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Clive Stafford Smith and Ahmad Ghappour have been summoned before a D.C. court on May 11th.

http://www.cageprisoners.com/articles.php?id=28626

Guantanamo Attorneys Face Possible Prison Time for Letter to Obama Detailing Client’s Allegations of Torture

11/04/2009

Clive Stafford Smith, Binyam Mohamed’s attorney. He is the legal director of the UK charity Reprieve and has represented more than fifty Guantanamo Bay prisoners. He is author of Eight O’Clock Ferry to the Windward Side: Seeking Justice in Guantanamo Bay.

AMY GOODMAN: This last story, an unusual development in the case of Binyam Mohamed, the British resident recently released after seven years in US custody, where he claims he was repeatedly tortured, first in a secret CIA prison, later at Guantanamo. Binyam Mohamed’s lawyers, Clive Stafford Smith and Ahmad Ghappour, could face six months in a US prison, The Guardian newspaper revealed last week, because of a letter they sent to President Obama explaining their client’s allegations of torture by US agents.

Officials from the Department of Defense who monitor and censor communication between Guantanamo prisoners and their lawyers filed a complaint against Mohamed’s lawyers for “unprofessional conduct” and for revealing classified evidence to the President. The memo the lawyers sent to Obama was completely redacted except for the title. It had urged the President to release evidence of Mohamed’s alleged torture into the public domain. Clive Stafford Smith and Ahmad Ghappour have been summoned before a D.C. court on May 11th.

I’m joined now in these last few minutes by Clive Stafford Smith, director of the British legal charity Reprieve.

Welcome to Democracy Now! Clive Stafford Smith, you’re afraid of being arrested if you come into this country?

CLIVE STAFFORD SMITH: No, I’m going to come to the country, because I want to face the charges. I mean, the charges are, to my mind, frivolous, because—it may be confusing to your listeners when you say that we supposedly revealed classified evidence and then say it was all censored—it was all censored. There wasn’t one iota of classified evidence revealed. So the real question, I guess, here is why the government continues to cover up the evidence of Binyam Mohamed’s torture.

AMY GOODMAN: But please explain, because I think this can be very confusing, what it is they said you did in this letter to President Obama. You are Binyam Mohamed’s lawyer.

CLIVE STAFFORD SMITH: Well, I wrote a letter to President Obama and attached to it a memorandum that was going to originally be the evidence that showed that Binyam was tortured. But that evidence we had to submit through the classification review process. So, ultimately, the two-page memo of evidence that Binyam had been tortured was all redacted, as you mentioned, so it was all blacked out. I mean, even to the President it was blacked out. And the only thing left in it was, you know, “In re: torture of Binyam Mohamed.”

What we were trying to do was get President Obama the information he needs to make a judgment as to whether the US should continue to cover up this evidence of torture. And it’s paradoxical that the President of the United States is not being permitted to make that judgment in a meaningful way.

AMY GOODMAN: So you will come to the United States for this May 11th hearing?

CLIVE STAFFORD SMITH: Oh, my goodness, yes. I mean, I am, I will say, offended by this process, but nothing would keep me away. I want to clear both mine and Ahmad’s name. And I want the real issue to be why the government continues to cover up the evidence of Binyam’s torture, because how can it be that we, as Americans, are not allowed to know when our government officials have committed criminal offenses against people like Binyam Mohamed? That just makes no sense at all. And if, indeed, someone should be on trial here, it should be the people who tortured Binyam.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’re going to leave it there. Clive Stafford Smith, thank you very much for this update.

CLIVE STAFFORD SMITH: Thank you.

SOURCE: Democracy Now
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Clive Stafford Smith and Ahmad Ghappour have been summoned before a D.C. court on May 11th.

Find one reference to this interview here

Guantanamo Attorneys Face Possible Prison Time for Letter to Obama Detailing Client’s Allegations of Torture

11/04/2009

Clive Stafford Smith, Binyam Mohamed’s attorney. He is the legal director of the UK charity Reprieve and has represented more than fifty Guantanamo Bay prisoners. He is author of Eight O’Clock Ferry to the Windward Side: Seeking Justice in Guantanamo Bay.

