Terror Courts

Within weeks of the September 11 attacks in 2001, the United States had captured hundreds of suspected al Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan, and by the following January the first of these prisoners arrived at the U.S. Navy's detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. "Wall Street Journal" correspondent Jess Bravin was there the day the prison camp opened, and he has continued ever since to cover the story of the detainees and the efforts of the Bush and Obama administrations to bring them to trial. A maze of legal, political, and moral issues have stood in the way of justice, Bravin explains. In this riveting book, he recounts a chapter in the War on Terror that has never been told before. Focusing on the military commission established by the Bush Administration to try Guantanamo Bay prisoners, Bravin describes prosecutions hampered by inadmissible evidence obtained through torture, procedures stalled by disagreements between military prosecutors and political appointees, and closed door dealings that led several prosecutors to resign. In a concluding chapter, the author discusses how George W. Bush's illegal experiment at Guantanamo undermined the rule of law and how its legacy continues to haunt the Obama administration.