Tortured trail

Guantanamo lawyers call for political pressure to release detainees, reports Nasser Arrabyee from Sanaa

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A group of American lawyers representing Guantanamo detainees called for more political pressure on the United States to immediately release the prisoners and said they would continue to work towards preventing the US government from relocating Guantanamo detainees to countries where they may be tortured.

"We have good reason to fear that the US might send our clients to third countries or to secret CIA facilities where they could be tortured or imprisoned indefinitely, without access to lawyers or judicial process," said lawyers David Remes and Marc Falkoff of the US-based law firm Covington and Burling while visiting families of detainees in Yemen last week.

Speaking of their previous work, the lawyers said, "we have prevented the US government from removing detainees from Guantanamo without providing us with an advance notice of its intention to remove them and its plans for them after their removal."

However, according to the lawyers, these actions fall short of their demands. "We want the US to return our clients to Yemen unconditionally, to be reunited with their families or to return them to Yemen on condition that they be either charged with a crime under Yemeni law or released, and that those who are charged with a crime receive due process of law."

The lawyers, who currently represent 15 Yemenis detained at Guantanamo, began representing their clients in July 2004 after the US Supreme Court ruled that the prisoners were entitled to challenge their detention in civilian courts. HOOD, a Yemen- based Islamist human rights organisation, obtained authorisation from families of the prisoners to work with US lawyers in challenging their detention.

"The US-based Center for Constitutional Rights assigned the cases to us and other American lawyers. There are now about 350 lawyers -- from law firms, law schools, and civil liberties groups, representing about 150 detainees. Most if not all of the lawyers are representing the detainees at no charge and with no expectation of payment," said the lawyers.

Remes and Falkoff denied that any of their Yemeni clients had taken up arms against the US. "Our clients, incidentally, are a diverse group. One is a successful businessman who was lured to Egypt, where he was kidnapped and sent to Guantanamo. Another is a charity worker seized in his sleep in the middle of the night at his home in Karachi. Another is a young man with multiple medical problems who went to Afghanistan for free treatment. Others went to Afghanistan to teach and preach the Quran. Another went to Afghanistan in 1999 to fight with the Taliban against the Northern Alliance; he never fired his weapon. Many were seized by Pakistani border guards as they fled from Afghanistan when the American bombing began. We are convinced that none of our clients took up arms against the US."

During their visit to five Yemeni provinces last week (Sanaa, Dhammar, Ibb, Taiz and Aden), some relatives of the prisoners were not cooperative and were "understandably wary of talking to Americans". Only about 35 of the more than 100 Yemeni Guantanamo detainees have lawyers.

The law firm Covington and Burling became involved with the cases in May 2004, when lawyers representing Selim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni detainee, asked for assistance. The US government alleged that Hamdan worked as Osama Bin Laden's driver in Afghanistan.

Hamdan, one of a handful of detainees the US is prosecuting for war crimes, was slated to be put before a military commission established by President Bush in November 2001 and tried for war crimes. Hamdan filed a lawsuit against the US government in US district court alleging that the system of military commissions established by the current American administration violates the US constitution, international law, and the Geneva Conventions.

The court agreed and declared the military commission system a violation of the Geneva Conventions. In response, the Bush administration pressured the US court of appeals to reverse the decision. The appeal has been briefed and argued, and the court's decision is forthcoming.

"The government has made it exceedingly difficult for us to represent our clients. It has imposed numerous unreasonable restrictions on our ability to visit and communicate with our clients and fights us on nearly every point, no matter how small, in the courts," Remes and Falkoff claimed.

Despite the difficulties, Remes and Falkoff remain optimistic. "We are convinced that we will ultimately prevail in the courts, but that could take as much as two or three more years. Our expectation is that the United States will eventually release most of the detainees of its own accord as a result of domestic and international political pressure."

Remes and two of his colleagues will return to Yemen in mid-June to attend a conference organised by Amnesty International and to consult with other families and government officials. "But this is not the visit to Yemen we most look forward to. That visit will be the visit we make to sit with our clients and their families and share a cup of tea in their own homes. With the assistance of the Yemeni government, we are hopeful that this joyous visit will occur not too far in the future," Remes said.