The Guantanamo Files: The Stories of the 759 Detainees in America's Ille (Paperback)

by Andy Worthington (Author)
Key Phrases: torture memo, cleared for release, humanitarian aid workers, Northern Alliance, Tora Bora, United States (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
'An important book. If you care about our Government's complicity in these illegal and horrific acts then this book provides the evidence.' Ken Loach"Extraordinary rendition, false imprisonment, inhumane treatment - including torture and death in secretive detention sites - has forever destroyed the lives of hundreds of men, of whom I was one. This book is the first of its kind to collate accounts from the prisoners themselves."Moazzam Begg, former Guantanamo detainee and spokesman for CagePrisoners"Guantanamo Bay is a legal black hole. ... This book is the closest many of the prisoners will come to a fair trial. Andy Worthington [uses] the US government's own documents to prove that innocent people were swept up in the post-9/11 panic. This is important work, impressively written." Clive Stafford Smith, Legal Director of Reprieve, and author of Bad Men: Guantanamo Bay and the Secret Prisons"Stunning. ... [Worthington] undermines claims that the prison camp is filled with vicious killers and terrorists."Marc Falkoff, lawyer for 17 Yemeni prisoners and editor of Poems from Guantanamo: The Detainees Speak"A meticulous [book] about torture at the beginning of the twenty-first century. [Written with] poignancy, compassion and outrage."Marty Fisher, Co-Producer of the film, 'Taxi to the Dark Side' "[This book is] an important tool for coming to grips with how we as a nation allowed indefinite detention without charge, extraordinary rendition and torture to become national policies."Candace Gorman, lawyer for two Guantanamo prisoners

Product Description

-- The first book to tell the story of every man trapped in Guantanamo --

'An important book. If you care about our Government's complicity in these illegal and horrific acts then this book provides the evidence.' Ken Loach

"Extraordinary rendition, fa

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Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Pluto Press (October 20, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0745326641
• ISBN-13: 978-0745326641
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #110,305 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A "war" with no Geneva Conventions, February 7, 2008

By	Mr. J. Putley "Jeremy Putley" (England) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

British journalist Andy Worthington is perhaps the world's leading expert on Guantánamo Bay and its inmates. Basing his research mostly on the Pentagon's own documents, obtained under freedom of information legislation, Worthington has produced a unique compendium of individual histories, combining them with a narrative of events in the "war on terror". The overwhelming case made by the book is that, amongst the great numbers of prisoners who were swept up in Afghanistan, the majority were either completely innocent men caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, or were unimportant foot-soldiers whose involvement in an inter-Muslim civil war both pre-dated 9/11 and had no connection with it. The treatment of these captives has been wholly disproportionate.

Helpless men, of whom some have subsequently been released, were tortured before arriving at Guantánamo Bay, the torture producing forced - and untrue - confessions of their links with al-Qaeda. In a number of cases the torture was "outsourced" to selected countries. The conduct of the CIA and the US military towards their prisoners recalls in some instances the fate of prisoners at the hands of the Gestapo in World War Two. Not coincidentally, perhaps, the term adopted by the US authorities, "enhanced interrogation techniques", expresses in English the Nazis' identical euphemism for similar forms of torture.

Following rendition to Guantánamo Bay, prisoners receive brutal treatment in supermax lockdowns. The majority of US "detainees" in Guantánamo Bay are being kept isolated in long-term solitary confinement, in high-security facilities. While there appears to be no operational necessity for such long-term isolation, one consequence of it is permanent psychological damage. In plain language, the detainees are being driven insane by the conditions of their incarceration. According to the normal meaning of words this is "cruel punishment" which the eighth amendment to the US Constitution specifically prohibits. The US appears to think such revenge against captives in its war on terror to be its moral right. Unfortunately for the Guantánamo detainees, because they are not US citizens, and not held in "the sovereign United States", the US Constitution does not operate for their protection.

Medical opinion is that the incarceration of prisoners in indefinite long-term solitary is a form of mental torture. As such it is contrary to the 1984 Convention Against Torture ratified by the United States. The supermax prison at Guantánamo Bay has been described as "harsher than any of the Death Row prisons" on the US mainland.

On the evidence provided by Andy Worthington, the judgment has to be that the US just over-reacted to the events of 9/11. Quite apart from the perverse decision to go to war in Iraq, what other verdict could there be, considering its adoption of torture as a method of punishment, and torture as a technique for the gathering of faulty intelligence?

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Underlying evil, June 12, 2008

By	John Fisher "3fish" (Springhill, Australia) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is a very detailed volume that takes a painstaking effort to detail, details of the various individuals who have been caught up in this so called war on terror.

It puts a human face to those incarcerated and a human story as to who they are.

And it is true there are some bad buggers in there, I think that I can account for perhaps 4 or was it 5 out of some 800.

But this is primarily the story of who the others are.

There is an underlying story in this volume, it sits just in the background and that is the bit that will really disturb the reader.

That there is an extraordinary incompetence in who was captured and an unbelievable naivety in the screening process of these people it does not surprise. I think that to most outside the US of A, this would be taken as a given; recent history allows us to draw no other conclusion.

The underlying story:

When I was a young lad in the early 60's our books and reading material often included stories of Nazi Germany and the prison systems that operated during that period, I well remember the revulsion I felt at that time as a 12 year old reading these stories of the abject cruelty of the guards toward those in their charge.

In reading Andy's story of the Guantanamo detainees, I suddenly realised that I was reading stories about those same cruel, or should I say evil, sadistic people. The German prison guards; only this time they were Americans in Afghanistan, Iraq and Cuba.

Which then makes me wonder, how is it that a very religious nation, primarily Christian to boot, preaching goodwill to all, a nation that is going to rid the world from evil can be responsible for such evil.

There is no question in my mind that the deeds mentioned in Andy's story will stand up to scrutiny. The evidence from all sources of the many evil deeds are overwhelming.

So where does this evil-sadistic nature come from. How does a nation create such evil creatures to do its bidding. That approval for the level of conduct heads right up to the administration so what conclusion do we draw about the US of A.

"Erfing" as is carried out at Guantanamo to this day. What sort of training goes into getting 5 to 8 thugs with shields, batons etc to enter a cell or gage and belt the living daylights out of the single inmate?

What type of people, cowards in the very essence of the word, are able to behave in this manner? In uniform, representative of all that is supposedly good of the US of A army. What type of soldiers does the US of A army train.

The "peroneal strike" and the story of Dilawar the taxi driver will bring you in for a reality check and not a good one.

The underlying story is the most frightening aspect of this book, a story that must be read.