by Moazzam Begg and Victoria BrittainFrom the publisher:
The searing story of one man's years inside the notorious American prison -- and his Kafkaesque struggle to clear his name.
Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, has become a worldwide symbol of the dark side of America's War on Terror. Here, for the first time, is a powerful and moving story from the other side, the first detainee's account of life inside the notorious prison. A highly educated British Muslim, Moazzam Begg spent three years in U.S. custody, nearly two of them in Guantánamo, before being released without charge in January of 2005.
Enemy Combatant, written with respected UK journalist Victoria Brittain, is the wrenching narrative of Begg's detention, including his eighteen months in solitary confinement. Secretly abducted at midnight from his home in Afghanistan, held incommunicado in Kandahar and Bagram Air Force base, Begg was eventually flown to Guantánamo, where, like more than 800 Muslim men and boys--550 of whom remain in custody--he was held in shackles and the now-trademark orange prison uniform, subjected to relentless interrogations and abusive and degrading conditions.
A riveting, personal story by a thoughtful and eloquent man, Enemy Combatant is a uniquely personal indictment of America's establishment of a global gulag that flouts the Geneva conventions -- one of the great miscarriages of justice in our time.
From the critics:
Despite considerable media speculation over what Begg may have left out of this memoir, it's a forcefully told, up-to-the-minute political story. Whether Begg is describing his Muslim and Asian friends fighting white supremacist skinhead street gangs in Birmingham, or telling how he shared poetry with a U.S. guard at Guant namo, his tone is assured. His work will be necessary reading for people on all sides of the issue. - Publishers Weekly
