Josephine Richardson was a British Labour Party politician. At the time of her death she was Member of Parliament for Barking, a post she had held almost exactly 20 years, since 1974.
Michael John Gapes is a British former politician who served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Ilford South from 1992 to 2019.
2004 Republican National Convention protest activity includes the broad range of marches, rallies, performances, demonstrations, exhibits, and acts of civil disobedience in New York City to protest the 2004 Republican National Convention and the nomination of President George W. Bush for the 2004 U.S. presidential election.
Moazzam Begg is a British Pakistani who was held in extrajudicial detention by the US government in the Bagram Theater Internment Facility and the Guantanamo Bay detainment camp, in Cuba, for nearly three years. Seized by Pakistani intelligence at his home in Pakistan in February 2002, he was transferred to the custody of US Army officers, who held him in the detention centre at Bagram, Afghanistan, before transferring him to Guantanamo Bay, where he was held until January 2005.
Brian William Haw was a British protester and peace campaigner who lived for almost ten years in a peace camp in London's Parliament Square from 2001, in a protest against UK and US foreign policy. He began the Parliament Square Peace Campaign before the September 11 attacks, and became a symbol of the anti-war movement over the policies of both the United Kingdom and the United States in Afghanistan and later Iraq. At the 2007 Channel 4 Political Awards he was voted Most Inspiring Political Figure. Haw died of cancer in Berlin, where he had been receiving medical treatment.
The 2005 Quran desecration controversy began when Newsweek's April 30, 2005, issue contained a report asserting that United States prison guards or interrogators had deliberately damaged a copy of the Quran. A week later, The New Yorker reported the words of Pakistani politician Imran Khan: "This is what the U.S. is doing—desecrating the Quran." This incident caused violent unrest in some parts of the Muslim world.
In 2005, The New York Times obtained a 2,000-page United States Army investigatory report concerning the homicides of two unarmed civilian Afghan prisoners by U.S. military personnel in December 2002 at the Bagram Theater Internment Facility in Bagram, Afghanistan and general treatment of prisoners. The two prisoners, Habibullah and Dilawar, were repeatedly chained to the ceiling and beaten, resulting in their deaths. Military coroners ruled that both the prisoners' deaths were homicides. Autopsies revealed severe trauma to both prisoners' legs, describing the trauma as comparable to being run over by a bus. Seven soldiers were charged in 2005.
Binyam Ahmed Mohamed, also referred to as Benjamin Mohammed, Benyam Mohammed or Benyam Mohammed al-Habashi, is an Ethiopian national and United Kingdom resident, who was detained as a suspected enemy combatant by the US Government in Guantanamo Bay prison between 2004 and 2009 without charges. He was arrested in Pakistan and transported first to Morocco under the US's extraordinary rendition program, where he claimed to have been interrogated under torture.
Clive Adrian Stafford Smith is a British attorney who specialises in the areas of civil rights and working against the death penalty in the United States of America. He worked to overturn death sentences for convicts, and helped found the not-for-profit Louisiana Capital Assistance Center in New Orleans. By 2002 this was the "largest capital defence organisation in the South." He was a founding board member of the Gulf Region Advocacy Center, based in Houston, Texas.
Omar Amer Deghayes is a Libyan citizen who had legal residency status with surviving members of his family in the United Kingdom since childhood. He was arrested in Pakistan in 2002. He was held by the United States as an enemy combatant at Guantanamo Bay detention camp from 2002 until December 18, 2007. He was released without charges and returned to Britain, where he lives. His Guantanamo Internment Serial Number was 727. Deghayes says he was blinded permanently in one eye, after a guard at Guantanamo gouged his eyes with his fingers. Deghayes was never charged with any crime at Guantanamo.
Shaker Abd al-Rahim Muhammad Aamer is a Saudi citizen who was held by the United States in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba for more than thirteen years without charge.
Sami Mohy El Din Muhammed Al Hajj, aka Sami Al-Haj is a Sudanese journalist for the Al Jazeera network. In 2001, while on his way to do camera work for the network in Afghanistan, he was arrested by the Pakistani army and held in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camp in Cuba for over six years. After his release, al-Hajj wrote a book titled Prisoner 345. He was released without charge on May 1, 2008. He later attempted to launch legal action against George W. Bush.
Jamil Abdul Latif el-Banna, born 28 May 1962, is a Jordanian of Palestinian origin, with refugee status in the United Kingdom, who had been living in north-west London. He was abducted in November 2002 by the CIA from the Gambia while on a business trip, and suffered extraordinary rendition to Bagram, Afghanistan, where he was held and interrogated by the CIA until March 2003. He was transferred to military custody at Guantanamo Bay detainment camp in March 2003, and held there until 19 December 2007.
Sir Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007. He was Leader of the Opposition from 1994 to 1997 and held various shadow cabinet posts from 1987 to 1994. Blair was Member of Parliament (MP) for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007, and was special envoy of the Quartet on the Middle East from 2007 to 2015. He is the second-longest-serving prime minister in post-war British history after Margaret Thatcher, the longest-serving Labour politician to have held the office, and the first and only person to date to lead the party to three consecutive general election victories.
The Guantanamo Bay detention camp is a United States military prison within Naval Station Guantanamo Bay (NSGB), also called GTMO on the coast of Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. It was established in January 2002 by U.S. President George W. Bush to hold terrorism suspects and "illegal enemy combatants" during the Global War on Terrorism following the attacks of September 11, 2001. As of August 2024, at least 780 persons from 48 countries have been detained at the camp since its creation, of whom 740 had been transferred elsewhere, 9 died in custody, and 30 remain; only 16 detainees have ever been charged by the U.S. with criminal offenses.
The Wood Green ricin plot was an alleged bioterrorism plot to attack the London Underground with ricin poison. The Metropolitan Police Service arrested six suspects on 5 January 2003, with one more arrested two days later.
Tarek Dergoul is a citizen of the United Kingdom of Moroccan origin who was held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba. He spent six or seven months in US custody in Afghanistan, prior to his arrival at Guantanamo on 5 May 2002. After he was repatriated to the United Kingdom on 8 March 2004, he asserted that conditions in US detention camps were brutal, and he was coerced to utter false confessions.
Cage is a London-based advocacy organisation which aims to empower communities impacted by the War on Terror. Cage highlights and campaigns against state policies, developed as part of the War on Terror. The organisation was formed to raise awareness of the plight of detainees held at Guantánamo Bay and elsewhere and has worked closely with former detainees held by the United States and campaigns on behalf of current detainees held without trial. Cage was formerly known as Cageprisoners, and is ordinarily styled as "CAGE".
Gita Sahgal is a British writer, journalist, film director, and women's rights and human rights activist, whose work focusses on the issues of feminism, fundamentalism and racism.
Chris Atkins is a British journalist, documentary film maker and best-selling author. He has made several fiction feature films, feature length documentaries and television documentaries, which have received three BAFTA nominations.
