Five Years of My Life: An Innocent Man in Guantanamo (Hardcover)

by Murat Kurnaz (Author) "IF I HAD TOLD MY MOTHER THAT I INTENDED TO TRAVEL TO Pakistan, she wouldn't have let me go..." (more)
Key Phrases: soundproof headphones, escort team, Red Cross, Department of Defense, United States (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The most compassionate, truthful and dignified account of the disgrace of Guantanamo that you are ever likely to read." --John le Carré

 

"I thank God that  Murat kept his sanity in the hell of injustice and torture of nearly 5 years in Guantanamo so he could tell his story. May it be studied in every school and college in Europe and the USA. May it help to close down all the illegal and secret prisons and camps, as well as Guantanamo, and restore the prisoners to their families. I am sure Murat's book will educate a whole generation about justice and the defense of human rights." -- Vanessa Redgrave

 

"Like many of the men imprisoned in Guantánamo, Murat Kurnaz was held for years without proper charge or trial. After intensive campaigning by his friends, family and Amnesty International members all over the world, he was finally released. This book is a profound and detailed account of his experiences. After suffering torture and detention without trial, it is testament to great strength of character that he is able to tell his story with such power and clarity." -- Kate Allen, Director, Amnesty International UK

"Murat makes the horrors and inanities of Guantánamo so real; his voice is by turns young and headstrong, wry and wise. Murat's mother came to the Unites States to hear our first Guantánamo case argued before the Supreme Court back in 2004 - when I met her, I didn't know whether she would ever see her son again.  Now he is home safe and has produced this riveting and moving account of his torture and abuse at the hands of the U.S. government to shine a light in a dark place and try to help all those still languishing without hope.  This is a must read." -- Michael Ratner, President of the Center for Constitutional Rights and attorney representing the Guantánamo detainees.

"Kurnaz recounts his woes, and those of his fellow prisoners, with modesty and compassion. . . . He has written a measured and readable account, which is often even humorous in a Swiftian sort of way." -- The Economist

"A vital document that should - rightly - shock and appall." -- Kirkus Reviews

"A plainspoken account, Five Years of My Life focuses on the daily humiliations and surreal texture of life at Guantanamo" - Mother Jones

"May well represent our best hope yet of preserving the truth about this depraved chapter in American history...Kurnaz describes the varied tortures to which he was subjected for the next five years with such a level-headed lack of self-pity that they come across as neither bitter rallying cry nor unbearable litany of torment. In his gentle, understated way, Kurnaz describes the reality behind the euphemisms used to describe the 'enhanced interrogation practices' the Bush administration has openly authorized in the 'war on terror'." --  The Santa Barbara Independant

"This is a book politicians should read, and should inspire anguished soul-searching among the rest of us." -- The Washington Post

“Kurnaz…avoids sensationalism for a harrowing record of barbarities carried out in the name of democracy…[written] in stark, unadorned prose, with no scores to settle, knowing that his account is beyond most people’s imagination.” -- The Guardian (UK)

 

"Kurnaz reveals Guantanamo shorn of media spin." -- The Guardian (UK)

 

"[An] indispensable document" -- The Washington Post

Product Description

In October 2001, nineteen-year-old Murat Kurnaz traveled to Pakistan to visit a madrassa. During a security check a few weeks after his arrival, he was arrested without explanation and for a bounty of $3,000, the Pakistani police sold him to U.S. forces. He was first taken to Kandahar, Afghanistan, where he was severely mistreated, and then two months later he was flown to Guantanamo as Prisoner #61. For more than 1,600 days, he was tortured and lived through hell.  He was kept in a cage and endured daily interrogations, solitary confinement, and sleep deprivation. Finally, in August 2006, Kurnaz was released, with  acknowledgment of his innocence. Told with lucidity, accuracy, and wisdom, Kurnaz's story is both sobering and poignant--an important testimony about our turbulent times when innocent people get caught in the crossfire of the war on terrorism.

