Bonini and D'Avanzo

We should probably find out who these guys are.

The prizewinning pair are investigative journalists on the "Big Crime" beat, covering spectacular Mafia murders, judicial corruption, official blackmail and, well, apparently illegal war, too.

Carlo Bonini, born in Rome in 1967, is special correspondent for the Rome daily, La Repubblica, which he joined after having worked for the Milanese newspaper Il Corriere della Sera, where he reported on the courts and the judiciary. Bonini has written or co-authored several non-fiction books, including:

Guantanamo. Usa, a Journey to the War on Terror Prison, Einaudi (2004)
One Country, One Cooperative, One Man, Mucchi (2002)
The Red Robe, Tropea (1998)
The Flower of Evil, Tropea (1999)

Giuseppe D'Avanzo is La Repubblica's top investigative reporter, teamed recently with Bonini. D'Avanzo has published as well:
Rostagno: A Crime Among Friends, Mondadori (1996)
Justice Is Cosa Nostra, Mondadori (1996)
The Days of the Gladio Conspiracy, Sperling & Kupfer (1991)
The Capo of Capos: The Life and Criminal Career of Totò Riina, Mondadori

Below is an exerpt from Bonini's book on Guantanamo, pictured above.

Inside the cage, someone decides to end it all. Forever. And in the only way possible--by hanging. Or rather, by trying to hang himself. This has happened thirty two times. With twenty-seven different injuries. Because some attempt hanging more than once. It is a changeable statistic which fluctuates as the months go by and sometimes inflates when collective desperation sets in. The same death scene is performed again and again. The victim knots a piece cloth and hangs it from the highest point on the wall of the cage where the steel wire of the mesh meets the cement roof of the cell. A noose is made at one end of the cloth. The victim slips his head in and lets himself slide down using the weight of the chest and pelvis. The body remains angular, sometimes in a jackknife position, other times bent at the knees. The hanging attempt causes tremendous convulsions, they tell me. Because in a space as restricted as that of the cage, with such a low roof, suffocation is never final. In the excitement of the shouts for help in the detention unit, the limbs of those who fail at the attempt begin to thrash in all directions governed by reflex. The cyanotic body is cerebrally and physically damaged. I talked to one of the suicide survivors on the other side of the windbreak protecting the cots of the "Detention Hospital”, a structure said to be for medical use at the western edge of Camp Delta. The air-conditioned tent reeking of lysoform with a spotless greenish linoleum floor has a several 20-bed wards and a staff of ninety-three doctors and nurses pulling teeth, amputating arms and legs, setting bones and sometimes treating chronic, debilitating illnesses such as tuberculosis. Those who visited the hospital in the weeks prior to my arrival reported seeing a man holding onto life thanks to a resuscitation machine. Fed through a system of tubes surgically inserted into the stomach. In a permanent vegetative state. Non-reversible. He’s recovering. We’re very pleased about that, says Capt. Kelleher. He’s started to talk and can move a bit. Of course, he still has trouble holding a cup. As in the detention units, here in the hospital the prisoners are addressed by number, never by name. By the number of the cell in which hanging was attempted. And every night, his body is chained to the cot in which he lies, as with anyone else who is treated there.