People The Law Forgot (Guantanamo, The Guardian)

[JailBush]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/guantanamo/story/0,13743,1098604,00.html

People the law forgot

It is almost two years since the Guantanamo prison camp opened. Its purpose is to hold people seized in the 'war on terror' and defined by the Bush administration as enemy combatants - though many appear to have been bystanders to the conflict. Images of Camp Delta's orange-jumpsuited, manacled detainees have provoked international outrage. But the real horror they face isn't physical hardship, it is the threat of infinite confinement, without trial or access to legal representation. James Meek has spent the past month talking to former inmates and some of those involved in operating the Pentagon's Kafkaesque justice system. He has built an unprecedented picture of life on the base, which we present in this special issue

Continued in part two

Wednesday December 3, 2003
The Guardian

One summer's day in Cuba in 2002, a 31-year-old Pakistani teacher of English named Abdul Razaq noticed something unusual in the familiar patterns of movement among the orange-suited figures in the mesh cages on either side of him. Two or three cages along from his own, a fellow Pakistani prisoner, Shah Mohammed, was silently going about trying to hang himself from a sheet lashed to the mesh. He had the cloth around his throat and he was choking....

[Jack Rabbit]

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