In 2008, I became the lawyer for Abdul Nasser Khantumani and his son Muhammed, two men who were being held at Guantánamo Bay Naval Base, in Cuba. When the United States took them into custody, in 2001, Abdul Nasser was in his forties; Muhammed was still a teenager, with a year of high school left. There’s a picture of him as a boy in Syria, not long before his life changed. He’s at the beach with his younger cousins, their arms draped over one another’s shoulders. He’s skinny and soaked, his wet hair plastered to his forehead.
On December 20,…
