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America’s Disappeared: Secret Imprisonment, Detainees and the "War on Terror" features first person accounts by individuals who have experienced the horrors of executive detention, including former Guantánamo detainees Shafiq Rasul and Asif Iqbal; Maher Arar, the Canadian citizen the United States sent to Syria to be interrogated and tortured for nearly a year; and many other non-citizens who were wrongly swept up in the post-9/11 terrorism investigations. These narratives appear alongside political and legal analysis of the Bush Administration’s controversial post-9/11 detention practices.

The confirmation proceedings for Alberto R. Gonzales and Condeleeza Rice, like the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, have triggered a national debate about the U.S. government’s controversial treatment of detainees and its practice of torture. At the heart of the debate is the question, Is the United States undermining democracy, freedom, and human rights in it’s effort to protect its citizens from terrorism? The authors of AMERICA'S DISAPPEARED answer, Yes.

AMERICA'S DISAPPEARED describes how the U.S. government, in response to the events of 9/11, launched an unprecedented campaign of racial profiling, detentions, and deportations so grievous as to evoke the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Thousands have been imprisoned without trial or any kind of judicial hearing. Thousands remain indefinitely detained without charge being brought against them. Some are tortured; others are shipped off to other countries to be tortured.

AMERICA'S DISAPPEARED brings together, for the first time, detainees’ own testimonies along with analysis by the leading constitutional attorneys and human rights advocates. In addition to a detailed exploration of detention—the forms currently in use, and the conditions of each—the book challenges the Bush administration’s justifications for violating the Geneva Conventions and the most basic definitions of human rights.

The book features first-person accounts of the horrors of indefinite detention by individuals who have experienced it, including former Guantánamo detainees Shafiq Rasul and Asif Iqbal; Maher Arar, the Canadian citizen sent to Syria by the United States to Syria, where he was interrogated and tortured for months; and many other non-citizens who were wrongly swept up in post-9/11 investigations.

AMERICA’S DISAPPEARED covers:

• Conditions at Guantánamo Bay detention center
• Analysis of U.S. definition of and policy toward torture
• The road leading to the Abu Ghraib prison scandal
• Analysis of detention of immigrants within the U.S.
• The debate around “enemy combatant” status
• Testimonies of survivors of U.S. military detention

“The stories shared by these individuals must be heard,” says Rachel Meeropol, the book’s contributing editor. “Our goal is not just to educate people about the problems with the Bush Administration’s ‘war on terror’ but also to provide a platform for the voices of those who have been the victims of the administration’s witch hunt. Their stories are heart wrenching and they should be required reading for those who would defend the crack-down on civil liberties and the targeting of non-citizens as ‘necessary’ in the post- 9/11 world.”

Rachel Meeropol is a staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights. She completed her undergraduate degree at Wesleyan University in 1997 and graduated from NYU Law School in 2002. Ms. Meeropol is currently vice president of the New York City Chapter of the National Lawyers’ Guild.

Barbara Olshansky is the Assistant Legal Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights. Ms. Olshansky graduated from Stanford Law School in 1985 and clerked for two years for Rose E. Bird, Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court. She recently co-authored a book on the planned war entitled Against War with Iraq and published another on the use of military tribunals entitled Secret Trials and Executions.

Michael Ratner is President of the Center for Constitutional Rights. Among his many cases was the successful closing of the camp for HIV-positive Haitian refugees at Guantánamo Bay Naval Station, Cuba, and numerous cases challenging a President’s authority to go to war without congressional approval. He co-authored the book Against War with Iraq and wrote chapters in Freedom at Risk; It's a Free Country; and Lost Liberties. He was a lecturer at the Yale Law School and currently teaches at the Columbia Law School. He has served as president of the National Lawyers Guild and Special Counsel to Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to assist in the prosecution of human rights crimes.

Steven Macpherson Watt is a human rights fellow with the Center for Constitutional Rights. Since November 2001, he has coordinated CCR’s litigation efforts in relation to government measures adopted post-September 11. Originally from Scotland, Mr. Watt qualified and practiced law in that country and holds an LL.M in International Human Rights Law from the University of Notre Dame.

Reed Brody is Special Counsel at Human Rights Watch. He is the author of the HRW report, "The Road to Abu Ghraib," which examines the roots of the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal. Brody coordinated HRW's intervention in the case of Augusto Pinochet in Britain's House of Lords, and initiated and coordinates the prosecution of the former dictator of Chad, Hissène Habré, who was arrested on torture charges in Senegal. Previously, he led United Nations teams investigating massacres in the Democratic Republic of Congo and observing human rights in El Salvador. In 1995-1996, he coordinated an international legal team to prosecute human rights crimes in Haiti. He is co-author (with Michael Ratner) of The Pinochet Papers: The Case of Augusto Pinochet in the British and Spanish Courts, and author of Tibet: Human Rights and the Rule of Law; and Contra Terror in Nicaragua.