Biography
Mansoor Adayfi is a writer, artist, human rights advocate, and former prisoner who spent over 14 years at Guantánamo Bay Prison Camp without charges or trial. He was resettled to Serbia in 2016 as part of an agreement between the US government and Serbia. In 2021, he completed his bachelor’s degree in management and wrote his thesis titled “Rehabilitation and Integration of Former Guantanamo Prisoners into Social Life and the Labor Market.” His thesis served as the basis of the Guantanamo Survivors Fund which he co-founded along with American lawyers and US-based NGOs. Now Mansoor is pursuing his masters degree in Project Management.
His first book titled, “Don’t Forget Us Here: Lost and Found at Guantanamo,” was published by Hachette and met with critical acclaim with reviews in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and numerous others.
Mansoor’s writings have also appeared in the New York Times, including his pieces titled “Taking Marriage Class at Guantánamo” and “In Our Prison by the Sea.” He’s also published numerous other op-eds in Al Jazeera, The Guardian, Middle East Monitor, The New Arab and Common Dreams among others. He also wrote the introduction, “Ode to the Sea: Art from Guantánamo Bay,” for the 2017-2018 exhibition of prisoners’ artwork at the John Jay College of Justice in New York City and contributed to the scholarly volume, “Witnessing Torture,” published by Palgrave, the ECCHR Special publication 2022, “Rupture and Reckoning – Guantanamo turns 20,”and many others.
Mansoor Adayfi works for CAGE International as the Guantánamo Project Coordinator, where he continues his advocacy for the closure of the military prison and the rights of its former prisoners.
