A British Muslim's Journey To Guantanamo And Back
Moazzam Begg is an ordinary man who has endured an extraordinary fate — imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit and whose precise nature has never been determined. As far as the US government was concerned, it was enough to label him an 'enemy combatant'.
Moazzam was arrested in Pakistan, where he was helping set up education programmes for children, in the panic-stricken months after the 9/11 attacks. He spent three years in prison, much of it in solitary confinement, and was subjected to over three hundred interrogations, death threats and torture, witnessing the killings of two detainees. He was released early in 2005 without explanation or apology.
'Enemy Combatant' is his riveting story. Not just an instant classic of incarceration literature, it reveals for the first time what it means to be an intelligent, politically engaged Muslim living in the West after 9/11, by someone who finds common ground with fellow Muslims enduring oppression around the world, and who has recently emerged as an influential voice in the Muslim community, against both acts of terrorism and the demonising of Islam.
