Guantanamo Follow-up

Following up on our very recent discussion of Mahvish Khan's My Guantanamo Diary, we have a new look at the The Guantánamo “Suicides” from Scott Horton of Harper's. Reaction from Glenn Greenwald (Salon) and Dahlia Lithwick (Slate),

The fact that three Guantanamo prisoners—none of whom had any links to terrorism and two of whom had already been cleared for release—may have been killed there and the deaths covered up, should be front-page news. That brand-new evidence of this possible atrocity from military guards was given only the most cursory investigation by the Obama administration should warrant some kind of blowback. But changing what we allow ourselves to believe about torture would change the way we have reconciled ourselves to torture. Nobody in this country is prepared to do that. So we have opted to ignore it.

Don't to forget to check out fresh action opportunities on Guantanamo closure from the ACLU Amnesty!

Update:  Via Human Rights Now,  here's how Amnesty is responding,

Yesterday, Amnesty International wrote formally to US Attorney General Eric Holder urging him to:

1) Release unredacted copies of the NCIS and SOUTHCOM investigations into the incident;
2) Publish the Department of Justice’s investigation of Sgt. Hickman’s allegations;
3) Reveal the purpose of the facility Hickman labeled ‘Camp No’; and
4) Publish any materials relating to the abuse of a fourth detainee, Shaker Aamer, reported to have taken place in Camp Echo on the same day.

  

Our January Author: Mahvish Khan

Mahvish Khan, author of this month's selection, My Guantanamo Diary: The Detainees and the Stories They Told Me, has her own website: Mahvish. You'll find pictures from Guantanamo, Afghanistan and the detainees and their families there. Guantanamo is a popular place for photo essayists. See also these provocative photo collections from TIME, Edmund Clark at lens culture and more from the Boston Globe.

Video of talks given by Khan are available from Authors@Google and ForaTV.




To follow up on the status of prisoners mentioned in the book or others you may have read about or written an Amnesty action on behalf of, you can consult the NYT's Guantánamo Docket. The Washington Post has a Guantanamo Bay Timeline that could be useful as well. Two of the NGO's featured prominently in the book are the Center for Constitutional Rights and Reprieve. CCR runs down all the Supreme Court cases concerning Guantanamo inmates and Reprieve does a good job of featuring the stories of their various detainee clients. Reprieve's director, Clive Stafford Smith wrote in the LATimes in 2007,

In more than 20 years trying death-penalty cases, I have visited all the worst prisons in the Deep South, yet none compares to Camp Six here. To the military, this tribute to Halliburton's profiteering is state-of-the-art; to the human being, it is simply inhumane.

The ACLU is always a worth a look too: Close Gitmo & End Military Commissions. And of course, you should check out Amnesty International USA's Counter Terror with Justice page, especially the current actions on behalf of detainees.

NPR reports on Guantanamo poetry and Harper's adds a poem from Jumah al-Dossary, who also penned this account of his imprisonment for the Washington Post, I'm Home, but Still Haunted by Guantanamo, leaving us with a little hope,

In Guantanamo, I was very angry with the people who had decided to hold me thousands of miles from home without charging or trying me. I was very angry with the people who kept me in isolation even when I was at my most desperate. I was very angry about having no rights at all. I was not angry with Americans in general and I even drew comfort from some, such as my lawyers and the kind soldier. But I could scarcely comprehend how U.S. policy had allowed me to be treated as I had been.
On the plane ride home, though, I decided that I would have to forgive to go on with my life. I also know that Sept. 11 was a great tragedy that caused some people to do dark things that they would not otherwise do. This knowledge helped me forget my miserable existence in Guantanamo and open my heart to life again...

Would that we could leave this behind us too, but the matter of what happens after Guantanamo still confronts us. I leave you with this post, Obama & the Guantanamo Mess: A Way Out? by David Cole from the New York Review blog as a signpost for discussion.

For January: My Guantanamo Diary

For January, we have chosen My Guantanamo Diary: The Detainees and the Stories They Told Me by Mahvish Khan:

Mahvish Khan is the only Afghan-American to walk into Guantanamo of her own accord. This unique book is her story, and the story of the men she grew to know uniquely well inside the cages of Guantanamo. Mahvish Khan is an American lawyer, born to immigrant Afghan parents. She was outraged that her country, the USA, seemed to have suspended its tradition of equality for all under the law with regard to those imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, and so she volunteered to translate for the lawyers - including British lawyer and founder of Reprieve Clive Stafford Smith - acting pro bono for the prisoners. Because she spoke their language, understood their customs and brought them Starbucks chai, the closest available drink to the kind of tea they would drink at home, they quickly befriended her, offering fatherly advice as well as a uniquely personal insight into their plight, and that of their families thousands of miles away at home. Some at Guantanamo are terrorists who deserve to be convicted and sentenced as such. Some are paediatricians and school teachers. We cannot tell the difference until we see them as individuals with their own unique stories. They deserve that much. No other writer has had access to the detainees. This book is a testament to their captivity. It documents the voices of men who have been tortured and held in a black hole of indefinite detention without legal recourse for years. It shows who they are and also allows readers to see that these men are more similar to us than they are different.