ACSBlog: The Blog of the American Constitution Society

Attorney Thomas P. Sullivan writes about his experiences representing prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay.  Some excerpts:

Your client awaits, one leg shackled to the floor, seated behind a table. He is bearded, swarthy, and normally doesn't speak or understand more than a few words of English. If you haven't met before -- and often even if you have -- he suspects that you and your interpreter are secret agents for the government come to pry information from him. After traditional amenities, and repeated assurances that you are there to help him, you discuss the state of the legal and political efforts underway to have him and the other prisoners returned home. There is a problem here: there is no real news to report, at least no good news about having him repatriated. The conversation consists chiefly of you trying, usually without discernible success, to explain why no progress has been made to get a hearing before a tribunal that will require the government to explain why he has been held in jail for five years. . . .

To summarize: In these [Combatant Status Review Tribunal (CSRT)] proceedings, the unrepresented prisoners have the burden of refuting unsupported, hearsay allegations from undisclosed sources, which the tribunal presumes are true. The CSRT and the [Administrative Review Board hearings] replicate the deservedly discredited Star Chamber, through which King Charles I of England retaliated against the Puritans during the 1600s. I can assure the readers they were a total sham. . . .

My impression of the prisoners I've met, shared by the other fine lawyers for prisoners with whom we've spoken, is that most of these men are not terrorists, should not have been imprisoned in the first place, and if sent home would resume peaceful, productive lives, albeit damaged by the inhumane experiences they have endured during the past half decade. But good or evil, these men are entitled to have their captor -- the United States government -- establish before a fair tribunal a valid reason for their imprisonment. They have not received that kind of hearing, and it appears they will not in the foreseeable future.

Thomas P. Sullivan is a partner in the Chicago law firm of Jenner & Block and the former United States Attorney for the Southern District of Illinois. This article was first printed in the May 2007 issue of The Circuit Rider, a publication of the Seventh Circuit Bar Association.