Through the looking-glass

April 22, 2007 12:43 PM

No fairytales allowed; Lawyer Clive Stafford Smith has 36 clients in Guantanamo and has visited many times. This is an extract from a new book where he argues that secrecy is a disease. A further extract explors the surreal world of the prison's media relations, where the only journalist with real access is one of the inmates. Stafford Smith was one of the narrators is this excellent recent FPP. Here is the site of his UK organisation.
posted by adamvasco (6 comments total)

Background: Clive Stafford Smith has been to Guantanamo Bay 14 times since Nov 2004 and still represents 36 of the 374 prisoners still there, incluiding the nine remaining British residents ( Shaker Aamer, Ahmed Belbacha, Omar Deghayes, Jamil El Banna, Ahmed Errachidi, Binyam Mohammed, Abdennour Sameur, Nohammad Al Qadir and Saiid Farhi). 21 prisoners represented by Stafford Smith's organisation, Reprieve, have so far been released, among them nine British citizens and two residents: Bisher al - Rawi returned to the UK last month after spending a year in solitary confinement, while Jamal Kiyemba was sent to Uganda. None of the returned British citizens has been prosecuted.
posted by adamvasco at 12:45 PM on April 22, 2007

Either try them or let them go, this situation is interminable. A colleague was in Guantanamo last month for the first time and she could barely have any contact with her client.
posted by Falconetti at 1:48 PM on April 22, 2007

In a December 2004 press conference, the US navy secretary Gordon England tried to defend conditions in Guantánamo by producing the novel argument that the camp was rehabilitative: "People have learned to read and have learned to write, and so it's not just being incarcerated. We do try to get people prepared for a better life."

!!!
posted by JHarris at 2:27 PM on April 22, 2007

Sickening. And completely what I expected to hear. What a bunch of cowards the US government is.
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 2:46 PM on April 22, 2007

s/is/are/
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 2:54 PM on April 22, 2007

*sigh*
posted by BrotherCaine at 1:10 AM on April 23, 2007