An Interview with Moazzam Begg
In January, 2002, Moazzam Begg, a British citizen of Pakistani descent, was seized in Islamabad. Although never officially charged with a crime, the US alleged that he had terrorist ties. A married father of two, with a new baby on the way, Begg spent eleven months at Bagram Air Base and two years in Guantánamo, largely in solitary confinement in a six-by-eight foot cell, before being released in 2005. Well-educated and multilingual, Begg has become a human rights advocate and often speaks on behalf of other detainees. In 2006 he published a memoir, Enemy Combatant: My Imprisonment at Guantánamo, Bagram, and Kandahar.
Begg spoke with freelance journalist Kara Platoni by telephone from his home in London. An excerpt from this interview was printed in the 2008 fall-winter issue of the Transcript, Berkeley’s alumni magazine. Read the full transcript.