Alter Net - Diary of a Guantánamo Attorney by H. Candace Gorman, In These Times
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By H. Candace Gorman, In These Times
Posted on January 20, 2007, Printed on January 20, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/46816/
I fell into the world of Guantánamo in October 2005. The Chicago
Council of
Lawyers had organized a luncheon discussion on the legal issues
surrounding the
infamous detention facility at the U.S. naval base in eastern Cuba. I
received
an e-mail thanking me for my attendance (I should have gone but didn't)
and
asking for volunteers to represent the nearly 200 known unrepresented
prisoners
at the base.
I had assumed that I was well-informed about our criminal president and
his
assault on the rule of law; it never occurred to me that four years
after being
captured (and more than one year after the Supreme Court affirmed their
right to
hearing and counsel) individuals were still being held without legal
representation. I replied to the e-mail, offering my services.
During a conference call for volunteer lawyers, I got a sense of what
the job
might entail. For example, attorneys are required to turn their client
notes
over to the government after visiting prisoners. I naively asked, "What
about
attorney-client privilege?" This, like so many other protections and
legal
principles, doesn't apply to Guantánamo. Attorneys often return from
the base
with urgent news, but have to wait weeks for the government to clear
their
notes. The government rarely, if ever, classifies the content; this
procedure
simply delays and encumbers our work.
At a workshop for volunteer lawyers organized by the Center for
Constitutional
Rights (CCR), I came to learn of the horrific particulars of prisoner
life in
Guantánamo: the hunger strikes, the suicide attempts and the dubious
circumstances under which prisoners had been captured. The vast
majority of
Guantánamo's inmates were apprehended in Afghanistan and elsewhere by
third
party forces, after the United States promised enormous bounties for
"murderers
and terrorists."
That December, I was assigned a detainee by CCR; his name was Abdul
Al-Ghizzawi,
a Libyan who had been living in Afghanistan before his capture. Another
prisoner
had written a letter identifying Al-Ghizzawi as someone who desired an
attorney.
Because the government would not release the names of detainees,
prisoners often
reached lawyers through such indirect means. I got to work preparing a
petition
for a writ of habeas corpus -- a petition that challenges the legality
of a
prisoner's detention and requests that the court order the authorities
to either
release the individual or justify his imprisonment with formal charges.
It has been a year since I filed the petition, and Al-Ghizzawi is still
languishing in Guantánamo. Initially, the government did everything
possible to
delay and obstruct access to my client. I knew only that my client was
ill, that
he wanted an attorney and that the government opposed entering the
protective
order that would allow me to visit and communicate with him.
Shortly after I filed the habeas petition, in a false gesture of
munificence,
the government invited my input into the Justice Department's review of
Al-Ghizzawi's status. What could I possibly say? As I wrote the review
board,
"Without knowing the reasons for Mr. Al-Ghizzawi's detention, it is
impossible
to address those reasons or the factual basis for continuing to detain
him." I
added that I would supplement the submission once I had had a chance to
meet and
interview him.
Eventually, after what then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld would
call a
"long hard slog," the protective order was entered. In July, eight
months after
filing the habeas petition, I was finally allowed to go to Guantánamo
and meet
with my client, a sick and visibly jaundiced man who pined for his wife
and
young daughter.
Al-Ghizzawi was a shopkeeper who sold bread, honey and other goods in
Jalalabad,
Afghanistan. When the American bombs started falling, he took his wife
and
daughter to the village where his in-laws lived. He then became one of
those
unlucky foreigners captured and turned in for a bounty. According to
the Bush
administration, all of the detainees were apprehended "on the
battlefield" -- in
this case, the quiet home of Al-Ghizzawi's in-laws.
My ultimate aim is to release Al-Ghizzawi and reunite him with his
family.
However, my immediate goal is to keep him alive. The medical staff at
Guantánamo
have diagnosed Al-Ghizzawi with tuberculosis and hepatitis B but failed
to
inform or treat him for either condition. I have been fighting for
access to
Al-Ghizzawi's medical records, but a D.C. district judge ruled that we
had not
demonstrated that he would suffer "irreparable harm" in being denied
his
records. Imagine, I need his records in order to prove that he will
suffer
"irreparable harm," but cannot access them without first proving
"irreparable
harm." (I have appealed that ruling.)
This is just one example. As I will relate in this space in the coming
months,
there is no rhyme or reason to the world of Guantánamo -- only a cruel
inhumanity.
Adrian Bleifuss Prados, the author's law clerk, contributed to this
column.
H. Candace Gorman is a civil rights attorney in Chicago.
© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/46816/