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The Guantanamo Lawyers: Shipwrecked

truthdig has an extract from a new book "The Guantanamo Lawyers" about the lawyers who have been acting for those imprisoned at Gitmo.

As the intro to the truthdig piece says:

"This important new book tells the story of the world’s most famous prison from the perspective of the lawyers who toiled under notoriously difficult conditions on behalf of the detainees. In this excerpt, Baher Azmy tells the story of his client, who was held for years despite having been found by his captors to have no connection with terrorism."

Part of the article:

"The United States knows that Murat Kurnaz has no connection to terrorism and logged this fact no less than five times in his classified “file.” According to his file, the U.S. military itself concluded that “Kurnaz has no connection to al Qaeda, the Taliban or any terrorist threat,” and “the Germans have confirmed he has no connection to al Qaeda.” The government resisted for years permitting disclosure of this information, but as a result of a Freedom of Information Act litigation we brought on his behalf, it is now public and indisputable that as early as 2002, the United States recognized that Murat had nothing to do with terrorism. Yet it suppressed this information and continued to imprison him."

Comments

Mark said…
Thanks for posting this. The book is really enlightening. Thorough treatment is given to all aspects of the Guantanamo problem, including the political machinations in Congress and "Guantanamo outside of Guantanamo" aka Bagram etc.
November 24, 2009 5:51 am
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