Lingerie Designer Releases Gitmo Inspired Underwear: "Fair Trial My A***"

Posted by Liliana Segura, AlterNet at 10:09 AM on February 15, 2008.

There's not much room for humor when it comes to Guantanamo, but human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith's "Case of the Contraband Underpants," published in The New Statesman last fall, had to make you chuckle.

I received a letter from an officer at [Guantanamo] suggesting that I might have smuggled some underwear in to my client, the British resident Shaker Aamer. Apparently Shaker had been "recently discovered to be wearing Under Armour briefs and a Speedo bathing suit." It seems he was wearing both contraband items in his cell at Camp Echo, where he has been in total isolation almost continuously since 24 September 2005, with only the flush of his steel toilet for company.

The odd discovery led the attorney on a fact-finding mission, in which he would learn that "Under Armour" underwear is "popular with the US military," making it more than likely that the illicit skivvies were planted by someone in uniform. (The Speedo suit was more mysterious; perhaps, Stafford Smith suggested, "the military could erect prohibitory signs in each prison cell: 'We don't pee in your swimming pool, so please don't swim in our toilet'"?)

Now, months later and right in time for London's Fashion Week, Stafford Smith and his UK-based legal charity, Reprieve, have inspired a line of underwear, Gitmo-orange and with the words "Fair Trial My Arse" emblazoned on the butt. Created by famed lingerie designer Agent Provocateur, the underwear has had an auspicious debut: a pair was "discreetly delivered" yesterday to Prime Minister Gordon Brown -- a Valentine's Day gift from Reprieve and its clients -- and another was spotted on the runway as part of the Vivienne Westwood collection at London's Fashion Week.

"Bad taste aside," Stafford Smith explains, "Fair Trial My Arse bears a serious message, particularly given this past week's announcement that the US military plans death-penalty trials in Guantanamo Bay … We hope the slogan will become a rallying cry for the closure of Guantanamo Bay and the secret prisons that proliferate around the world."

Tagged as: guantanamo, clive stafford smith, reprieve, fashion week

Liliana Segura is an AlterNet staff writer and editor of the Rights & Liberties section.