Alfred Dreyfus Trial

Capt. Alfred Dreyfus was a fairly restrained young man, graduating from one of France’s most notable military academies, The Ecole Polytechnique. He was devoted to serving his country, and more importantly, to his wife and child.
On what began as a characterless day in 1894, artillery officer Dreyfus was arrested under the pretenses that he was selling military secrets to a German attaché in Paris. The accusations were false, and there was no incriminating evidence against him, only that he was a Jew of Alsatian descent. Anti-Semitism along with a cauldron of other social forces forced Dreyfus into an ostentatious trial that would soon tear his reputation to pieces. The accusations were constructed behind clandestine doors, with inadequate evidence to say the least.
Dreyfus was court-martialed, and sentenced to rot away on the fabled Franco-Caribbean prison, Devils Island. Here he was shackled at three different locations on his body, and chained to either the ground or his iron bed. He was barred from speaking to the guards that watched over the tiny jail cell, while the tropical heat baked him, and mosquitos pestered him relentlessly.

The trial of Albert Dreyfus soon tore France apart, with many intellectuals
Begley believed that racism had infected the socio-political sphere during this time, which evoked the virulent inquiry of Dreyfus, due to his “otherness” of being a Jew. The most provoking part of the book resonates in the similarity Begley draws between the judicial treatment of Albert Dreyfus, and the “enemy combatants” that were held without trial in Guantanamo bay during the bush presidency. As Murtagh of New York University Journal of International Law and Politics states, “what startles here is not just the story itself but how clearly the story evokes Guantanamo Bay”