To many people, the defining moment of the first decade is the attacks on 9/11. But, of course, it is not the attacks that defined us as Americans. Our response defined us. When we look back at 9/11, we must look at who we were the day before the attacks...

Can a person held in a prison cell among neighbors who do not speak his language be as lonely as someone who is held incommunicado in an isolation cell? That question arose in the interview of a former detainee we filmed for the Witness to Guantanamo project (W2G). (Presently, W2G...

This past week President Obama affirmed what many people expected. Although the president had proclaimed soon after he was elected that he would shut Guantanamo Bay Detention Center within one year, he has now confirmed that the prison will remain open for the foreseeable future. Consequently, a significant...

On a steamy and stormy Saturday in late August 2010, I joined 200 friends and family members of Robert (Bob) Hicks as we celebrated the naming of "Robert (Bob) Hicks" street in Bogalusa, Louisiana. The ceremony was inspirational. But, my meeting with his grandchild after the ceremony is a memory...

Much has been written on the lives of detainees in Guantanamo post September 11, 2001. But relatively little has been written about the lives of Americans who worked on this side of the wire. In the Witness to Guantanamo project, www.witnesstoguantanamo.com, we have filmed in-depth interviews of former...

A friend said that she recently saw photos of men who had been incarcerated at Guantanamo prison and that the photos expressed each man's human dignity. I, too, have seen the dignity in each of the twenty-four former detainees we have interviewed on film for our Witness to...

The Witness to Guantanamo Project (W2G) just returned from filming interviews with the Uyghurs in Palau. The project has been conducting in-depth (2 ½ hour) videos of former Guantanamo detainees around the world, with the intent of documenting the systematic human rights abuses and rule of law violations committed in...

"The first day I was at Guantanamo, they put me in a little cage. There was a toilet hole and I thought this is the bathroom and they will then take me to my cell. Later, they brought me food. 'Why food?' I thought, 'This is a bathroom.' Only the...

I Debated a War Criminal
Professor Peter Jan Honigsberg

In September 2005, the Federalist Society at the University of San Francisco School of Law, where I teach, invited me to debate Professor John Yoo of Berkeley Law School on the legitimacy of the term "enemy combatant." Professor Yoo had...

There has been much talk in the media lately promoting the possibility of establishing truth commissions for Guantanamo. Suggestions have predominately focused on Congressional investigations, similar to the recent Senate committee determining that the torture at Guantanamo was directed by Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and other administration officials, or the...

A fellow law professor cautioned me when I told him I was applying to visit Guantanamo. "After they strap you in, they announce that the next bathroom stop is at Guantanamo. There are no bathrooms on the ten-seater propeller aircraft. And the bumpy flight is over three hours."

The...