Guant·namo: What the World Should Know teams human rights lawyer Michael Ratner with political journalist Ellen Ray to reveal the truth about the Guant·namo Bay Naval Station prison camp and the creation of a new network of U.S. detention centres around the world. The U.S. administration insists that the prisoners within Guant·namo have no rights and can be interogated for as long, and as intensively, as their captors wish. At the end of June 2004 the US Supreme Court ruled against Bush Administration claims that the American military could hold ́enemy combatantsî indefinitely, without charge, and without access to legal representation. Guant·namo: What the World Should Know is the most authoritative account to date on President Bush's moves toward a network of detention centres, a system without accountability, which flouts both U.S. and international law. Author Michael Ratner, President of the Center for Constitutional Rights, was at the centre of this storm as co-counsel on Rasul v. Bush, the historic case of Guant·namo detainees just decided upon by the U.S. Supreme Court. Gathered together for the first time, this book includes the governmental memoranda that created the framework in which the inhuman conditions at Guant·namo Bay and Abu Ghraib could be condoned. It also includes a letter from two recently released British Guantanamo detainees, Shafiq Rasul and Asif Iqbal outlining the unchecked brutal treatment and torture which are systemic and widespread in the camp. "The chasm between constitutional ideal and actual policy that Guant·namo opens up is one more illustration of the capacity for absolute power to corrupt absolutely. Ratner and Ray at least give us the facts we need to solidify our own stand against the Bush administration's neo-medievalism. Feel outraged, then get active." Anita Roddick, activist, and founder of The Body Shop
Michael Ratner is President of the Center for Constitutional Rights. He serves as co-counsel in Rasul v. Bush, the historic case of Guantánamo detainees currently before the U.S. Supreme Court. Under Ratner's leadership, the Center has aggressively challenged the constitutional and international law violations undertaken by the United States post-9/11, including the constitutionality of indefinite detention and the restrictions on civil liberties as defined by the unfolding terms of a permanent war. In the 1990s Ratner acted as a principal counsel in the successful suit to close the camp for HIV-positive Haitian refugees on Guantánamo Bay. He has written and consulted extensively on Guantánamo, the Patriot Act, military tribunals, and civil liberties in the post-9/11 world. He has also been a lecturer of international human rights litigation at the Yale Law School and the Columbia School of Law, president of the National Lawyers Guild, special Counsel to Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to assist in the prosecution of human rights crimes, and radio co-host for the civil rights show Law and Disorder.
Ellen Ray is President of the Institute for Media Analysis and the author and editor of numerous books and magazines on U.S. intelligence and international politics. She is co-editor with William Schaap of Bioterror: Manufacturing Wars the American Way and Covert Action: The Root of Terrorism, both published by Ocean Press in 2003.