See all Editorial Reviews

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Product Details Hardcover: 256 pages Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan (April 1, 2008) Language: English ISBN-10: 0230603742 ISBN-13: 978-0230603745 Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies) Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (16 customer reviews) Amazon.com Sales Rank: #57,048 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books) Popular in these categories: (What's this?) #12 in  Books > Nonfiction > Social Sciences > Political Science > Rights #22 in  Books > Nonfiction > Politics > Human Rights #23 in  Books > Nonfiction > Law > Constitutional Law > Human Rights

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First Sentence:
IF I HAD TOLD MY MOTHER THAT I INTENDED TO TRAVEL TO Pakistan, she wouldn't have let me go. Read the first page

Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
soundproof headphones, escort team

Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Red Cross, Department of Defense, United States, Saudi Arabia, General Miller, Block Mike, Ali Miri, Uncle Ekram, Block Alpha, Mansura Center, Baher Azmy, Murat Kurnaz, Selcuk Bilgin, Abu Bakr Mosque, Sofyen Ben Amor, Mohammed Atta, Kuba Mosque, Weser River

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Customer Reviews

16 Reviews 5 star:  (11) 4 star:  (2) 3 star:  (2) 2 star:    (0) 1 star:  (1)           Average Customer Review 4.4 out of 5 stars (16 customer reviews)		Share your thoughts with other customers:
Most Helpful Customer Reviews 6 of 8 people found the following review helpful: 5.0 out of 5 stars Inside Gitmo, April 1, 2008 By  Kerry Walters (Lewisburg, PA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)       It's rare (at my age, anyway!) for a book to keep me up all night. But Murat Kurnaz's memoir of his five years in the Guantanamo prison camp did just that. I spent most of the night hours reading it, alternately grateful that we finally have an insider's view of Gitmo and horrified at Kurnaz's descriptions of what he and the other prisoners endured. The rest of the night I spent pacing, too agitated by what I'd read to sleep. If even a small part of what Kurnaz says is true--and we have independent evidence that suggests his tale is accurate--the treatment of prisoners at Gitmo is indecent and, by any reasonable person's standard, illegal. Kurnaz, a German-born (in 1982) Turk, traveled to Pakistan in late 2001 to study at a madrassa. Shortly thereafter, through a combination of false evidence, police corruption, alleged guilt by association, and bureaucratic incompetence, he was arrested and handed over to American military authorities. After a three-month imprisonment in Afghanistan, he was transferred to Gitmo, where he would stay until his exoneration and release in August 2006. (This despite the fact that the U.S. authorities quickly realized, as Kurnaz's lawyer, Baher Azmy, compellingly argues in the book's epilogue, that Kurnaz was innocent.) Kurnaz's first three months in Gitmo were spent in Camp X-Ray, so called because the prisoners where in open air cages where everything was "completely transparent" to the scrutiny of the guards. The cages were 15 square feet (smaller than German requirements for caging animals), open to the weather as well as spiders, snakes, and scorpions. prisoners were irregularly fed, denied medical treatment, and given bad water to drink. They were also forbidden to stand, lie down during the day, or touch the sides of the cages. Breaking any rule brought swift retribution from the IRF, Immediate Reaction Force, whose members would quickly pepper-spray the offending prisoner and then beat him senseless. But spraying and beating could also come out of the blue. The point, Kurnaz quickly concluded, was to break prisoners and humiliate them--but also, at least in some cases, to provide guards an opportunity to vent (p. 147). Transferred from open cages to cages within buildings--a new prison called Camp Delta--Kurnaz underwent regular and harsh interrogation, endured often uneatable food, participated in a couple of hunger strikes when the Koran was trampled by American guards, and suffered under a new policy of "maximum discomfort" initiated by a change of camp commanders. The new CO, General Geoffrey Miller, began Operation Sandman, intended to deprive prisoners of sleep by subjecting them to continuous cell rotations and loud heavy metal music. Rebelling against the physical abuse and the psych-ops mistreatments, Kurnaz was repeatedly thrown into solitary confinement--basically a "ship container with a door" whose temperature could be manipulated to be either frigid or suffocatingly hot (p. 161). A particularly poignant moment in Kurnaz's imprisonment was when one of his American guards, conscience-stricken, confessed to him that the treatment of Gitmo prisoners constituted torture. On the day of his discharge from the military, the guard removed his MP armband and threw it on the ground (pp. 193-94). Other guards, indoctrinated before their tour of duty with films and lectures that described Gitmo prisoners as murderous prisoners, were brutal. Kurnaz's story is horrifying, both because of its details and because it affirms what most of us uncomfortably have already pieced together--that prisoners are being tortured at Gitmo. How ironic that the logo over the Guantanamo gates says "Honor Bound to Defend Freedom" (p. 147). 7 of 10 people found the following review helpful: 3.0 out of 5 stars An unnecessary Martyr, May 12, 2008 By  Herbert L Calhoun "paulocal" (Falls Church, VA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)    In this rather harrowing story, Murat Kurnaz's a Turkish immigrant living with his family in Germany, recounts the events that landed him in a series of U.S. sanctioned Post-911 prisons: establishments we have since learned are to be referred to as part of U.S. "renditions:" that is prisons operating with U.S. consent but outside normal U.S. legal jurisdiction. What we have since learned is that they are strung across the globe from Afghanistan to Cuba. In graphic details, the author gives an almost blow-by-blow account of the almost uncivilized treatment he received in each prison. Although he never actually uses that term torture, the reader can draw his own conclusions about what to call it. No matter what one calls it, if even a small part of his story is true, there is nothing revealed here that in any way could make the U.S. proud of its actions. Although in defense of those actions, it is not just a minor detail