AMY GOODMAN: This last story, an unusual development in the case of Binyam Mohamed, the British resident recently released after seven years in US custody, where he claims he was repeatedly tortured, first in a secret CIA prison, later at Guantanamo. Binyam Mohamed’s lawyers, Clive Stafford Smith and Ahmad Ghappour, could face six months in a US prison, The Guardian newspaper revealed last week, because of a letter they sent to President Obama explaining their client’s allegations of torture by US agents.

Officials from the Department of Defense who monitor and censor communication between Guantanamo prisoners and their lawyers filed a complaint against Mohamed’s lawyers for “unprofessional conduct” and for revealing classified evidence to the President. The memo the lawyers sent to Obama was completely redacted except for the title. It had urged the President to release evidence of Mohamed’s alleged torture into the public domain. Clive Stafford Smith and Ahmad Ghappour have been summoned before a D.C. court on May 11th.

I’m joined now in these last few minutes by Clive Stafford Smith, director of the British legal charity Reprieve.

Welcome to Democracy Now! Clive Stafford Smith, you’re afraid of being arrested if you come into this country?

CLIVE STAFFORD SMITH: No, I’m going to come to the country, because I want to face the charges. I mean, the charges are, to my mind, frivolous, because—it may be confusing to your listeners when you say that we supposedly revealed classified evidence and then say it was all censored—it was all censored. There wasn’t one iota of classified evidence revealed. So the real question, I guess, here is why the government continues to cover up the evidence of Binyam Mohamed’s torture.

AMY GOODMAN: But please explain, because I think this can be very confusing, what it is they said you did in this letter to President Obama. You are Binyam Mohamed’s lawyer.

CLIVE STAFFORD SMITH: Well, I wrote a letter to President Obama and attached to it a memorandum that was going to originally be the evidence that showed that Binyam was tortured. But that evidence we had to submit through the classification review process. So, ultimately, the two-page memo of evidence that Binyam had been tortured was all redacted, as you mentioned, so it was all blacked out. I mean, even to the President it was blacked out. And the only thing left in it was, you know, “In re: torture of Binyam Mohamed.”

What we were trying to do was get President Obama the information he needs to make a judgment as to whether the US should continue to cover up this evidence of torture. And it’s paradoxical that the President of the United States is not being permitted to make that judgment in a meaningful way.

AMY GOODMAN: So you will come to the United States for this May 11th hearing?

CLIVE STAFFORD SMITH: Oh, my goodness, yes. I mean, I am, I will say, offended by this process, but nothing would keep me away. I want to clear both mine and Ahmad’s name. And I want the real issue to be why the government continues to cover up the evidence of Binyam’s torture, because how can it be that we, as Americans, are not allowed to know when our government officials have committed criminal offenses against people like Binyam Mohamed? That just makes no sense at all. And if, indeed, someone should be on trial here, it should be the people who tortured Binyam.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’re going to leave it there. Clive Stafford Smith, thank you very much for this update.

CLIVE STAFFORD SMITH: Thank you.

Also see Democracy Now dot org
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Other Related Items/Sources:

Center for Constitutinal Rights/ Special Prosecutor:
http://ccrjustice.org/prosecutebushofficials

Human Rights & GTMO Prisoners: Call for Advance Notice of Venue Changes
http://ccrjustice.org/newsroom/press-releases/d.c.-circuit-court-decision-refuses-allow-advance-notice-guantanamo-detainee

http://www.bordc.org/news

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/
MORE TROUBLING SIGNS

A lawyer representing detainees at Gitmo tells TPMmuckraker that the foot-dragging and stonewalling that marked the Bush Administration’s handling of detainee cases continues unabated under President Obama:

It did not surprise me in the slightest that the Bush administration would do everything in its power to subvert the Supreme Court’s ruling. I expected that. What I did not expect is that there would be absolutely zero change in the stonewall strategy when the [new] administration came in.

