Guantanamo lawyers

Now here’s an interesting development. A close study of the front-runners in the Presidential primaries reveals that all have called for the closure of Guantánamo, with the exception of Mitt Romney, who famously declared, during a televised GOP debate last May, “I am glad [the detainees] are at Guantánamo. I don’t want them on our [...]

Adel Abdul Hakim, an ethnic Uighur, is one of five former Guantánamo detainees from China, who were cleared of all wrongdoing after a military review board, but who could not be repatriated because of fears that they would be tortured on their return. After trawling the world looking for countries that would accept former Guantánamo [...]

Following up on my exclusive report yesterday about the former Guantánamo detainee Adel Abdul Hakim and his application for permanent asylum in Sweden, his lawyer Sabin Willett, who first alerted me to Adel’s story, has kindly allowed me to reproduce a talk that he gave to the Swedish Helsinki Committee’s War & Peace Seminar in [...]

In the Los Angeles Times, Clive Stafford Smith, the legal director of the London-based legal charity Reprieve, which represents dozens of Guantánamo detainees, recently filed a report from the “Combined Bachelors’ Quarters” at Guantánamo, where visiting lawyers are housed. He had been visiting some of his clients, although, as he explained, “I can’t tell you [...]

Prior to visiting Canada for a short tour to publicize the plight of his client, Omar Khadr (profiled here and here), US military lawyer Lt. Cmdr. William Kuebler –- whose opposition to the US government’s system of trials by Military Commission was covered here and here –- issued a press release, which succinctly explained why [...]