Abdul Razzaq Hekmati

Please support my work as a reader-funded journalist! I’m currently trying to raise $2500 (£2000) to support my writing and campaigning on Guantánamo and related issues over the next three months of the Trump administration.   Today, as we approach a terrible milestone in Guantánamo’s history — the 6,000th day of the prison’s existence, this […]

On June 2 last year, the Pentagon announced that a Yemeni prisoner at Guantánamo, Mohammed al-Hanashi (also known as Muhammad Salih) had died, reportedly by committing suicide. He was the fifth reported suicide at Guantánamo, following three deaths on June 9, 2006 and another on May 30, 2007, and he was the sixth man to […]

On Sunday, in his first television interview since winning the Presidential election, Barack Obama repeated his campaign pledge to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay and to ban the use of torture by US forces. Speaking on 60 Minutes, he explained, “I have said repeatedly that I intend to close Guantánamo, and I will follow […]

On February 5, the New York Times published a front-page story by Carlotta Gall and myself, Time Runs Out for an Afghan Held by the U.S., about Abdul Razzaq Hekmati, a 68-year old Afghan detainee who died in Guantánamo on December 30, 2007, in which we established that Mr. Hekmati, known to the authorities in […]

Following its expressions of concern (here and here) about the Editor’s Note that followed the publication of a front-page article in the New York Times last week by Carlotta Gall and myself, Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) sent the following letter to the Times’ public editor: A double standard on reporters who express opinions? […]

In an article entitled “Objectivity” or Spinelessness? for his “No Comment” column for Harper’s, Scott Horton responds to yesterday’s New York Times’ Editor’s Note, in which the Times’ editorial board distanced itself from my descriptions of Guantánamo as “a cruel and misguided response by the Bush Administration to the Sept. 11 attacks,” and my “outspoken […]

Today’s New York Times runs the following Editor’s Note, as a response to the front-page article, Time Runs Out for an Afghan Held by the U.S., which ran on Tuesday. “A front-page article on Tuesday, Feb. 5, 2008 described the problems of the tribunals at the American military base in Guantánamo, as seen through the […]

Today the New York Times runs an exclusive front page article by Carlotta Gall and myself, Time Runs Out for an Afghan Held by the U.S., relating the story of Abdul Razzaq Hekmati, a 68-year old detainee who died of cancer at Guantánamo on December 30, after being held for five years without charge or […]