The Guantánamo Lawyers: Inside a Prison Outside the Law

by Jonathan Hafetz, Mark P. Denbeaux (Editor)

Overview

The stories of Guantánamo detainees, silenced and imprisoned without trial, as told by their lawyers

Following the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the United States imprisoned more than seven hundred and fifty men at its naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. These men, ranging from teenage boys to men in their eighties from over forty different countries, were detained for years without charges, trial, and a fair hearing. Without any legal status or protection, they were truly outside the law: imprisoned in secret, denied communication with their families, and subjected to extreme isolation, physical and mental abuse, and, in some instances, torture.

These are the detainees’ stories, told by their lawyers because the prisoners themselves were silenced. It took habeas counsel more than two years—and a ruling from the United States Supreme Court—to finally gain the right to visit and talk to their clients at Guantánamo. Even then, lawyers were forced to operate under severe restrictions designed to inhibit communication and envelop the prison in secrecy. In time, however, lawyers were able to meet with their clients and bring the truth about Guantánamo to the world.

The Guantánamo Lawyers contains over one hundred personal narratives from attorneys who have represented detainees held at “GTMO” as well as at other overseas prisons, from Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan to secret CIA jails or “black sites.” Mark Denbeaux and Jonathan Hafetz—themselves lawyers for detainees—collected stories that cover virtually every facet of Guantánamo, and the litigation it sparked. Together, these moving, powerful voices create a historical record of Guantánamo’s legal, human, and moral failings, and provide a window into America’s catastrophic effort to create a prison beyond the law.

An online archive, hosted by New York University Libraries, will be available at the time of publication and will contain the complete texts as well as other accounts contributed by Guantánamo lawyers. The documents will be freely available on the Internet for research, teaching, and non-commercial uses, and will be preserved indefinitely as a historical collection.

Read free excerpts from the book at http://www.theguantanamolawyers.com and explore the complete archive of narratives at http://dlib.nyu.edu/guantanamo

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814785058
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	03/04/2011
Pages:	464
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.70(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Jonathan Hafetz is Associate Professor at Seton Hall Law School and has litigated numerous landmark habeas corpus detention cases. He also is the co-editor (with Mark Denbeaux) of The Guantánamo Lawyers: Inside a Prison Outside the Law (NYU Press, 2009).

Mark Denbeaux is a professor at Seton Hall Law School, where he also directs the Center for Policy and Research.

Table of Contents

Introduction Mark P. Denbeaux Jonathan Hafetz 1

Prelude 7

1 Representing the "Worst of the Worst" 13

How and Why the Lawyers Started Representing Detainees 13

2 Getting behind the Wire 29

Rasul/Al Odah: The Right to Representation 29

3 Uncovering Guantánamo's Human Face 55

First Impressions 55

Rendered: How the Detainees Got to Guantánamo 85

Female Attorneys 91

Family Members 96

Interpreters 103

4 Red Tape and Kangaroo Courts 109

Barriers to Representation 109

The No-Hearing Hearings: Combatant Status Review Tribunals 148

Military Commissions 169

Political Maneuvering 200

Boumediene v. Bush: The Death Knell for Prisons beyond the Law 219

5 Tortured 229

A Product of Torture Culture 229

Reactions 255

Hunger Strikes 265

Suicides 281

6 Alternative Forms of Advocacy 289

7 Leaving Guantánamo 313

Stuck in Limbo 313

Out but Not Free 329

Happy Endings? 341

8 Guantánamo beyond Cuba: A Global Detention System outside the Law 361

Guantánamo Comes to America 361

Black Sites 379

Coda 399

Timeline: Guantánamo and the "War on Terror" 405

Contributors 413

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

The most compelling reason to read The Guantanamo Lawyers is that the legal questions created by Guantanamo have not yet been fully resolved. President Obama's promise to close the prison has so far gone unfulfilled, and John Paul Stevens, who will perhaps be remembered more for his writings on Guantanamo than any other subject, will leave the Court at the end of this term. No matter how the Guantanamo question is resolved, historians will no doubt benefit from Denbeaux and Hafetz's excellent book."-Tyler D. Helmond, in The Champion (NACDL),

“Perhaps the appeal to enlightened national interest was the best strategic means of accelerating the end of Guantánamo; but it necessarily de-emphasized in the public discourse the great cost imposed on the detainees. The many stories told in The Guantánamo Lawyers, which make Guantánamo’s human cost much more tangible, go some way towards redressing this.”-Concurring Opinions,

“A new and remarkable book... made up of the written accounts by more than a hundred of the lawyers who provide detailed accounts of their meetings with their clients inside the prison... an informative and telling chronicle of what Guantanamo is really like...”-The New York Times ,

“Provides an invaluable perspective—or more accurately, perspectives, since more than one hundred lawyers contributed to the volume. These men and women, all working for nothing, have gained intimate access to those whom the United States sought to keep hidden behind strictly closed doors….The stories these lawyers have been able to tell, adroitly edited by Mark Denbeaux and Jonathan Hafetz, offer a multifaceted portrait of life on the base.

-New York Review of Books

,

“A valuable contribution to the record of an unfinished story bound to reverberate for years to come.”
-Kirkus Reviews

Editorial Reviews

"In this admirable compliation, Mark P. Denbeaux, a professor at Seaton hall University School of Law and Jonathan Hafetz, a staff attorney at the ACLU’s National Security Project, have explored one of this generation’s great moral questions by assembling first-person reports from over 100 attourneys who represent prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay.”"

