Pretty amazing story from the Australia Sun Herald about the borrowing habits of Guantanamo Bay prisoners who are fighting over who gets to read which Harry Potter books.
Ex-US Air Force translator (and former prisoner)Ahmad Al Halabi, librarian at Guantanamo Bay prison, said (accused terrorist) Australian David Hicks was one of several inmates who were “always arguing about which volume of Harry Potter they could have”.
Of course the reading matter was highly suspect …investigators thought a series of numbers next to Hicks’s name on a cell block roster were part of a secret coded message between Al Halabi and Hicks. But the “code” was in fact the reference numbers for the Harry Potter books in the library.
You’ve got to read it to believe it here
Code
Before people assume that the military people were nuts they might want to consider this. Books have been often used as a way to pass coded messages. The trick is for both people to use the same book as the “code book.”
Coded message might look like this
12(5) 34(12) 2(5)
The first number is the page of the book and the second number is the word on the page. 12(5) would be page twelve word five of the agreed upon book. The advantage of this system is that a very common book can be used as your code book. If the enemy or person you don’t want to read the message does not know what book you are using they cannot break the code.
If the prisoners were looking at the same book, turning it in, and requesting it again I would be suspicious that they were using this method of code to pass messages.
Perhaps
Perhaps we should stop calling him Osama Bin Laden and start calling him “He Who Shall Not Be Named”.