that Murat and his brother were arrested a few months after the 911 attack on America, when both were enroute to Afghanistan. And when detained they gave contradictory reasons for their travels. According to Murat the purpose of the trip was to attend a Madrassa better to get in touch with their Muslim religions roots. However, this is not the story told by his brother, who was stopped at the German border by immigration authorities. According to his brother, they were headed to Afghanistan to fight for the Taliban. In fact, it is this his brother's version (told to the German authorities unbeknownst to Murat), that eventually got Murat into hot water once he arrived at the Pakistani-Afghan border. The brother's version took on added significance when it was also learned by German authorities (through subsequent interviews with his family) that both had left Germany in secrecy and without giving warning even to their families. On the surface, even Murat's telling of this story looks suspiciously like preparatory terrorists activity. It didn't help matters either that Pakistan authorities were being paid a bounty of $3,000 for turning in suspected terrorists. If indeed the author and his brother were headed to Afghanistan to fight for the Taliban, as the latter claimed, then they surely could not have been expecting any sympathy from the U.S. government. And indeed, had he been properly charged and brought before a normal U.S. bar of justice, there would be no story to tell here. I frankly would have had no sympathy for their plight either, because under this more normal set of circumstances, evidence could have been brought forth, including the testimony of his brother, and the family. And as is customary in such cases, their respective fates would have been left to the mercy of the U.S. courts, either military or civilian. Based just on the facts told here, the chances would have been about 50-50 that they could have been convicted on charges of conspiring to give support to sworn U.S. enemies. But that is not the story told here. Instead of being given at least the minimum of due process guaranteed under the Geneva Convention, of being formally charged under U.S. law, transported and held over for trial, and then given proper legal representation, instead Murat was unconscionably held incommunicado and against every percept of American law, tortured for more than five years. Even if no lawsuits ensue, just as was the case with Abu Ghraib, irreparable damage has been done to the U.S. international reputation. Leaving all of the torture aside, which is difficult to do given how blatant it was, the sheer insanity of our leaders to engage in such unconscionable practices even in the aftermath of 911, simply staggers the imagination. Are we a Banana Republic or what? Three stars. 9 of 13 people found the following review helpful: 5.0 out of 5 stars A powerfully told tale that will keep you reading to the end, April 16, 2008 By  Alan E. Eggleston (Michigan, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)    I shared the experience of another reviewer of this book. I was so insensed by what I was reading, I read late into the night until I couldn't remain awake (3 a.m.) and then got up the next morning and read thoughout the morning and afternoon again to finish this story. There are lots of reasons to read this book: To learn the truth and be enraged at the audacity of powerful people out of control. To not quite believe what you've heard and want to hear for yourself what someone experienced firsthand. To be a non-believer and to see what falsehoods are being spread against our democracy. But beware -- once you read this, you will be insensed at what is happening in our name and to our name, and the only way it will keep happening is if we simply refuse to listen when someone tells us about it. This tale is powerfully told. It will surely keep you reading to the end, too.		Most Recent Customer Reviews 1.0 out of 5 stars Absolute fantasy I can only hope that the German version makes more sense. Kernaz and his fellow Muslims praying EAST from Afghanistan? Don't think so. Read more Published 2 months ago by James D. Crabtree 5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing Truth!! I am so shocked and moved after reading this book. This is a must read for everyone.. What happens in Guantanamo is inhumane. Not even animals are treated this way. Published 11 months ago by UmAyah 5.0 out of 5 stars American disgrace In this book, translated from German, Murat Kurnaz, a German Turk, tells his tragic story. When only nineteen and an apprentice shipbuilder, while taking time off in Pakistan for... Read more Published 11 months ago by Gillian A 5.0 out of 5 stars Senator Dick Durbin was right about Guantanamo After reading an FBI report about the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo, the U.S. Senator from Illinois, Dick Durbin, compared it to the Nazis. Read more Published 11 months ago by Rod 5.0 out of 5 stars A must read! The book highlights some of the darkest sides of the Bush administation's "War On Terror". Murat Kurnaz tells a breathtaking and horrifying story about the unlawful detention that... Read more Published 12 months ago by P S 5.0 out of 5 stars Must read A first hand testimony of how things can go so wrong when we forget to treat people as human beings Published 13 months ago by Fanny 4.0 out of 5 stars A Big Black Eye for America Assuming everything Murat writes about in this book is true, and for now I'm assuming that it is because I have no reason to believe otherwise, it is the most revealing and... Read more Published 14 months ago by G. Towle 4.0 out of 5 stars RICK "SHAQ" GOLDSTEIN SAYS: "AN APPALLING CONFINEMENT... BUT WITNESSES NAMES NEED TO BE REVEALED." On October 3, 2001 (Shortly after the World Trade Center attacks of 9/11) the author, 19-year-old Murat Kurnaz flew from Germany to Pakistan to fulfill his personal goal of... Read more Published 14 months ago by Rick Shaq Goldstein 5.0 out of 5 stars Required reading for all Americans Night by Elie Wiesel. A Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovitch by Alexander Solzhenityn. These are the books that I was reminded of as I read Murat Kurnaz's account of the time he... Read more Published 14 months ago by Keri A. 5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing first hand account The book will shock the hell out of you. This is not some second-hand account, but day-by-day details from an actual victim. Read more Published 14 months ago by Tom Markus Search Customer Reviews Only search this product's reviews

