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The Guantánamo Lawyers: Inside a Prison Outside the Law
Read free excerpts from the book at http: //www.theguantanamolawyers.com and explore the complete archive of narratives at http: //dlib.nyu.edu/guantanamo
Following the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the United States imprisoned more than seven hundred and fifty men at its naval base at Guantánamo 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 Guantánamo. 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 Guantánamo to the world.
The Guantánamo 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 Guantánamo, and the litigation it sparked. Together, these moving, powerful voices create a historical record of Guantánamo'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 Guantánamo 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.
Following the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the United States imprisoned more than seven hundred and fifty men at its naval base at Guantánamo 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 Guantánamo. 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 Guantánamo to the world.
The Guantánamo 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 Guantánamo, and the litigation it sparked. Together, these moving, powerful voices create a historical record of Guantánamo'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 Guantánamo 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.
- GenresNonfictionLaw
464 pages, Hardcover
First published November 1, 2009
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189 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
November 8, 2009
As a former Guantanamo lawyer with two pieces in this book, I am completely biased. But from that bias, I can say that this book captures what it feels like to go to Guantanamo, to work to try to get your client a day in court as you have been trained to do, only to encounter delay after delay by the government, which insists that it holds the "worst of the worst" but refuses to prove it. This book is a collection of hundreds of voices with many different perspectives, but all with the desperate purposes of trying to help our clients. It also presents the stories of numerous detainees, many of whom have never previously been published. The preservation of their accounts will hopefully help history's verdict ensure that Guantanamo never happens again.
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May 12, 2009The editors are also co-directors of the Guantanamo documentation project:
http://www.nyu.edu/public.affairs/rel...
http://www.nyu.edu/public.affairs/rel...
February 18, 2019
I found this book browsing the bookshelves of a library -- and I'm eternally grateful that I did. For as much as you think you might know about Guantanamo from reading some articles here and there over the years -- nothing can quite compare to the overwhelming force of story upon story of tragedy, hope, despair, and continuing to fight in the face of daunting odds and dubious legal cover.
One of the most important messages from this book is the struggle for basic human dignity and the right to be told why you're being held. The editors do not claim or suggest that every story is that of someone falsely imprisoned or falsely accused of being an enemy combatant. It is uncontroverted, even by our own government, that scores or hundreds of human beings were wrongly held at Guantanamo for years on end, often in brutal conditions. I'd read some articles about the Uighurs, for example, but this book does an excellent job of bringing to the fore the human aspect of long-term detention, often including years of solitary confinement without so much as a single impartial hearing. Whether picked up on the battlefield or (as was often the case) fleeing violence and scooped up in Pakistan for reward money, these human beings spent years fighting a system that did not want to justify their imprisonment, and often released prisoners just prior to judicial hearings in order to avoid oversight of what had tragically occurred for years.
Now I recognize full well that the lawyers who tell the stories throughout come at this project with a specific end goal in mind -- often representation of their clients. Even keeping that in mind, however, it is hard to walk away from this book without feeling several things: pride at the efforts to uphold constitutional values; pride at the many public servants who refused to take part in sham hearings, or who called out the injustice of those proceedings, or who voted in combatant status hearings based on the (lack of) facts only to be later overturned by a bureaucracy that refused to acknowledge that it had wronged many of the human beings held at Guantanamo; shame at the individuals and institutions in power that failed to uphold our values -- even while recognizing that they thought they were protecting our country when they were acting to its detriment; and hope at the fact that the continued efforts of lawyers may have helped some of the human beings held at Guantanamo be restored to their families, lives, and countries, despite the fact that their years of incarceration can never be undone.
In the end, I recommend this book for any American who wants to be reminded of what this country stands for and anyone who wants to learn more about what occurred at Guantanamo. The stories are well-curated in this book and also available in full at http://dlib.nyu.edu/guantanamo/.
(The views expressed here are my own and do not reflect any official position of the DoD or US Air Force)
One of the most important messages from this book is the struggle for basic human dignity and the right to be told why you're being held. The editors do not claim or suggest that every story is that of someone falsely imprisoned or falsely accused of being an enemy combatant. It is uncontroverted, even by our own government, that scores or hundreds of human beings were wrongly held at Guantanamo for years on end, often in brutal conditions. I'd read some articles about the Uighurs, for example, but this book does an excellent job of bringing to the fore the human aspect of long-term detention, often including years of solitary confinement without so much as a single impartial hearing. Whether picked up on the battlefield or (as was often the case) fleeing violence and scooped up in Pakistan for reward money, these human beings spent years fighting a system that did not want to justify their imprisonment, and often released prisoners just prior to judicial hearings in order to avoid oversight of what had tragically occurred for years.
Now I recognize full well that the lawyers who tell the stories throughout come at this project with a specific end goal in mind -- often representation of their clients. Even keeping that in mind, however, it is hard to walk away from this book without feeling several things: pride at the efforts to uphold constitutional values; pride at the many public servants who refused to take part in sham hearings, or who called out the injustice of those proceedings, or who voted in combatant status hearings based on the (lack of) facts only to be later overturned by a bureaucracy that refused to acknowledge that it had wronged many of the human beings held at Guantanamo; shame at the individuals and institutions in power that failed to uphold our values -- even while recognizing that they thought they were protecting our country when they were acting to its detriment; and hope at the fact that the continued efforts of lawyers may have helped some of the human beings held at Guantanamo be restored to their families, lives, and countries, despite the fact that their years of incarceration can never be undone.
In the end, I recommend this book for any American who wants to be reminded of what this country stands for and anyone who wants to learn more about what occurred at Guantanamo. The stories are well-curated in this book and also available in full at http://dlib.nyu.edu/guantanamo/.
(The views expressed here are my own and do not reflect any official position of the DoD or US Air Force)
February 4, 2010
The lawyers' first-hand narratives of battling for the rights of detainees are stirring, eye-opening, heartbreaking, and ultimately, infuriating. The lawyers' stories detail the senseless obstacles they face every step of the way, from getting to Guantanamo to seeing their clients to obtaining documents and battling bureaucratic red tape and duking it out in the courtroom and the Capitol. And the sheer hypocrisy and nonsensical nature of the government's policies, and their plain inability to prove that the detainees are actual terrorists, is mind-boggling. What is most heartbreaking are the accounts of the torture of the detainees, and their unbelievable mental, physical, and emotional suffering at the hands of our government. Many of these stories come straight from the mouths of the detainees, in their conversations with their lawyers and the letters they write, and you can't help but acutely feel their desperation and pain. A compelling must-read that shows the reality of the situation in Guantanamo, the mess we're in, and how far we've fallen from the rule of law and common human decency.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews