[serendipity_000]

Assalamu Alaikum

Since January 11, 2002, when the first twenty prisoners were brought to Guantanamo, over seven hundred boys and men have been held in this legal black hole; now over three hundred prisoners remain in custody. In 2007, a Pentagon-sponsored report portrayed the prisoners of Guantanamo as a threat in support of the federal administrations repeated characterization of the prisoners as "worst of the worst." In response, Vince Warren, Executive Director of Center for Constitutional Rights writes about the status of the prisoners: We have visited men driven to despair with less and less faith that they would ever see justice, men who were turned over for enormous bounties to the U.S. because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, or men who were fleeing the conflict, or men who were cooks, goatherders and other minor actors swept up and locked away, now lost to their families and branded terrorists forever.

At most, five percent of the men at Guantánamo were captured by U.S. forces. In five years, only ten people out of 786 at Guantánamo have ever been charged with a crime; only one ever went before a Military Commission, and not a single one is currently charged. Not content to mount attacks on op-ed pages around the country on attorneys for representing their clients pro bono and not content to repeat their rosy descriptions of the privileges afforded a handful of detainees as though that in any way represented the conditions of most of the detainees who are locked up in solitary confinement 23 hours a day, rarely see sunlight yet always have the lights on in their cells, continue to be subjected to temperature extremes, sleep deprivation and brutal force-feeding when they choose the only form of non-violent protest of their conditions available to them by denying sustenance, the government commissioned a report that would massage the statistics and re-categorize the data so that they could try to convince the world that the people they had been keeping locked up indefinitely for more than five years really were, as they claimed at the start, "the worst of the worst."

Writing to a detainee is a simple way of breaking through the dark cloud of secrecy and isolation surrounding any institution where torture, cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment is permitted. Generally, no messages are delivered to the detainees, including from their relatives. However, attorney Marc Falkoff reports that two of his clients have received cards and that they are very appreciative. Whether these cards are delivered or not, we urge you to approach this action as a devotional prayer as much as a political act.

What can my congregation do?

Choose a prisoner from list below: Some of the prisoners below have information about them posted on the web; some do not. Our objective is to make a personal connection to break through the total anonymity and convey the message `I remember you´ and that we do believe in fair and just treatment of all prisoners in US custody.

Prayers:
Include a prisoner in your prayer meetings; in the weekly congregational prayers; or in your daily individual prayers.

Post Cards or letters:
· Buy plain postcards or postcards with pictures of natural landscapes or flower (no persons or animals).
· Mail these cards with pre-printed simple messages in English and Arabic, or you may write the words yourself.
· Write as a group or congregation en masse on a regular basis, or take turns individually or in small groups.

In keeping with recommendations of Amnesty International, we ask that you:
· Please keep your message simple such as: "We are thinking of you."
· Don´t discuss politics or accusations against the prisoner
· Please be sensitive to different cultural and religious mores when choosing cards with images on them

Postcard should be addressed as follows: [Prisoner Name - ISN number]
Camp Delta
P.O. Box 160
Washington DC 20053

Writing to authorities: Decide if you will write as individuals or on behalf
of your institution and if to follow up in case of no response.

DETAINEE INFO:

Please keep your message simple such as: "We are thinking of you."
· Don´t discuss politics or accusations against the prisoner
· Please be sensitive to different cultural and religious mores when choosing cards with images on them Postcard should be addressed as follows: [Prisoner Name - ISN number] Prisoners on this list are clients of Professor Marc D. Falkoff, author of Poems from Guantanamo

Mahmoud Abd Al Aziz Abd Al Mujahid, ISN #31 (St. Bartholomew's)
Adil Said Al Haj Obeid Al Busayss, ISN #165
Majid Mahmud Abdu Ahmad, ISN #41 (St. Mary's)
Mohammed Mohammed Hassen, ISN #681
Abd Al Malik Abd Al Wahab, ISN #37
Faruq Ali Ahmed, ISN #32 (St. Peter Claver Church )
Muktar Yahya Najee Al Warafi, ISN #117 (Brooklyn Meeting)
Salman Yahya Hassan Mohammed Rabeii, ISN #508 (St. Nicholas-on-the-Hudson)
Yasin Qasem Muhammad Ismail, ISN #522 (Morningside Meeting)
Abdulsalam Ali Abdulrahman Al-Hela, ISN #1463
Allal Abd Aljallil Abd Al Rahman Abd, ISN #156
Saeed Mohammed Saleh Hatim, ISN #255
Jamal Muhammad 'Alawi Mar'i, ISN #577 (Church of Holy Trinity)
Mohammed Nasser Yahia Abdullah Khussrof, ISN #509
Uthman Abdul Rahim Mohammed Uthman, ISN #27
Hassan Bin Attash, ISN #1456
There is also Majid Khan -- also known as Detainee No. 010020.