Defending Two Innocent Men Accused of Terrorism

Waucoma Bookstore & Columbia River Fellowship for Peace will be hosting Portland author Steven Wax for a book reading & signing on Thursday, March 26 at 7 pm at Columbia Center for the Arts.

Wax is the author of “Kafka Comes To America: Fighting for Justice in the War on Terror."

Wax will have a separate reading for the cast and crew of Death and the Maiden the same day at 4:30 p.m.

 

Book Overview

Through the gripping inside-stories of two of the most highly publicized terrorism cases of the 21st century, author Steven T. Wax shines a spotlight on one of the most critical issues faced by Americans today.

“Kafka Comes To America: Fighting for Justice in the War on Terror” is the saga of one public defender's struggle to rescue two innocent men from the Kafkaesque practices of our judicial system - a system now tainted by the loss of our civil liberties in the name of the war on terror.

The Oregon Lawyer Accused

The book tells the well-known true story of Brandon Mayfield, an American-born lawyer and family man living in Oregon, who was mistakenly arrested as a suspected terrorist in the Madrid bombings because of an incorrectly identified fingerprint. You
may have seen the coverage of an Oregon judge's ruling to overturn sections of the Patriot Act late last year-the ruling arose from a civil suit against the government by Brandon Mayfield in response to his wrongful arrest.

The Sudanese Hospital Administrator Accused

Less known, although currently growing in media attention thanks to Wax's efforts, is Adel Hamad, a Sudanese hospital administrator who was taken from his apartment in Pakistan and flown in chains to Guantanamo as part of an anti-Arab sweep
intended to satisfy the American government's new security initiatives. Weaving together the stories of Brandon, the citizen, Adel, the alien, and the work of Wax's defense teams, Kafka Comes to America makes clear that the rights in jeopardy in the war on terror belong to all of us.

About Steven Wax

A  patriotic American and a firm believer in upholding the judicial system he has come to know and respect, Wax has served twenty-nine years as a public defender.

From Guantanamo to the Supreme Court, Wax has been there, and he is well positioned to present a sharp, trenchant picture of both how we've come to lose our civil liberties and how we must all fight for our constitutional rights.

Steven Wax is in his sixth term as the Federal Public Defender for the District of Oregon. A cum laude graduate of Colgate University and Harvard Law School, he was a key part of the Brooklyn, N.Y. District Attorney’s prosecution of David Berkowitz, a.k.a.“The Son of Sam.” Wax and his team are currently representing seven men held as “enemy combatants” in Guantanamo.

He has taught at the Northwestern School of Law at Lewis and Clark College, serves as an ethics prosecutor for the Oregon State Bar, and lectures throughout the country.