Guantanamo haunts released detainees

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If only more people were aware of this. While I'm looking forward to this book, the people who really need to read it, won't. There are plenty of documentaries out (watch The Road to Guantanamo) if you really want to get pissed) that prove this point again and again, but there's just too much willful ignorance. And now we pay $200 million to Palau to take those innocent Uighurs because of willful ignorant stupidity. Sigh.

Last year, we interviewed 62 released Guantanamo detainees from nine countries in Europe, the Middle East and Southern Asia. We found that although many harbored negative feelings toward the U.S. government, most simply wanted to reintegrate into their families and communities. But they found it difficult to do so.

Nearly all suffered from what we call the "Guantanamo stigma," a presumption in their communities that they were dangerous men, even though the U.S. had never convicted them of a crime. Only six of the 62 had been able to find permanent jobs. Many had lost property, and their families had been driven into debt during their absence.

One released detainee, a highly educated businessman whose family had lived in Europe while he was in captivity, said his children found it complicated to explain why their father was in Guantanamo, so they simply told people he was in jail. "You can't express to a child that there is something in this world called 'detention without trial,' where the rule of law doesn't exist," he said, noting that children assume that "if you're in jail, you must be bad, because that's what society does to bad people."

Laurel Fletcher is a clinical professor of law at UC Berkeley School of Law, and Eric Stover is an adjunct professor of law and public health at UC Berkeley. Their book, "The Guantanamo Effect: Exposing the Consequences of U.S. Detention and Interrogation Practices," is due out in September.

more at link: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-fletcher11-2009jun11,0,3628694.story