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Guantanamo's 'general' fights on as free man

Liam Starkey / seJuly 27, 2013

Inmates at the Guantanamo Bay internment camp called Ahmed Errachidi "the general." During five years at Guantanamo, he sought ways for prisoners to resist their incarceration. Now a free man, back in his native Morocco, he’s supporting the inmates from afar.

https://p.dw.com/p/19Et7

In January 2002, as the United States-led ‘war on terror’ began, Washington reopened its century-old military base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba as a detention center for people suspected of being terrorists.

During his campaign for the presidency in 2008, Barack Obama pledged to shut down Guantanamo, which had come under scrutiny for the interrogation practices used there and the way prisoners were treated. In one of his first acts as president, he signed an executive order for its closure.

More than four years on, Obama failed to get Congress to agree on the process for shutting down the prison, and it remains open.

Of the166 detainees currently in Guantanamo, more than 100 are on a hunger strike.