Thursday January 11th, 2007 was the 5th anniversary of illegal detention at Guantánamo Naval Base. Amnesty International has undertaken global vigils in countries including Israel, Italy, Japan, Spain, and the UK. Anti-war activists marched on the US prison in Guantanamo Bay to demand its closure. Relatives of some of the 400 prisoners held there took part in the march. The protesters included a British former detainee, Asif Iqbal; the mother and brother of a current detainee, Omar Deghayes; and Cindy Sheehan, a well-known American peace activist.

Witness Against Torture and other groups organized protests in the US. In San Francisco, a "participatory protest" - with street theater, leafletting, music, a reading of the names of detainees, and other non-violent adventures - took place on Saturday, January 13th from 1-3 pm in Union Square. Photos

The Bush administration has repeatedly described the 450-500 men detained at Guantanamo as "the worst of the worst." There's mounting evidence that for most of the detainees the reality is very different. The government has filed formal charges against only 10 of the detainees. The president of the Belgian Senate, who headed an official inspection team recently dispatched to Guantanamo by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), concluded that "we could have only 30 to 40 real valuable cases." As for the other 90+ percent of the detainees, few match the lurid descriptions offered by Cheney et al., and most are probably guilty of nothing at all. In many cases, the government's evidence consists of little more than admissions or accusations made by other detainees after hundreds of hours of interrogations. In 55 percent of the cases, the government makes no claim that the detainee committed any hostile acts against the United States or its coalition allies. Only 8 percent of the detainees were characterized as al Qaeda fighters. Only 5 percent were captured by United States forces; 86 percent were captured by Pakistan or the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, then handed over to the U.S. forces – at a time when the U.S. offered large bounties for capture of suspected enemies.
Read More | DC: Hundreds demand Gitmo closure-and over 80 arrests | Torture, Suicide and Imprisonment: A Look Back at Five Years of Guantanamo | Groups urge end to Guantanamo | Newly released FBI files document widespread torture at Guantánamo | David Hicks enters his sixth year of detention at Guantánamo Bay | "Why Is My Dad in Guantanamo" | Witness Against Torture