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan (April 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0230603742
• ISBN-13: 978-0230603745
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #57,048 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #12 in	Books > Nonfiction > Social Sciences > Political Science > Rights
  #22 in	Books > Nonfiction > Politics > Human Rights
  #23 in	Books > Nonfiction > Law > Constitutional Law > Human Rights

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Inside Gitmo, April 1, 2008

By	Kerry Walters (Lewisburg, PA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

It's rare (at my age, anyway!) for a book to keep me up all night. But Murat Kurnaz's memoir of his five years in the Guantanamo prison camp did just that. I spent most of the night hours reading it, alternately grateful that we finally have an insider's view of Gitmo and horrified at Kurnaz's descriptions of what he and the other prisoners endured. The rest of the night I spent pacing, too agitated by what I'd read to sleep. If even a small part of what Kurnaz says is true--and we have independent evidence that suggests his tale is accurate--the treatment of prisoners at Gitmo is indecent and, by any reasonable person's standard, illegal.

Kurnaz, a German-born (in 1982) Turk, traveled to Pakistan in late 2001 to study at a madrassa. Shortly thereafter, through a combination of false evidence, police corruption, alleged guilt by association, and bureaucratic incompetence, he was arrested and handed over to American military authorities. After a three-month imprisonment in Afghanistan, he was transferred to Gitmo, where he would stay until his exoneration and release in August 2006. (This despite the fact that the U.S. authorities quickly realized, as Kurnaz's lawyer, Baher Azmy, compellingly argues in the book's epilogue, that Kurnaz was innocent.)

Kurnaz's first three months in Gitmo were spent in Camp X-Ray, so called because the prisoners where in open air cages where everything was "completely transparent" to the scrutiny of the guards. The cages were 15 square feet (smaller than German requirements for caging animals), open to the weather as well as spiders, snakes, and scorpions. prisoners were irregularly fed, denied medical treatment, and given bad water to drink. They were also forbidden to stand, lie down during the day, or touch the sides of the cages. Breaking any rule brought swift retribution from the IRF, Immediate Reaction Force, whose members would quickly pepper-spray the offending prisoner and then beat him senseless. But spraying and beating could also come out of the blue. The point, Kurnaz quickly concluded, was to break prisoners and humiliate them--but also, at least in some cases, to provide guards an opportunity to vent (p. 147).

Transferred from open cages to cages within buildings--a new prison called Camp Delta--Kurnaz underwent regular and harsh interrogation, endured often uneatable food, participated in a couple of hunger strikes when the Koran was trampled by American guards, and suffered under a new policy of "maximum discomfort" initiated by a change of camp commanders. The new CO, General Geoffrey Miller, began Operation Sandman, intended to deprive prisoners of sleep by subjecting them to continuous cell rotations and loud heavy metal music. Rebelling against the physical abuse and the psych-ops mistreatments, Kurnaz was repeatedly thrown into solitary confinement--basically a "ship container with a door" whose temperature could be manipulated to be either frigid or suffocatingly hot (p. 161).

