Enemy Combatant

In Great Britain, much is being made of a new book, EnemyCombatant (Free Press) by Moazzam Begg, that was just published. Begg, aBritish citizen, with journalist Victoria Brittain, has written an absorbingand moving account of his incarceration by the United States for nearly threeyears in Afghanistan and Guantanamo. It is a chilling story of injustice on amassive scale but it is also an indictment of the degradation of a greatdemocracy, once committed to the rule of law, and now led by Americans who haveabandoned respect for the humane values embodied in the constitution. Born andrasied in the UK, Begg eventually married and moved to Afghanistan in mid-2001.Two months after 9/11, armed men broke into the family home at night and violentlyabducted Begg with no explanation. For the next three years, first at the U.S.base at Bagram in Afghanistan and then at Guantanamo, he was repeatedlyinterrogated and tortured. The reasons for this almost unimaginable brutality,which remain undisclosed but can be inferred, were the belief or suspicion thathe was a member or associate of al Qaeda. There was no evidence against him,merely a racist assumption.

The British government at last negotiated the release of itscitizens from Guantanamo. Begg arrived back in Britain in January 2005. Thepolice detained him overnight, ostensibly for questioning as a suspectedterrorist. They then swiftly released him without charge.

Source: Camden New Journal (UK), May 4, 2006

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