45 years: 1978-2023
In 2006, four years after the illegal prison in Guantánamo Bay opened, the Pentagon finally released the names of the 773 men held there, as well as 7,000 pages of transcripts from tribunals assessing their status as ‘enemy combatants’. Andy Worthington is the only person to have analysed every page of these transcripts and this book reveals the stories of all those imprisoned in Guantánamo. Deprived of the safeguards of the Geneva Conventions, and, for the most part, sold to the Americans by their allies in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the detainees have struggled for five years to have their stories heard.
Looking in detail at the circumstances of their capture, and at the coercive interrogations and unsubstantiated allegations that have been used to justify their detention. Stories of torture in Afghanistan and Guantánamo are uncovered, as well as new information about the process of ‘extraordinary rendition’ that underpins the US administration’s ‘war on terror’. Who will speak for the 773 men who have been held in Guantánamo? This passionate and brilliantly detailed book brings their stories to the world for the first time.
