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Guantánamo Prisoners Stage Peaceful Protest and Hunger Strike on 10th Anniversary of the Opening of the Prison

by Andy Worthington
January 10, 2012

Today, prisoners at Guantánamo will embark on a peaceful protest, involving sit-ins and hunger strikes, to protest about their continued detention, and the continued existence of the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, three years after President Obama came to office promising to close it within a year, and to show their appreciation of the protests being mounted on their behalf by US citizens, who are gathering in Washington D.C. on Wednesday to stage a rally and march to urge the President to fulfill his broken promise.

Ramzi Kassem, a law professor at the City University of New York, and one of the attorneys for Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo, said that his client, who is held in isolation in Camp 5, told him on his last visit that the prisoners would embark on a peaceful protest and hunger strike for three days, from Jan. 10 to 12, to protest about the President’s failure to close Guantánamo as promised.

Justice Obstructed at Bagram as at Guantanamo - Ten Years is Too Long!

by Brian Terrell
October 4, 2011

Despite ten years of occupation and untold millions of dollars spent on rebuilding Afghanistan’s broken judicial and criminal justice system, the Afghan courts are “still too weak,” the Washington Post reported on August 12, for the United States to relinquish its control over the Parwan Detention Center on Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. On September 21, the same paper reported that the U.S. military is seeking contractors to significantly increase the capacity of the prison there.

15 Arrested At White House Protesting U.S. Torture Practices

Mike Ferner
2 March 2006

Washington – Fifteen people were arrested yesterday in front of the White House after winding their way for two hours through the streets of the nation’s capital, demanding the U.S. stop torturing detainees in military prisons.

14 Aero protesters found guilty

January 6, 2006

Judge gives jail time to protesters of Aero Contractors in Smithfield — unless they pay fines and serve probation

The News & Observer
Peggy Lim, Staff Writer

A District Court judge convicted 14 defendants of trespassing Thursday in connection with a November anti-torture protest at Aero Contractors Ltd. in Smithfield.

The protesters pleaded not guilty, but admitted during their joint trial that they had intentionally trespassed onto the premises of Aero Contractors at the Johnston County Airport on the morning of Nov. 18. They argued, however, that their crime was justified as an act of civil disobedience.

Press Release: Citizens Group Exposes Aero Contractors

For Immediate Release
January 4, 2006

Contact:
Andrew Wimmer 314-249-7890
Louise Lears 314-558-1197

CITIZENS GROUP EXPOSES AERO CONTRACTORS
Trial Thursday in Johnston County, NC
Further Investigation of “Torture Taxi” Operation

A group of citizens from Illinois, Missouri and North Carolina will come together to take part in a number of actions this week in North Carolina to continue their efforts to expose the “torture taxi” operations of Aero Contractors. They will call on Michael F. Easley, the Governor of North Carolina, to take action to shut down the company’s illegal activities at two North Carolina locations.

On November 18, 2005, the group, Stop Torture Now served a peoples’ indictment to Aero Contractors, charging them with multiple counts of violation of U.S. and international laws and treaties banning torture by providing pilots and planes for the CIA’s program of “extraordinary rendition.”

Illegal Trip Protests Guantanamo Prison: Baltimore Activists Will Join Others in March through Cuba to U.S. Base

December 6, 2005
By Matthew Hay Brown, Baltimore Sun reporter
Baltimore Sun website

More than two dozen activists from Baltimore and elsewhere have arrived in Cuba to protest the U.S. detention-and-interrogation operation at Guantanamo Bay.

The activists, most of them Christian, have broken U.S. law by traveling to the communist nation. They were planning to set out this morning for the Navy base in southeastern Cuba where the United States is holding about 500 foreign terror suspects without prisoner-of-war status or criminal charges.

Do Cordova-based planes transport terrorists for CIA? Spanish newspaper reports craft landings there

November 20, 2005
By Bartholomew Sullivan and Marc Perrusquia
Published in Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN)

WASHINGTON — A Cordova company is at the center of a diplomatic row over whether its planes have been used to secretly transport terrorism suspects for interrogation by foreign security services in a practice called extraordinary rendition.

Stevens Express Leasing, which Federal Aviation Administration records show owns four airplanes, was identified by the Spanish newspaper Diario de Mallorca as the owner of planes associated with CIA operations regularly landing on the island of Majorca, Spain.

14 Arrested in Action to End C.I.A. Torture Flights

November 19, 2005

14 social justice activists were arrested on Friday, November 18 aftering entering the property of Aero Contractors near Smithfield, N.C. They sought to deliver an indictment to Aero regarding its violation of international law. Aero Contractors has provided planes and pilots for the C.I.A.’s program of “extraordinary rendition”—a program which flies terror suspects to locations at which they will likely be tortured.

Kathy Kelly, co-founder of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, was one of those arrested and charged with trespassing. Others arrested include 8 social justice activists from in and around Johnston County, NC in which the action occured and 5 are from Stop Torture Now and the Center for Theology and Social Justice Analysis in St. Louis. All were released Saturday on $500 bond.

14 held after airport protest (Local News Coverage from the Raleigh News & Observer)

C.I.A. Expanding Terror Battle Under Guise of Charter Flights (New York Times, May 31, 2005)

Indictment Issued Against Aero Contractors

Stop Torture Now, organizers of the action

Center for Theology & Social Analysis

CIA’s “Torture Taxi” in the Spotlight, by Mike Ferner

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