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The General: The Ordinary Man Challenged Guantanamo
The General The Ordinary Man Challenged Guantanamo Author:Ahmed Errachidi, Gillian Slovo This is Ahmed's story. It will make you rethink what it means to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It will also make you look anew at survival, justice and the so-called War on Terror. — On September 11th 2001, in a café in London, Ahmed Errachidi watched as the twin towers collapsed. He was appalled by the loss of innocent life. But ... more »he couldn't possibly have predicted how much of his own life he too would lose because of that day.
In a series of terrible events, Ahmed was sold by the Pakistanis to the Americans in the diplomatic lounge at Islamabad airport and spent five and a half years in Guantanamo, mostly in solitary confinement. There, he was beaten, tortured, humiliated, sectioned, very nearly destroyed.
But Ahmed did not give in. This very ordinary, Moroccan-born London chef became a leader of men, devising protests and resistance by any means possible, but also transporting his fellow prisoners by inviting them to lavish imaginary feasts exquisitely described. Known by the authorities as The General, he successfully negotiated a long list of improvements to conditions in the prison. And then, after all those years, Ahmed was free, his innocence admitted.« less