Harry Potter bewitches Guantanamo Bay prisoners

“Harry Potter is a popular title among some of the detainee population,” said the librarian, a civilian contractor identified only as “Lorie” who works at the prison camp for foreign terrorism suspects at the U.S. naval base in Cuba.

Lorie said the popularity of the best-selling Harry Potter books, which recount the adventures of a boy wizard as he triumphs over the powers of evil, was matched only by the prisoners’ passion for Agatha Christie, some of whose murder mysteries are set in the Middle East.

“We have Harry Potter in four languages, English, French, Farsi and Russian. We have it on order in Arabic. We do not have books 5 and 6 in the series, at this time. We have had several detainees read the series,” Lorie said in a written response to questions from Reuters.

“Ahhhh, so you are enjoying Harry Potter, no? Tell us where Osama bin Laden is, and we’ll let you find out who dies at the end of book 6…”

Defined tags for this entry: geeky, Guantanimo Bay, Harry Potter, rants, torture