Zack Roth has more.
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/04/yesterday_we_told_you_about.php
Not Just State Secrets: Obama Continuing Bush’s Stonewalling On Gitmo Cases, Lawyer Claims By Zachary Roth – April 10, 2009, 3:43PM

Yesterday we told you about the Obama Justice Department’s invocation of a sweeping state secrets privilege in a warrantless wiretapping case. But that may not be the only area in which the new administration’s war on terror tactics recall the worst excesses of the Bush years.

Last year, the Supreme Court ruled that detainees at Guantanamo had the right to appeal their detentions in federal courts. But since then, only a few cases have been completed. And in an interview with TPMmuckraker, David Cynamon — a lawyer for four Kuwaiti Gitmo detainees who are bringing habeas corpus claims against the government — said that the Justice Department has been consistently dragging its heels in the case, denying detainees their basic due process rights and furthering what he called the “abandonment of the rule of law.”

“The Department of Justice has been doing everything in its power to delay and obstruct these cases,” said Cynamon, whose clients were picked up in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region in the period after the 2001 U.S invasion of Afghanistan. “They’re not doing anything to move the case along, and doing everything to avoid it.”

Asked whether he had observed a shift of any kind in the government’s approach since the Obama administration came into office, Cynamon flatly replied: “None whatsoever.”

He continued: That has been, to me, the biggest disappointment and mystery. It did not surprise me in the slightest that the Bush administration would do everything in its power to subvert the Supreme Court’s ruling. I expected that. What I did not expect is that there would be absolutely zero change in the stonewall strategy when the [new] administration came in.

Cynamon said he didn’t expect to see a change “on January 21st.” But, “there’s been enough time now that you can’t simply say ‘it’s still operating on auto pilot from the previous administration’. So I have been disappointed and frustrated not to see a change.”

And he added that, based on conversations with other lawyers defending Gitmo clients, the government’s stonewalling strategy was being applied not just to his case, but more broadly.

Cynamon detailed three specific areas in which the government is stonewalling. First, he said, it has taken an unduly long time to produce declassified evidence. Indeed, in February, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ordered one government lawyer removed from the case for failing to comply with repeated orders to make the evidence available. In a court document, the judge wrote that the lawyer’s “compliance was not optional,” and added that the court “has serious concern about counsel’s ability to read and comprehend its orders.”

Second, Cynamon said the government is resisting requests for discovery, slowing things down by forcing defense lawyers to go to court at each stage. “Across the board they basically say no,” he said. “It’s whatever bullshit excuse – ‘it’s too burdensome, its not relevant, its beyond the narrow….”

But the government’s “most egregious” stonewalling tactic, said Cynamon, parallels the misconduct famously displayed by the prosecutors in the Ted Stevens case: It has consistently failed to produce exculpatory evidence in its possession, as it is legally required to do. “They have completely, in my view, ignored that obligation,” said Cynamon. “We have come across a number of items of exculpatory evidence that the government should have given us and didn’t.”

For instance, said Cynamon, one his clients had military commission charges issued against him, and as a result was appointed a military defense counsel, who has access to a secure government database. The defense counsel, Cynamon explained, “fairly quickly and fairly easily found some documents on that secure database that were very helpful and exculpatory and helpful to our clients…that should have been produced to us in our case.”

Cynamon said that Obama should be given credit for his pledge to close Guantanamo within a year. But he said that doesn’t address the core issue.

“The fundamental problem is that there has been a complete abandonment of the rule of law and a denial of the most basic due process, which is: ‘If you get thrown in jail, you ought to have the right to have an independent judge look at the basis on which you’re in jail to decide whether you should be there,’” he said. “And closing Guantanamo doesn’t address that, if they just end up getting transferred to prisons in other places.”

Cynamon continued: “What I have been hoping for, and am getting increasingly frustrated about, is to see that closing Guantanamo be matched with a change in policy at the Justice Department to actually try to get these cases heard to test the evidence and then to determine, if there’s no evidence, to release these people. That part I haven’t seen at all.”

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