pax Christi Maine. Endorsed by Peace Action Maine, Maine Veterans For Peace, PeaceWorks of Greater Brunswick Maine, ME Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space. Download Flier.
For more information on Guantánamo, please go to: https://www.andyworthington.co.uk/tag/close-guantanamo/ and https://www.nogitmos.org/
Recording: https://youtu.be/tkWsMlbIpws Speaker slides with resources: https://peaceactionme.org/images/pdf/HumanRightsDayTalkSlides.pdf Saved chat. (Archived Event web announcement, FBevent.)
Witness Against Torture, Pax Christi Maine and many endorsing groups are again planning a#Close Guantánamo Prison Rally, Jan. 14 Saturdayat theAugustaArmory. Stay tuned.
Some Resources on the prison at Guantanamo Bay:
Taxi to the Dark Side is a powerful film about how the US reacted to the 9/11 attacks, and how Muslim men ended up in Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib and were tortured. The film tells its story by following the capture and death of an Afghani taxi driver named Diliwar. The film is available to rent or purchase on IMDb.
A more contemporary film is the sequel to The Mauritanian, the commercial film about Mohamedou Slahi’s imprisonment at Guantánamo based on his book Guantanamo Diary. The sequel is titled Guantánamo Diary Revisited. This film includes interviews with the people who guarded and tortured Slahi. The interviews open a window to the mentality of those working at and running the interrogations at Guantaánamo. The film also is available to rent or purchase on IMDb.
Another contemporary film is Life after Guantanamo: Exiled in Kazakhstan. This short film shows what life is like for one of the Guantánamo prisoners released to Kazakhstan. Here is a link to it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUBbxIoGNaw
An excellent book on prison life in Guantánamo is Monsour Adayfi’s book, Don’t Forget Us Here. Monsour spent 15 years in Guantánamo, was released to Serbia, and just finished a bike ride across Europe to raise awareness about what life has been like for those released from Guantánamo.
Feel free to ask Frank about Guantánamo and the 35 prisoners still there.