New York Law Journal

"One of the most inspiring features of the post-9/11 world has been the willingness of lawyers from all walks of life to volunteer to represent those condemned to indefinite detention at Guantánamo. This book provides an invaluable birds-eye view of what its like to fight for justice in a law-free zone, representing men who the government has labeled the worst of the worst."

David Cole

"A critically important and inspired project. . . . Guantánamo from the point of view of the habeas lawyersthose courageous men and women who have stood up for the rule of law, the constitution and human rights as they represented the detainees beginning in December, 2001."

Peter Jan Honigsburg

"“The most compelling reason to read is that the legal questions created by Guantanamo have not yet been fully resolved. President Obama’s promise to close the prison has so far gone unfulfilled, and John Paul Stevens, who will perhaps be remembered more for his writings on Guantanamo than any other subject, will leave the Court at the end of this term. No matter how the Guantanamo question is resolved, historians will no doubt benefit from Denbeaux and Hafetz’s excellent book."

Tyler D. Helmond

"A new and remarkable book... made up of the written accounts by more than a hundred of the lawyers who provide detailed accounts of their meetings with their clients inside the prison... an informative and telling chronicle of what Guantanamo is really like..."

The New York Times

"Finally, the silence surrounding Guantánamo has been broken. Person by person, through the eyes of their civilian and military defense attorneys, the Guantánamo detainees have found a voice. This collection of stories underscores the valiant efforts of these lawyers and the intentional cruelty of the Bush administrations legal obstructiveness which withheld due process and imposed intolerable conditions upon hundreds of detainees. Readable, heartbreaking and expansive in its intimate detail, Hafetz and Denbeauxs volume is an invaluable contribution to the history of Guantánamo."

Karen Greenberg

"[M]akes for gripping if somber reading. . .They have produced a book that will make other lawyers vicariously proud."

TimesOnline

"Perhaps the appeal to enlightened national interest was the best strategic means of accelerating the end of Guantánamo; but it necessarily de-emphasized in the public discourse the great cost imposed on the detainees. The many stories told in The Guantánamo Lawyers, which make Guantánamos human cost much more tangible, go some way towards redressing this."

Concurring Opinions

"This is a fascinating and revealing behind-the-scenes account of the human stories inside Guantánamo, told candidly by some of Americas best, and most public-spirited, lawyers."

Jane Mayer

"The Guantánamo Lawyers is a powerful and important book. These first-hand accounts strip way much of the veneer that has encased tepid and lifeless news stories of what has happened at Guantanamo and elsewhere. This behind-the-scenes look at these brave lawyers and abused detainees is fascinating and revealing."

TruthOut

"Provides an invaluable perspectiveor more accurately, perspectives, since more than one hundred lawyers contributed to the volume. These men and women, all working for nothing, have gained intimate access to those whom the United States sought to keep hidden behind strictly closed doors.The stories these lawyers have been able to tell, adroitly edited by Mark Denbeaux and Jonathan Hafetz, offer a multifaceted portrait of life on the base."

New York Review of Books

"The narratives are excellent and very powerful, and provide an insightful view into what it is like to be a prisoner at Guantánamo and the challenges and emotional experiences in representing those prisoners."

Jules Lobel

"A new and remarkable book... made up of the written accounts by more than a hundred of the lawyers who provide detailed accounts of their meetings with their clients inside the prison... an informative and telling chronicle of what Guantanamo is really like..."

The New York Times

This is a fascinating and revealing behind-the-scenes account of the human stories inside Guantánamo, told candidly by some of America’s best, and most public-spirited, lawyers.”
-Jane Mayer,author of The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals

“This volume is as chilling an indictment of the executive's disdain for the rule of law as could be imagined…. The details of what passes for law in Guantánamo will shock readers familiar with any concept of due process…. The skill, courage and resourcefulness of the unofficial Guantánamo Bay Bar Association give us genuine cause for pride in lawyers.”
• New York Law Journal

From the Publisher

First-person accounts by the attorneys representing prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Following the U.S. response to the attacks of 9/11, the Bush administration chose the naval base at Guantanamo to house the "worst of the worst" prisoners, as Donald Rumsfeld put it. (See Karen Greenberg's recent The Least Worst Place for an account of the detention regime's early history.) There, more than 750 men remained for years, their identities kept secret, without legal status, charges or trial. From the detention of these so-called "enemy combatants" arose Rasul v. Bush, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and Boumediene v. Bush, three landmark Supreme Court cases stating that the prisoners had a "right to challenge their detention through habeas corpus." Denbeaux (Law/Seton Hall Univ.) and ACLU lawyer Hafetz gather statements, anecdotes and reminiscences from the volunteer lawyers who took on this unpopular cause. The material is divided into a number of parts: how the lawyers first got involved and made their way to the island; the conditions they encountered as they met with their clients; the mistreatment (either observed or reported) of the detainees; the legal battles they fought and the alternative forms of advocacy they adopted-lobbying Congress, speaking before community groups, writing for the press-to expose the prisoners' plight; the eventual release of some detainees; and the replication of Guantanamo's conditions at various "black sites" around the globe. Most interesting are the special problems faced by female attorneys representing Muslim clients, the numerous tales of willful obstruction and absurd red tape imposed by the government and the military and the background stories of some of thedetainees. Some readers will be put off the frequently self-congratulatory tone of the attorneys, their almost unanimous claims of their clients' innocence, their seeming obliviousness to the difficult legal questions the terror war poses and their condescension, even occasionally to the detainees. Others will see them as they see themselves: heroes protecting the U.S. Constitution. A valuable contribution to the record of an unfinished story bound to reverberate for years to come.

Kirkus Reviews