{"id":12989,"date":"2022-02-03T08:54:00","date_gmt":"2022-02-03T08:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/?p=12989"},"modified":"2022-01-31T11:00:08","modified_gmt":"2022-01-31T11:00:08","slug":"10-years-ago-london-atos-guantanamo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/?p=12989","title":{"rendered":"10 Years Ago – London, Atos & Guantanamo"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

10 Years Ago – London, Atos & Guantanamo – 3rd Feb 2012<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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London Walking<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

I was early for the protest I had come to photograph so I took a little walk around the area just north of the Euston Rd. I’d used Transport for London’s Journey Planner, but forgotten that this sometimes hugely exaggerates the time taken to make changes between trains and between train and bus for those familiar with routes. Walking helped stop me from completely freezing with the temperature around zero and a cutting wind. Some days even thermal underclothing isn’t enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Later I walked around Kings Cross looking for a protest outside a place that didn’t seem to exist – I think the organisers had got the address wrong – but in any case I could find nothing happening in the area and then went to get a bus and photographed the St Pancras hotel from near the bus stop. Eventually my bus came.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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London Walking<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Disabled Protest Supports the Atos Two<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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Disabled people and their supporters braved freezing weather to stage an hour-long protest outside the UK offices of Atos, protesting against the unfair testing of fitness to work and benefit cuts and supporting the ‘Atos 2’.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Atos 2 were a wheelchair user and a pensioner, Notts Uncut activists who were charged with \u2018aggravated trespass\u2019 after peacefully entering an Atos assessment centre in Nottingham on a National Day of Action Against Atos and the Benefit Cuts last December. The charges were eventually dropped but the arrest and illegal confiscation of video material marked a new and disturbing attitude by police towards peaceful protest. There was another protest in Nottingham at the same time as that in London.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Disabled Protest Supports the Atos Two<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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London Guant\u00e1namo Campaign Candlelit Vigil<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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The London Guant\u00e1namo Campaign marked 5 years of regular protest at the US Embassy and over 10 years of illegal detention with a candlelit vigil, calling for the shutting down of the camp and the return of UK residents Shaker Aamer and Ahmed Belbacha.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Ahmed Belbacha was eventually released without charge in 2014, having been twice cleared for release in 2007 and 2009. He had come to the UK from Algeria as an asylum seeker and lived and worked here for a couple of years before his claim was rejected, after which he went to Pakistan to study the Koran. He made a visit to Afghanistan and was arrested on his way back to Pakistan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Shaker Aamer, a Saudi citizen and legal UK resident married to a British woman who was applying for British citizenship went with his family to work for an Islamic charity in Afghanistan in 2001. He was arrested by Afghans and handed to the US in return for a ransom. Again he was cleared for release in 2007 and 2009, but continued to be held until October 2015.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

London Guant\u00e1namo Campaign Candlelit Vigil<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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10 Years Ago – London, Atos & Guantanamo – 3rd Feb 2012 London Walking I was early for the protest I had come to photograph so I took a little walk around the area just north of the Euston Rd. I’d used Transport for London’s Journey Planner, but forgotten that this sometimes hugely exaggerates the … Continue reading 10 Years Ago – London, Atos & Guantanamo<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,3,7],"tags":[6844,3442,6848,3960,342,236,6845,6847,3961,2687,3079,2107,17,6583,1343,3438,83,16,6846,2686,3441],"class_list":["post-12989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-londonphotos","category-my-own-work","category-political-issues","tag-10-years-ago","tag-atos","tag-atos-2","tag-atos-tests","tag-candlelit-vigil","tag-dpac","tag-euston-road","tag-faulty-tests","tag-fit-to-work","tag-grosvenor-square","tag-guantanamo","tag-kings-cross","tag-london","tag-london-guantanamo-campaign-2","tag-london-photos","tag-mhrn","tag-peter-marshall","tag-protest","tag-triton-square","tag-us-embassy","tag-winvisible"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12989"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12989\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12991,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12989\/revisions\/12991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}