Guantanamo Voices

July 6, 2020
Mirk (Open Earth) teams up with more than a dozen talented artists to present these wrenching illustrated oral histories, which function eloquently as “an antidote to forgetting,” as reporter Omar El Akkad writes in his introduction. Each piece is based on original interviews with individuals who spent time at the Guantanamo Bay prison, among them ex-prisoners, service members, and a former chief of Middle East counterintelligence. Their stories form a damning mosaic of a Kafkaesque facility that was built on non-U.S. soil in order to circumvent federal laws guaranteeing the right of prisoners to free trials, thereby trapping them in years of imprisonment, some with no formal charges ever laid against them. Aside from the brutal conditions and torture described by ex-prisoners such as Moazzam Begg, testimony is given from lawyers like Matthew Diaz, who blew the whistle on the human rights abuses occurring—and subsequently had his career destroyed. Though the artistic styles vary, ranging from the expressionistic linework of Omar Khouri to the immediately charming comics of Kane Lynch, the warm color palette designed by Kazimir Lee unifies the collection while helping the heavy subject matter stay measurably more approachable. This anthology disturbs and illuminates in equal measure. Agent: Fiona Kenshole, Transatlantic Agency.

Starred review from July 1, 2020
A graphic depiction of the human rights disaster that is the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo. In this collection, illustrated by a dozen or so imaginative artists, editor Mirk presents an extraordinary chronicle of the notorious prison, featuring first-person accounts by prisoners, guards, and other constituents that demonstrate the facility's cruel reputation. Since 2002, by the editor's count, Guantanamo has housed 780 prisoners; 40 remain to this day. Of the hundreds of prisoners, writes Mirk, "few have ever been charged with a crime." Following a reporter's introduction to the current status of the facility, the book cuts to observations by Mark Fallon, former chief of Middle East Counterintelligence for the Naval Criminal Investigation Service, and Matthew Diaz, a former Navy Judge Advocate, which explore not just the absurd discrepancies in the prison's approach to discipline, but also the prevalence of torture. There are also the horrific stories of those considered prisoners of war: "You're never going to see your family again. You could be facing execution by firing squad, lethal injection, or gas chamber." We also hear from the attorneys trying to mete out some kind of justice for those unjustly imprisoned and the prosecutors trying to figure out how to try accused men who don't technically exist in the American justice system. The sweetly illustrated chapter about prisoner Mansoor Adayfi depicts how the Yemeni-born prisoner bonded with the island's wild animals during his 14-year stay: "She reminded me every week that I was still human and that life still had beauty," he says of the iguana he named Princess. Adayfi was never charged with a crime. Perhaps the best summary comes from Katie Taylor, who coordinates the Life After Guantanamo project at the human rights organization Reprieve: "This prison is premised on false information." An eye-opening, damning indictment of one of America's worst trespasses that continues to this day.

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Starred review from September 1, 2020
For this project ten years in the making, journalist/writer Mirk gathered a diverse dozen comic artists; fellow journalist/writer Omar El Akkad (American War, 2017), who provides the searing introduction; and historian/journalist Andy Worthington (The Guant�namo Files, 2007), who contributes fact-checked accuracy. Together, this creative village exposes the surreal inhumanity and documents the humane attempts at justice-seeking for the so-called detainees in the detention facility known as Guant�namo. Mirk transforms her original interviews, combined with additional interviews from Columbia University's Rule of Law project, into a disturbing eyewitness account of unprecedented violations, abuses, flagrant disregard of both the U.S. Constitution's Sixth Amendment ( the right to a speedy and public trial ) and the Geneva Conventions' Article 103, which limits pre-trial confinement. Confronting U.S. officials and employees, tormented prisoners held without charge, attorneys, and activists, interviews are turned by Mirk's collaborating artists into affecting, often gruesome panels (the palette cleverly pre-determined to evoke the surreal contrast between Guant�namo's beauty and the horrors within). Beyond the interview chapters, supplementary content?map, facts, timeline, survivor Abu Zubaydah's original sketches of torture, Guant�namo gift shop (!) photos, exhaustive sources?further unmasks the abominations, amplified by the fact that Guant�namo remains an active facility. We created an entire new legal system for brown men, prisoners' attorney Alka Pradhan starkly contends. If these were white men from France or Germany, there is no way Guant�namo would exist. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)