Based on their testimonies and those of former inmates, Mr Hawk estimates that there are 150,000-200,000 prisoners penneders, penned into a string of camps that can be pinpointed on Google Earth (being "sent up to the mountains" is a euphemism among ordinary folk for those who disappear).
You can imagine the scholarly minds of the Renaissance didn't weigh too heavily on their testimonies.
The state's case rested largely on what were presented as confession letters obtained by jailhouse snitches and on their testimony.
How did this happen to them? "The Road to Guantánamo," relying as it does on their testimony, does not entirely answer that question.
They all declined to comment on their testimony, and federal officials have refused to discuss the grand jury or the scope of its proceedings.
Based on their testimony, Rima, upon being approached by security forces, shouted at them, 'I don't want you to die; I want the blood to stop,' but was arrested anyway".
Mary Dejevsky in the Independent was also impressed: "In relying on their testimony, and her own sensibilities, Gessen conveys the atmosphere – whether of the last months of the Soviet Union, the chaotic years of Yeltsin, the strange transfer of the presidency to Putin or the disappointments of his period – more accurately than any recent chronicler of the period".
Without a "smoking gun," he said the Crown's case rested solely on their testimony, which was "less than full, frank, and forthcoming".
Two years later, the District Attorney's office abruptly announced it would no longer call several narcotics officers to testify in criminal cases and, without saying why, agreed to begin dropping charges brought by those officers and overturn convictions based on their testimony.
At Sona's trial, his lawyer tried to cast doubt on their testimony, pointing out that most of what they said had been in media accounts, but the judge was convinced that they were telling the truth, and Sona was convicted and sentenced to nine months in jail.
Gates scribbled some of their testimony on tall blackboards, which accumulated in leaning stacks.