A particularly poignant moment in Kurnaz's imprisonment was when one of his American guards, conscience-stricken, confessed to him that the treatment of Gitmo prisoners constituted torture. On the day of his discharge from the military, the guard removed his MP armband and threw it on the ground (pp. 193-94). Other guards, indoctrinated before their tour of duty with films and lectures that described Gitmo prisoners as murderous prisoners, were brutal.

Kurnaz's story is horrifying, both because of its details and because it affirms what most of us uncomfortably have already pieced together--that prisoners are being tortured at Gitmo. How ironic that the logo over the Guantanamo gates says "Honor Bound to Defend Freedom" (p. 147).

7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars An unnecessary Martyr, May 12, 2008

By	Herbert L Calhoun "paulocal" (Falls Church, VA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

In this rather harrowing story, Murat Kurnaz's a Turkish immigrant living with his family in Germany, recounts the events that landed him in a series of U.S. sanctioned Post-911 prisons: establishments we have since learned are to be referred to as part of U.S. "renditions:" that is prisons operating with U.S. consent but outside normal U.S. legal jurisdiction. What we have since learned is that they are strung across the globe from Afghanistan to Cuba.

In graphic details, the author gives an almost blow-by-blow account of the almost uncivilized treatment he received in each prison. Although he never actually uses that term torture, the reader can draw his own conclusions about what to call it.

No matter what one calls it, if even a small part of his story is true, there is nothing revealed here that in any way could make the U.S. proud of its actions. Although in defense of those actions, it is not just a minor detail that Murat and his brother were arrested a few months after the 911 attack on America, when both were enroute to Afghanistan. And when detained they gave contradictory reasons for their travels.

According to Murat the purpose of the trip was to attend a Madrassa better to get in touch with their Muslim religions roots. However, this is not the story told by his brother, who was stopped at the German border by immigration authorities. According to his brother, they were headed to Afghanistan to fight for the Taliban. In fact, it is this his brother's version (told to the German authorities unbeknownst to Murat), that eventually got Murat into hot water once he arrived at the Pakistani-Afghan border. The brother's version took on added significance when it was also learned by German authorities (through subsequent interviews with his family) that both had left Germany in secrecy and without giving warning even to their families. On the surface, even Murat's telling of this story looks suspiciously like preparatory terrorists activity. It didn't help matters either that Pakistan authorities were being paid a bounty of $3,000 for turning in suspected terrorists.

If indeed the author and his brother were headed to Afghanistan to fight for the Taliban, as the latter claimed, then they surely could not have been expecting any sympathy from the U.S. government. And indeed, had he been properly charged and brought before a normal U.S. bar of justice, there would be no story to tell here. I frankly would have had no sympathy for their plight either, because under this more normal set of circumstances, evidence could have been brought forth, including the testimony of his brother, and the family. And as is customary in such cases, their respective fates would have been left to the mercy of the U.S. courts, either military or civilian. Based just on the facts told here, the chances would have been about 50-50 that they could have been convicted on charges of conspiring to give support to sworn U.S. enemies.

But that is not the story told here. Instead of being given at least the minimum of due process guaranteed under the Geneva Convention, of being formally charged under U.S. law, transported and held over for trial, and then given proper legal representation, instead Murat was unconscionably held incommunicado and against every percept of American law, tortured for more than five years.

Even if no lawsuits ensue, just as was the case with Abu Ghraib, irreparable damage has been done to the U.S. international reputation. Leaving all of the torture aside, which is difficult to do given how blatant it was, the sheer insanity of our leaders to engage in such unconscionable practices even in the aftermath of 911, simply staggers the imagination. Are we a Banana Republic or what?

Three stars.

9 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A powerfully told tale that will keep you reading to the end, April 16, 2008

By	Alan E. Eggleston (Michigan, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I shared the experience of another reviewer of this book. I was so insensed by what I was reading, I read late into the night until I couldn't remain awake (3 a.m.) and then got up the next morning and read thoughout the morning and afternoon again to finish this story.

There are lots of reasons to read this book: To learn the truth and be enraged at the audacity of powerful people out of control. To not quite believe what you've heard and want to hear for yourself what someone experienced firsthand. To be a non-believer and to see what falsehoods are being spread against our democracy. But beware -- once you read this, you will be insensed at what is happening in our name and to our name, and the only way it will keep happening is if we simply refuse to listen when someone tells us about it.

This tale is powerfully told. It will surely keep you reading to the end, too.