The stories of Guantanamo detainees, silenced and imprisoned without trial, as told by their lawyers
Following the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the United States imprisoned more than seven hundred and fifty men at its naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. These men, ranging from teenage boys to men in their eighties from over forty different countries, were detained for years without charges, trial, and a fair hearing. Without any legal status or protection, they were truly outside the law: imprisoned in secret, denied communication with their families, and subjected to extreme isolation, physical and mental abuse, and, in some instances, torture.
These are the detainees' stories, told by their lawyers because the prisoners themselves were silenced. It took habeas counsel more than two years-and a ruling from the United States Supreme Court-to finally gain the right to visit and talk to their clients at Guantanamo. Even then, lawyers were forced to operate under severe restrictions designed to inhibit communication and envelop the prison in secrecy. In time, however, lawyers were able to meet with their clients and bring the truth about Guantanamo to the world.
The Guantanamo Lawyers contains over one hundred personal narratives from attorneys who have represented detainees held at "GTMO" as well as at other overseas prisons, from Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan to secret CIA jails or "black sites." Mark Denbeaux and Jonathan Hafetz-themselves lawyers for detainees-collected stories that cover virtually every facet of Guantanamo, and the litigation it sparked. Together, these moving, powerful voices create a historical record of Guantanamo's legal, human, and moral failings, and provide a window into America's catastrophic effort to create a prison beyond the law.
An online archive, hosted by New York University Libraries, will be available at the time of publication and will contain the complete texts as well as other accounts contributed by Guantanamo lawyers. The documents will be freely available on the Internet for research, teaching, and non-commercial uses, and will be preserved indefinitely as a historical collection.
Read free excerpts from the book at http://www.theguantanamolawyers.com and explore the complete archive of narratives at http://dlib.nyu.edu/guantanamo
Industry Reviews
"The Guantanamo Lawyers is an informative and telling chronicle of what Guantanamo is really like, the physical appearance of the place, how the inmates behaved, the Kafkaesque legalistic gymnastics used by the government to try to keep the detainees locked up without recourse to the civilian courts, the use of confessions extracted -- according to the book, by force -- from detainees not old enough to have driver's licenses... Most of all, the book presents a sharp challenge to the view of those who supported the detentions at Guantanamo out of the belief that the men detained there really were, as former Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld famously put it, "the worst of the worst" - Richard Bernstein, New York Times, October 2010 "A critically important and inspired project... Guantanamo from the point of view of the habeas lawyers - those courageous men and women who have stood up for the rule of law, the constitution and human rights as they represented the detainees beginning in December." Peter Jan Honigsburg, author of Our Nation, Unhinged: The Human Consequences of the War on Terror "The narratives are excellent and very powerful, and provide an insightful view into what it is like to be a prisoner at Guantanamo and the challenges and emotional experiences in representing those prisoners." Jules Lobel, co-author of Less Safe, Less Free: Why America is Losing the War on Terror "The desperate words, quoted here, of Gitmo detainees on torture grab the heart and do not let go. This compelling book on the American penal colony and its residents is a cautionary tale of overzealous executive wartime power and the awful mess it sometimes leaves behind."Publishers Weekly, 31st August 2009 "A valuable contribution to the record of an unfinished story bound to reverberate for years to come." Kirkus Reviews, issue 9/15 "The Guantanamo Lawyers: Inside a Prison Outside the Law, a collective account by the lawyers who have volunteered to represent the island's prisoners, provides an invaluable perspective--or more accurately, perspectives, since more than one hundred lawyers contributed to the volume. These men and women, all working for nothing, have gained intimate access to those whom the United States sought to keep hidden behind strictly closed doors. The significance of what they have learned is reflected in how the United States treats them...The stories these lawyers have been able to tell, adroitly edited by Mark Denbeaux and Jonathan Hafetz, offer a multifaceted portrait of life on the base." - New York Review of Books
