The Eight O'Clock Ferry to the Windward Side: Seeking Justice in Guantanamo Bay

by Clive Stafford Smith

Book Overview

At a July 17, 2003 press conference held jointly with Prime Minister Tony Blair, President George W. Bush described the prisoners held in Guantanamo: "The only thing I know for certain is that these... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1568583745
• ISBN13: 9781568583747
• Release Date: October 2007
• Publisher: Nation Books
• Length: 307 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

as much of the details as are allowed to be known

Imagine that you have been swept away to a prison, kept in solitary confinement and when taken out for questioning you are continually asked about the tomatoes you were carrying ( the translators don't always have a full command of dialects )and you have no idea what your interrogators want or if they are totally insane. Because this book is written from a lawyer's point of view and lays out only the facts ( only what he has been able to ascertain and what he is allowed to make known ) it takes some reflection and imagination to put yourself in the place of the detainees and savour the experience that they have had and continue to have. In other words this isn't "Midnight Express", but a look at guantanamo, its rules, the U.S. military, the stories of a few of the detainees and the constitutional and humanitarian issues involved.

A window into Guantanamo

From various newspaper articles, I had heard that many of the people in Guantanamo Bay were innocent and that torture happens there. But all of that seemed very abstract until I read this book. I was frequently upset by the things I read in this book. It is difficult to read about torture, as well as your own goverment's ability to waste time, tax-payer money and other people's lives for information that bears no fruit, or worse, fruit that meets their pre-conceived notions. I think that is the saddest aspect of reading this book. Why is the government still detaining people for which there is hard evidence of their innocence? How can we be spending bllions of $$ on the war on terror, yet not get the detainees' ages and names correct? Highlights of the book: - How politically-charged the words 'terror' and 'torture' are. - The account of Binyam Mohamed's 18-month torture abroad and his military trial. - The discussion of the 'ticking time bomb' scenario, which is often used to justify torture, and why the detention and torture of people held longer than a day, let alone 3+ years, will likely give obsolete or false information. - The discussion of how the US has given far more dangerous enemies of the past the benefit of a public trial, and our part in ensuring fair trials for Nazi war crime criminals. - Portraits of people in Guantanamo, both detainess and Americans stationed there. - Arguments for fair trials and open society versus the current policy of secrecy, torture and secret prisons, even for the baddest of the bad. The last chapter, where Mr. Smith talks about the effect of the US's decisions on terrorism recruitment, reads more like political rant. I am sympathetic to the argument, but it is speculation. And frankly, not needed. The preceding chapters are powerful on their own. I would encourage people to read this book.

Gitmo: America's disgrace

This is not an anti-American book. What it is against is torture, injustice, false imprisonment, inhumanity, and the betrayal of American core values and fundamental beliefs. This book (previously published in the UK as "Bad Men") discloses that a considerable number of the prisoners at Guantánamo Bay were at the time of their capture, and of course still are, totally innocent, but being in the wrong place at the wrong time were sold into captivity by locals greedy for the bounty offered by the US. Amnesty International has published a finding that "hundreds of people" were arbitrarily detained, after the US offered cash payments, in leaflets dropped by American aircraft, for information on Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters. This "rewards programme" resulted in a frenetic market in abductees. It is the reason for the false imprisonment of uncounted men and boys in American secret prisons, in secret locations around the world, and at Guantánamo Bay. In an earlier article [in Index on Censorship, "The Archipelago of Gulags," February 2006] Stafford Smith wrote: "The majority of prisoners I represent were not seized in Afghanistan, but purchased in Pakistan for the bounties offered by the US - starting at $5,000." In Pakistan, the per capita annual income is $720. Torture by US proxies, the book shows, was carried out to obtain confirmation of the alleged status of these purchased captives as terrorists or enemy combatants. One victim of rendition was the 16-years-old Hassan bin Attash, who was rendered to Jordan "for sixteen months of torture" because the US government wanted information about his older brother. He is still imprisoned at Guantánamo. On the basis of the evidence in this book, when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice denied, in December 2005, that the US had sent so-called enemy combatants to countries where they would be interrogated under torture, she was lying - a lie to which Prime Minister Tony Blair and the British Foreign Secretary of the day repeatedly lent their support at the time. Guantánamo is "the mother of all mistakes." Fifty-five per cent of those in captivity at Guantánamo Bay are not even alleged to have ever taken part in hostilities; 95 per cent of them were not taken into custody by US troops, but were turned over by Pakistanis or Afghans - usually in exchange for cash; 92 per cent were not even accused of being al-Qaeda fighters. In answer to the question, why are patently innocent non-combatants still being held as prisoners by the Bush administration? it seems the answer is, in effect, moral cowardice. No one wants, or is able, to take responsibility for making the decision and signing the release order. There are quite a few prisoners in US mainland prisons being held in solitary for life, and their being driven insane as a result of prolonged confinement is an expected outcome. Whether such cruel punishment is constitutional is a good question. Indefinite imprisonment in solitary confinement is undeniably c

Brilliant account of Guantanamo

This excellent book by the lawyer Clive Stafford Smith is a chilling exposé of the revolting crimes committed by the US state at Guantanamo Bay. It was written under US military censorship rules, so he has been forced to conceal worse horrors than he reveals. Since January 2002, 759 people have been imprisoned there, including 64 children. After five years, fewer than half the prisoners have even met a lawyer, but most have met a torturer. The US state uses the `ticking bomb' rationale to try to justify torturing prisoners. But there has never been a single case where torture saved lives by yielding information that prevented the explosion of a ticking bomb. The US state has also used this rationale to encourage, assist and exploit torture by its allies. Torture in Egypt led to the false confession of a link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qa'ida, a claim used to try to try to get us to support attacking Iraq. Torture in Morocco led to the US state's allegation of a plot to explode a dirty bomb in New York. The people that US Attorney-General Ashcroft named as responsible were never charged with the plot because, as officials said, that "could open up charges from defence lawyers that their earlier statements were a result of torture." This was to admit that the charges were true. Under the US military commission's procedures for trying just ten of Guantanamo Bay's prisoners, even if the defendant were acquitted, he could still be held forever because all prisoners are supposedly "enemy combatants that we captured on the battlefield" (administration lawyer); "these are people picked up off the battlefield in Afghanistan" (Bush). But in the real world, 55% of the prisoners are not even alleged ever to have taken part in hostilities. 95% of them were not captured by US troops; they were turned over to the USA by Pakistan or Afghanistan's Northern Alliance, for payment equivalent to seven years' salaries. 92% have not even been accused of being Al Qa'ida fighters. Stafford Smith recounts the commission hearing of Binyam Mohamed in December 2005. The senior prosecutor allegedly said, "the military panel will be hand-picked and will not acquit these detainees." Lord Justice Steyn called these commissions kangaroo courts, where judges bound straight from charges to verdicts. In June 2006 the Supreme Court ruled that the commissions were illegal. In October, Congress reinstated them by passing Bush's Military Commissions Act. Stafford Smith estimates that the US state is holding another 14,000 prisoners in other camps and prisons across the world, including on Britain's colony of Diego Garcia. Even Goering was given a fair trial - how many of these 14,000 people will ever get a fair trial? The Labour government has connived at and participated in these disgusting crimes that strengthen only Al Qa'ida.