Azadeh Dastyari, United States Migrant Interdiction and the Detention of Refugees in Guantánamo Bay

Guantánamo Bay has become synonymous with extraordinary rendition and the ‘War on Terror’. In a recent report on the future of its detention facilities, Amnesty International describes Guantánamo as a ‘symbol of torture, rendition and indefinite detention’. 1 The detention of suspected terrorists on Cuban territory under United States (US) military authority has certainly attracted considerable commentary and much criticism. President Obama has described it as a ‘symbol around the world for an America that flouts the rule of law’ (p 1). It might therefore be reasonably assumed that all those who find themselves incarcerated in the detention facilities on the island are suspected, to varying degrees, of being involved in acts of terrorism. Further, there is a widespread view that Guantánamo constitutes a legal vacuum where the norms of international law do not apply and where neither the US, nor Cuba, accepts responsibility for the detainees in accordance with their own municipal laws. In this book Azadeh Dastyari, who is a lecturer in Law at Monash University, Australia, in her analysis of the US Migrant Interdiction Programme (MIP) debunks both of these myths in a scholarly, informed account, which draws on established international legal principles, judicial precedents and policy statements.

Amnesty · Criminology · Geography · Human rights · Interdiction · International law · Political science · Refugee · Sociology · Terrorism · Torture · Global Peace and Security Dynamics · International Law and Human Rights · Law · Military and Defense Studies