Justice at Guantanamo: One Woman's Odyssey and Her Crusade for Human Rights [Hardcover]

Kristine Huskey with Aleigh Acerni (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 2, 2009

A tell-all journey of how one woman landed the toughest legal career on the planet—defending suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay—by using personal strength, courage, and never letting anyone tell her no.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Justice at Guantanamo is about a woman from Alaska who does understand what America really stands for—equal justice for all under the law, common decency, and respect for human rights. Kristine Huskey may have captured our attention with her beauty and her personality, but she captured our commitment to the cause of her clients with her intellect and her courage.”

—U.S. Congressman Jim Moran, Virginia’s 8th Congressional District

 

“Kristine Huskey skillfully weaves together the story of how she discovers her calling in life with the saga that takes her and her colleagues into the prison cells of Guantánamo Bay. The reader cannot help but be inspired by Huskey’s passion for justice and her desire to preserve America’s most cherished ideals.”

—Joanne B. Ciulla, professor and Coston Family Chair in Leadership and Ethics, Jepson School of Leadership Studies, University of Richmond

From the Inside Flap

As a professional model and dancer in 1990, Kristine Huskey would never have guessed that by 2006 she’d be one of America’s top human rights experts—and an attorney defending the world’s most controversial prisoners. Then again, her life had always had its unexpected turns. In Justice at Guantánamo, Huskey tells the fascinating story of how she went from a childhood in Alaska to a civil war in Africa, from the glitter (and grunge) of life in the Big Apple to, finally, her true calling—law.
                            
Huskey was one of the first female lawyers to represent detainees of the Guantánamo Bay detention center—including two whose cases yielded a landmark Supreme Court decision allowing them to challenge their detentions in federal courts. Justice at Guantánamo delves into her many visits to the camp’s secretive, all-male world. Riveting scenes capture the intensity as Huskey advocates for such men as “the twelve Kuwaitis” whose incarceration under inhumane conditions causes some of them to engage in near-fatal hunger strikes. When Huskey fights for better medical care for these men, they seek in her a friend and, sometimes, a savoir.

 

Huskey continues to fight for her clients’ rights and to forge a career in the controversial realm of national security. In light of signals from the administration of President Obama that the United States may continue to detain suspected (but not convicted) terrorists—notwithstanding its plans to close the infamous detention center—Huskey must also ask: Can we forge a new policy that protects both our national security and our founding fathers’ ideals?

 

While Guantánamo’s legacy will be questionable at best, this remarkable book shows that more certain is the legacy of one woman who never let anyone tell her no as she fought for the rule of law in the “war on terror.”

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Lyons Press; First edition (June 2, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1599214687
• ISBN-13: 978-1599214689
• Product Dimensions: 1.1 x 5.5 x 7.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,845,748 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Role Model for Young Women December 14, 2009

By Caroline A. Millar

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

This is definitely a page turner and I read it in one day. One cannot but help to keep reading as it flows beautifully and you are fascinated by all Kristine has done in her life up until now.
Kristine's "adventurers" make for a parent's white hairs but she is also a role model to young women to set goals for themselves and aim higher.
I have a whole new outlook on Guantanamo and feel foolish I fell into the "media" version of what has happened there. To see it from Kristine's humanitarian perspective is an eye opener and thank God for her convictions and those of others to see that justice is served.
I am definitely ordering this book for our two daughters who also grew up in Alaska and fortunately are able to think for themselves are sensitive to the needs of others.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Couldn't put it down October 18, 2009

By L. H. Orth

Format:Hardcover

What a great book and a fresh new way to look at such an intense, headline topic as Guantanamo. Kristine Huskey's life is gripping on its own. From her formative years in a fine arts boarding school, to setting out on her own in NYC, living the fast life to deciding to go to college, it was fascinating. The risks that Kristine Huskey took in her everyday life made me shake my head and think, "I never could have done THAT!" Weave her life around her legal career and where it took her and you have an incredible story.

I'm not one to read nonfiction, as I prefer novels, but this book reads like a fast paced novel with lots of rich characters, action and an intense legal battle. Justice at Guantanamo taught me about how our legal system is supposed to work and how an administration can block, delay, and ignore the law and what our constitution stands for. Reading Kristine Huskey's story, of her career build up to representing the Kuwaiti families with loved ones in Gitmo, along with the struggle for justice that she, her clients and her law firm faced made me question my own beliefs as an American. Do I really believe in the phrase so often said, that one is innocent until proven guilty? When is it correct to ignore that basic right? Is it right for me to decide, while I'm watching the news, without hearing all the facts that a person is guilty of a crime? Because the crime was against my country, does that mean that it's right to ignore protocol and forget that America believes in liberty and justice for all? Who gets a fair trial and who doesn't?

This book made me really think about how our society has become caustically judgemental, and unfortunately a lot more openly racist against people who look, talk and pray differently than other people. Justice at Guantanamo made me ask the question; at what point does a crime become bad enough that the suspect is stripped of the basic human rights that our country is founded upon? Gitmo is still in the news. There are still unanswered questions about the prisoners remaining in Gitmo. Having read Justice at Guantanamo, I will follow the ongoing story with the recent facts. Kudos to Kristine Huskey for writing such an insightful, timely and thought provoking book.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars I was wrong. August 12, 2009

By John Quincy Lee

Format:Hardcover

An inspiring story about Kristine Huskey, party animal turned human rights lawyer. A wonderful lesson in humility. Kristine Huskey was brave (and crazy) enough to challenge a grave injustice committed during the Bush administration. While these prisoners rot away at Guantanamo Bay today. President Bush can only express "regret". What are the lessons we learned after the "exclusion act" against the Chinese Americans, the internment camps against the Japanese Americans? 9-11 pissed us off. But I must admit I was also blinded by my anger. I was wrong to believe in "us or them" propaganda. We must commit to equal justice for all humanity like Kristine has. Very good book.