Review: Translator gives an inside view in 'My Guantanamo Diary'

[struggle4progress]

By Nathaniel French, Special to the Times
In print: Sunday, June 22, 2008

While finishing law school in Miami, Mahvish Rukhsana Khan volunteered as an interpreter for lawyers working on behalf of detainees at Guantanamo Bay ...

Some of the incidents Khan reports are absurd, such as the written exchange between a lawyer and a military commander trading accusations as to who might have provided several of the detainees with Speedos and "contraband underwear."

Others are more disturbing. One lawyer, Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, discovered his client in the midst of a suicide attempt, hanging from his cage with a slashed arm. Another, Clive Stafford Smith, was pulled aside, shown a mesh cage and threatened with imprisonment because the military believed he supported the detainees' hunger strikes.

Most troubling are Khan's second-hand accounts of detainee abuse. Prisoners complained of sexual assault, exposure to extreme cold, beatings and other degradations. In one incident, a man said he was held on the floor while a guard smeared her menstrual blood on his body. Another prisoner said his genitals were repeatedly cut with a scalpel ...

http://www.tampabay.com/features/books/article629508.ece