Poems From Guantanamo

Published in August, Poems From Guantánamo contains 22 poems, by 17 Guantánamo detainees –- many of whom are still held without charge or trial after five and half years –- which were cleared for publication only after passing through a strict censorship process established by the Pentagon. In telephone interviews conducted on 7 and 10 [...]

The following poem was chosen by Marc Falkoff, editor of Poems from Guantánamo: The Detainees Speak, as an example of a poem, which, as he described in an interview with me on Nth Position, is “striking in terms of imagery, metaphor and thematic complexity.” The former detainee (he was released from Guantánamo in December 2006) [...]

Now that the time is approaching when the Supreme Court will once more decide whether the detainees at Guantánamo have the right to challenge their detention in the US courts (a right the Supreme Court gave them in June 2004, but which was snatched away from them in subsequent legislation fuelled by paranoia and Democratic [...]

Murat Kurnaz

In a busy week for former Guantánamo detainees, Der Spiegel reports that the sole German ex-detainee, Murat Kurnaz –- born in Bremen but ignored by the German government until Angela Merkel came to power, because he was the son of Turkish immigrant workers (gastarbeiter) –- is making headway with his long-standing claim, which he [...]

The following is a declassified letter from a Guantánamo detainee named Abdul Aziz, who has been held in US custody without charge or trial for over five and a half years. Abdul Aziz traveled to Afghanistan in late September 2001, after taking his final exams at the Imam Muhammad Ibn Saud University in Riyadh, to [...]