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Summary
Summary
The U.S. detention center at Guantánamo Bay has become the symbol of an unprecedented detention system of global reach and immense power. Since the 9/11 attacks, the news has on an almost daily basis headlined stories of prisoners held indefinitely at Guantánamo without charge or trial, many of whom have been interrogated in violation of restrictions on torture and other abuse. These individuals, once labeled "enemy combatants" to eliminate legal restrictions on their treatment, have in numerous instances been subject to lawless renditions between prisons around the world. The lines between law enforcement and military action; crime and war; and the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of power have become dangerously blurred, and it is time to unpack the evolution and trajectory of these detentions to devise policies that restore the rule of law and due process.
Obama's Guantánamo: Stories from an Enduring Prison describes President Obama's failure to close America's enduring offshore detention center, as he had promised to do within his first year in office, and the costs of that failure for those imprisoned there. Like its predecessor, Guantánamo Lawyers: Inside a Prison Outside the Law, Obama's Guantánamo consists of accounts from lawyers who have not only represented detainees, but also served as their main connection to the outside world. Their stories provide us with an accessible explanation of the forces at work in the detentions and place detainees' stories in the larger context of America's submission to fearmongering. These stories demonstrate all that is wrong with the prison and the importance of maintaining a commitment to human rights even in times of insecurity.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
These searing essays on the "enduring prison" make an impressive follow-up to The Guantánamo Lawyers, an earlier collection coedited by Hafetz, a Seton Hall associate law professor. All of the contributors are lawyers who have represented Guantánamo Bay detainees, and they provide an insider look into a "legal black hole" where, they argue, the rule of law is suspended. Recounting stories of human rights violations inside the prison, the essays excoriate President Obama for his failure to close Guantánamo as promised. In their respective essays, Gary A. Isaac, Mark Fleming, and Omar Farah examine the landmark case Boumediene v. Bush, in which habeas corpus was restored for prisoners, to no avail. Other essayists boldly defend their clients' rights to urgent medical assistance, safe expatriation after release, and the fair disclosure of classified records. Refuting the common perception of Guantánamo detainees as being, without exception, remorseless terrorists, these essays reveal the human side of prisoners who were often abducted under shaky pretexts and detained indefinitely to await trial. This book, from a legal perspective, looks deeply and insightfully into an American institution working in secret in the age of the War on Terror. (July) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
As Barack Obama's presidency comes to a close, lawyers who defend inmates at Guantnamo assess his broken promise to close the prison and the legacy he will leave.Though the public knows it as a prison for the world's most hardened terrorists, Guantnamo is and has been home to a great number of people who never had any connection to terrorism. Of the 779 men who have suffered incarceration at the base, fewer than 10 have ever been convicted of anything, and all but one of those convictions occurred in ad hoc military tribunals with arbitrary and unclear rules and standards of evidence. Dozens of the remaining prisoners were cleared for release years ago, remaining only because Yemen, their home country, is considered too dangerous to repatriate them. In this collection, edited by Hafetz (Seton Hall Law School; Habeas Corpus After 9/11, 2011, etc.), members and advocates of the Guantnamo defense bar contribute their personal reflections, many quite moving, on their cases. Sabin Willett asks, "were we always a timorous people, who ran from our Constitution at the first sign of trouble?" Several contributors invoke Kafka, as their clients inhabit an alternate universe where those found not guilty are subjected to double and triple jeopardy, hearsay is considered allowable evidence, and attorney-client communications are intercepted by the National Security Agency. Shayana Kadidal tells the story of his client, a clearly mentally ill man who was apparently imprisoned solely because he told interrogators he had once taken a taxi to Bara, a small suburb of Peshawar that they promptly confused with Tora Bora. Martha Raynor sums up the situation of anyone who finds himself in this netherworld, saying of her client, "when he will be released, who will decide it, and under what criteria is utterly unknown." An alarming and important indictment of Obama's ineffectual approach to one of his signature campaign issues and of America's tarnished system of justice as a whole. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Choice Review
Disappointment and frustration are the themes tying together the 14 essays written by lawyers for the prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay. A supplement to The Guantánamo Lawyers (2009), this collection serves as a vehicle for the contributors to condemn the failure of President Barack Obama to fulfill his campaign pledge to close the prison camp. Defense attorneys need to be good storytellers, and that is evident here. Several essays succeed in humanizing individual prisoners. Shayana Kadidal does so by evoking pity for his hapless client. Martha Rayner does so by denouncing the torture and other violations of the rule of law to which her client was subjected. With the exception of the account written by Frank Goldsmith, which takes issue with the "worst of the worst" claim, the essays do not directly challenge the three-part official explanation for the original decision by the George W. Bush administration to open the prison camp. Nor do they offer an alternative explanation for that decision. That may be why the concluding essay by Aliya Hana Hussain rings a little hollow in its call to offer an alternative narrative. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. --John Charles Hickman, Berry College