Guantanamo detainees not told they had defense lawyers

[LiviaOlivia]

Posted on Fri, Jun. 16, 2006
Guantanamo detainees unaware of defense lawyers
BY CAROL ROSENBERG
Knight Ridder Newspapers

MIAMI - The Yemeni captive who killed himself at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had an attorney arranging to visit him in August, but did not know it when he committed suicide. One of the Saudis, Mani Shaman al Utaybi, 30, had been approved for transfer to a jail back home, but also had never been told he was cleared to depart the U.S. detention center. As the Pentagon was silent Thursday on the repatriation of the bodies of the three men from the island prison, their lawyers questioned whether their isolation and lack of knowledge about their status contributed to their deaths.

The three men hanged themselves in Camp 1 with nooses made from shredded bedsheets and towels on Saturday in what the military called a choreographed group suicide. Rear Adm. Harry Harris Jr., the camps' commander, described it as an act of "asymmetrical warfare." But attorneys for the men_who the military initially said had no lawyers_say that had the detainees known of legal efforts on their behalf, they might be alive today.

"As far as we know he (Ali Abdullah Ahmed) did not know he had an attorney. We certainly never got through to him to advise him of that fact," said Dave Engelhardt of Washington, D.C., who had filed a habeas corpus petition for Ahmed, the 29- or 30-year-old Yemeni. "Perhaps he would have not have committed suicide if he had known the facts of his representation of counsel and the progress that is being made in the American courts for the detainees."

Both Engelhardt and attorney Jeff Davis of Charlotte, N.C., said government lawyers had thwarted repeated attempts to see their clients. Davis said his firm was notified more than a month ago that Utaybi was approved for transfer back to Saudi Arabia. But the notice came under a seal of secrecy, said Davis, so Utaybi, who had never met his lawyer, did not know he would be sent home - which The Miami Herald confirmed independently.

~snip~

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/nation/14838834.htm

[Terran1212]

1. Insane

All of this is.

[enough]

2. Shame, shame.

[annabanana]

3. My head is exploding..

two out of the three men who killed themselves would probably be alive if they had been told that one had had a lawyer assigned and the other was due to be sent back to his own country.

Who else is on the very brink of despair? Who else there is feeling completely hopeless and forgotten? Who else has not been told that there is someone working on their behalf?

Oh this is beyond shameful.

[Pachamama]

5. You know what is making my head explode? Its the fact that maybe these

men were "suicided" BECAUSE they were going to GO HOME!!!!

I don't believe we get all the details and facts on anything going on anymore. But, if we are to assume that what is true in fact is that these men had representation and were likely to be going home, is it possible that certain people running Gitmo don't want these people going home and talking?

:eyes: Just wondering....:shrug:

[nealmhughes]

4. WTF does "assymetrical warfare" mean?

I suppose if the three weren't hanged in a pyramid pattern, or in a row, but say with 2 on the same side and at one end of the row and another at the other end, then it would be an asymmetrical group suicide, but I don't get "symmetrical warfare," much less its anthesis.
This is ridiculous jargon that noone in the general public should be expected to understand.
Does some sort of philosophy of warfare have notions of symmetric and asymmetric warfare?
General, please pronounce your apologetics in English -- the kind that most people speak, that is.

[ManiacJoe]

6. The term seems to be

well used by those interested in the topic. While it is a new phrase to me, there are lots of apparently good articles via Google.

[LiviaOlivia]

7. see this link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asymmetric_warfare#Iraq