The Accused

Without confirmation, the reader is left to deal with a standoff. In the view of the Pentagon, Begg was, and still is, a dangerous terrorist. Although he was released by both the U.S. and British authorities without a single charge, a recent New York Times story reported that the Department of Defense still maintains that he "associated" with al-Qaeda operatives, attended several notorious paramilitary terrorist training camps, and financed, recruited and sympathized with terrorists. Newsweek carried a piece, Begg himself notes with disgust, suggesting that he had planned to fly unmanned drones into Western government targets. If this is so, Begg's memoir, which specifically condemns all terrorist attacks on civilians, is a work of mind-bogglingly crafty deception.

If, on the other hand, Begg's protestations of innocence are to be believed and the U.S. government was wrong about him, this book documents an unconscionable descent into a hell of government-sanctioned physical and psychological brutality, administered without even the most rudimentary due process. Taken at face value, the stupidity and cruelty that Begg recounts are utterly shocking to anyone who cherishes the vision of America as an enlightened, law-abiding government, not to mention the leader of the free world.

Begg's story shares many familiar features with profiles of other recent terror suspects. A devout Muslim, he grew up caught between cultures in a secular middle-class immigrant family in Birmingham, England. Despite his family's patina of learning and bourgeois values, he was picked on by white "Paki-bashers." Slightly built, he joined a thuggish ethnic street gang in high school and learned jujitsu. Increasingly, he found meaning and purpose in Muslim causes -- raising money and traveling to provide aid to Muslim fighters in Bosnia, Chechnya and Afghanistan.

Well-read and scholarly, Begg opened an Islamic book store in Manchester, which became an intellectual hub for jihadi sympathizers. The distinction between supporter of Muslim causes and terror suspect is at the core of this book, and it would have been more helpful if Begg had provided more analysis of it. Instead, he seems to straddle the two worlds without much reflection. He had scrapes with the law, not all of which seem fully explained. His social circle and his travels to visit relatives and friends in Pakistan and Afghanistan -- where he briefly visited a non-al-Qaeda paramilitary training camp -- drew the attention of the British security service, MI5. But Begg insists that, although he admired the ideas of the Taliban (but grew disillusioned with them once he saw them for himself), he never knowingly met anyone from al-Qaeda. He had heard of Osama bin Laden, he writes, but he had no sympathy with bin Laden's or any other group's call for jihad against the United States.

In the fall of 2001, Begg had just moved his family to Afghanistan, which he hoped would provide a cheap and welcoming Muslim environment in which to raise his children. Instead, he and his family were caught in the harrowing U.S. assault and forced to flee to Pakistan. They had just resettled in Islamabad when, after midnight on Jan. 31, 2002, as his family slept, he answered a knock on the door in his stocking feet and was made to kneel by a small group of silent, plain-clothed Pakistani and Western strangers. They forced a hood over his head, bound his wrists and ankles, and carried him into a waiting vehicle.

His account of his journey during the following three years is full of fascinating insight. He realized, at one point, that only fear could explain Americans' ridiculous overkill in their treatment of the detainees. On his last day in U.S. custody, as he was being transferred to the plane that would finally take him home to freedom, American soldiers lost the key to the extra chains and padlock in which they had ensnared him. Why, he wondered, would they expect him to try to escape at this point, when he was about to board the plane home? As he stood there, contemplating the futility of his entire imprisonment, as the soldiers scurried to find wire cutters, each pair bigger than the last, the metaphor is clear: In Guantanamo we don't know how to get out of the bind into which we've put not just our prisoners but also ourselves. ·

Jane Mayer is a staff writer for the New Yorker.