Peter Jan Honigsberg is Professor of Law at the University of San Francisco School of Law. He is the author of Crossing Border Street: A Civil Rights Memoir (UC Press, June 2000), among other books.
He visited Guantánamo in May 2007. His latest book, Our Nation Unhinged: The Human Consequences of the War on Terror was published by UC Press in March 2009. To learn more about the book and the issues at hand, please visit Honigsberg's blog, Our Nation Unhinged.
On January 10, 2009, Honigsberg posted an article on the Huffington Post called Establishing a Truth Commission for Guantanamo. Since the article was published, Honisgberg has since changed the name of his project to: Witness to Guantanamo: Never Again!
The article explains how the project will document former Guantanamo detainees and how the new Obama Administration is going forward with the failed policies brought on by the Bush Administration. Especially with the announcement of the impending closure of Guantanamo, one can only hope human rights will forever be preserved, while Honigsberg hopes the leaders held accountable should be prosecuted. Below is an excerpt of the article.
"We outside the administration cannot bring charges and prosecute. But
there is much we can do. We can lobby the administration to support
Chairman Conyers' bill and to establish other inquiry commissions to
investigate former Bush officials and their reprehensible policies. The
International Center for Transitional Justice is in the forefront in
this regard, working to persuade the new administration to act.
However, no one expects the new administration to make the effort to
reach the nearly 800 people around the globe who were detained at
Guantanamo and to collect their statements. Consequently, we need to
move forward independently, and gather these first-person accounts
before they become harder to access and people's memories wane. Memory
building will prevent denials of Guantanamo in the future and prevent
the repetition of policies that condone violence."
To read the article in its entirety, please visit the Huffington Post page, Establishing a Truth Commission for Guantanamo.
