Product Description

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, engaged Muslim living in the West after 9/11, by someone who has recently emerged as an influential voice in the Muslim community, against both acts of terrorism and the demonising of Islam.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #36782 in Books
• Published on: 2007-02-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

TONY BENN
'A brilliant, terrifying and deeply moving account . . . A warning of the dangers inherent in using religion to justify war'

The Titles and Authors to watch in 2006, IRISH TIMES
'If this was a thriller, people would say it was unlikely. Unhappily, it's true'

Financial Times
What is impressive about the account in this book is the sympathy with which [Begg] describes some of his captors.

Customer Reviews

brave man, cowardly governments
I saw Moazzam Begg speak at the Edinburgh Book Festival in August 2006 -- he came across as modest, intelligent, calm and unembittered by his atrocious experiences at the hands of stupid governments. Many of the questions he was asked (by people who hadn't read his account) had more than a hint of skepticism about them and were a little insulting, but he always refused to rise to the bait, instead using his formidable knowledge of western and eastern culture to gently prove to his audience that he was not a terrorist and that his years of hell in custody were a farcical and dangerous overreaction of paranoid states. If you read this book, you will understand that the vast majority of people that have been picked up in the counterproductive "War On Terror" are innocent, and you will scratch your head in disbelief at the unnecessary brutality that is routinely inflicted on them in your name. As this book makes plain, the US and UK response to the horrific terrorism of 9/11 and since is so tragically misguided. These governments are doing EXACTLY what the terrorists want them to do, and recruiting enemies in the process. It is calm, informed, thoughtful books like this one that will heal the divide -- not another US fantasy of "spreading democracy" by force if necessary in the middle east (but not in China, Burma, North Korea and so on...)

The Distant Inception of a Wonderful Book.
I remember quite well trying to encourage my fellow suffer of Concentration Camp Echo - once released from their in October 2004CE and residing in Concentration Camp Delta, Papa block - that he should write down his experiences: the pressure was coming both from myself and Clive Stafford Smith yet Moazzam only answered, "I need my laptop - this is not the atmosphere for writing". We had mused on the name. He thought 'Chimes of the Razor Wire', 'Enemy Combatant' seemed simpler and more profound to me. I am happy he conceded to it. Atleast I was right in that respect!

Moazzam had more faith in being released than I. I had embraced the idea that I would never see freedom and with a stiff upper-lip, derived from discovering my Britishness in defiance of the establishment, I sought to bloody their noses with the 'Document of Abuse' that I was hunched over relentlessly, to the exclusion of others, writing. Indeed history has proved the faith of Moazzam right and my scepticism wrong: as we were indeed released and he did get his laptop (I saw it with my own eyes). This book is a testimony to Moazzam's hope, faith in people, its struggle and eventual triumph. It is good to see: All praise is due to Allah the Lord of the Worlds.

Feroz Ali Abbasi,

Nothing like it
A fantastic read. Well-written and gripping. Moazzem Begg is articulate and at times amusing as he writes about his account of his horrific capture, his time in solitary confinement and subsequent release.
The book gives insight into a Muslim man who is British and more educated and cultured than many of his captors.
It is interesting and yet worrying as it reveals the stark realities of Guantanamo Bay and the real victims of the War on Terror.
Highly highly recommended for anyone who wants to read a stimulating and meaty story..the bonus this one has is that it really happened.