Video: On RT, Andy Worthington Discusses the Relaunched Gitmo Clock, the Countdown to Close Guantanamo and Whether Obama Will Close the Prison

Watch me on RT here. Visit, like, share and retweet the Gitmo Clock here.

Today, I was delighted to appear on RT to discuss the Gitmo Clock that I relaunched yesterday to count down the days, hours, minutes and seconds left for President Obama to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay. The first version of the clock was launched in the summer of 2013 to count the number of days since President Obama’s May 2013 promise to resume releasing prisoners from  Guantánamo, and how many men had been released.

This new version of the Gitmo Clock is part of the Countdown to Close Guantánamo that I launched in January, as the co-director of the Close Guantánamo campaign. Below is a cross-post of the article I published on Close Guantánamo yesterday for the relaunch of the clock, preceded by a transcript of excerpts from the RT interview.

RT: Obama is surely aware that time is running out. Do you think your reminder will be what kicks him into action? Is the closure of Gitmo going to finally happen before he leaves office?

Andy Worthington: I very much hope so, as do all the people who have been working so hard for so many years to get this wretched place closed down. What I am trying to do with the campaign here is just to keep the pressure on, keep reminding the President — the clock is part of that. We’ve got a Countdown to Close Guantanamo, where every 50 days we’ve got people standing with posters. The numbers are going down; just reminding him that time is running out.

RT: But if that was so easy for him to do that, of course it would have been done. There is a lot more to it in the background. What are the sticking points here?

Andy Worthington: I have to say that President Obama has moved very slowly at various times during his presidency, when he’s been faced with pretty unprincipled, but pretty severe opposition in Congress. Congress is the main problem. Lawmakers have been doing everything they can to make it extremely difficult for him to close Guantanamo. But he hasn’t been willing to spend the political capital to overcome their resistance. And he has had the means to do that. What we’ve got now is clearly a concerted effort by the administration with time running out to actually move towards getting it closed…

RT: You said “towards.” You don’t actually think it’s going to happen?

Andy Worthington: It is really hard to know. He is reducing the number of prisoners there. He’ll say to Congress: Look, it’s costing an insane amount of money to hold a smaller and smaller amount of people, because the fixed costs for running the place are the same, whether you’ve got a few dozen people, or hundreds.

He may prevail in persuading Congress. Otherwise we’re not sure yet whether he can do it by an executive order, or whether he is going to be left to hand it over to his successor. If that is a Democrat, it looks less problematical about achieving it…

The obstacle he has is that the laws that are currently in place prohibit him from closing it by moving prisoners to the mainland, which is what would need to fulfill his promise. So will Congress play ball with him, or will he have to do it without Congress? We are still waiting to see.

For the Countdown to Close Guantánamo, We Relaunch the Gitmo Clock, Counting Days Obama Has Left to Close the Prison Before He Leaves Office
By Andy Worthington, Close Guantánamo, April 24, 2016

Yesterday, the Close Guantánamo campaign relaunched the Gitmo Clock,  which we first set up in the summer of 2013 to count the number of days since President Obama’s May 2013 promise to resume releasing prisoners from the prison at Guantánamo Bay (after several years of inaction, prompted by Congressional obstruction), and also to count the number of prisoners released. See this RT article for a screenshot of the first version of the clock.

This new version counts down how many days President Obama has left until he leaves office, to fulfill the promise to close Guantánamo that he made on his second day as president back in January 2009.

Please visit the Gitmo Clock, like it, share it and retweet it if you want to see Guantánamo closed.

The Close Guantánamo campaign was set up on January 11, 2012, the 10th anniversary of the opening of the prison, by myself and the attorney Tom Wilner, who represented the Guantánamo prisoners in their Supreme Court cases in 2004 and 2008, when they successfully sought habeas corpus rights.

In January this year, Tom and I set up a new initiative, the Countdown to Close Guantánamo, which Andy launched on Democracy Now! with the music legend Roger Waters (ex-Pink Floyd), and the relaunched Gitmo Clock is part of this initiative. For the Countdown, celebrities (including the actors David Morrissey and Juliet Stevenson and the musician and producer Brian Eno), politicians, former prisoners and concerned members of the public across the US and worldwide have been taking photos of themselves with signs telling President Obama how many days he has left to close the prison before he leaves office.

Over 300 photos are on the website (here and here), with supporters holding up signs marking one year to go (on Jan. 20), 350 days (on Feb. 4), and 300 days (on Mar. 25).

The next milestone is 250 days to go (on May 14), and in the meantime the Gitmo Clock is counting down from today, with just 270 days left for President Obama to fulfill his promise. To take part in the Countdown to Close Guantánamo, take a photo with a poster and email it it to us for May 14.

80 prisoners are still held at Guantánamo, and 26 of those men have been approved for release — 15 since 2010, when President Obama’s high-level, inter-agency Guantánamo Review Task Force decided whether the prisoners held when Obama took office should be released or prosecuted, or whether they should continue to be held without charge or trial, and eleven since January 2014, as a result of the ongoing deliberations of Periodic Review Boards, established to review the cases of all the men not already approved for release or facing trials.

The administration has promised to release everyone approved for release by summer, and to ensure that all the Periodic Review Boards are completed before the end of Obama’s presidency, but it is still by no means clear whether or not the president will manage to persuade Congress to back his plan to move the remaining prisoners to the US mainland, so that Guantánamo can finally be closed. We know that many campaigners, activists and lawyers are troubled by the prospect of indefinite detention being moved to the US mainland, rather than being shut down once and for all, but as we have always maintained, we believe that, on the mainland, they will have new opportunities to challenge the basis of their detention that have been denied them at Guantánamo for too many years.

Note: Thanks to Justin Norman for designing the Gitmo Clock.