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.
Mansoor’s 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. It won the 2022 Evelyn Shakir Non-Fiction Award. Together with his friend and editor, Antonio Aiello, he was a Sundance Institute Fellow in Episodic TV to adapt his book into the television show, "From Guantánamo, With Love," now in development with Diversity Hire, Inc. Mansoor and Aiello also adapted "Life After" into a feature film by the same name, currently a finalist in the Sundance Feature Film Development category and in development with Process-Media and Diversity Hire, Inc. This month, he turned in the final draft of an audiobook, "Letters from Guantanamo," to Audible, and it will be published in 2024.
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.
In 2018, he participated in the creation of the Whicker Prize-winning radio documentary, "The Art of Now" for BBC radio about art from Guantánamo and the CBC podcast, "Love Me," which aired on NPR's Snap Judgment. Regularly interviewed by international news media about his experiences at Guantánamo and life after, he was also featured in "Out of