Guantanamo Bay attorneys

The Center for Constitutional Rights has coordinated efforts by American lawyers to handle the habeas corpus, and other legal appeals, of several hundred of the Guantanamo detainees.

Only American lawyers have been allowed to visit detainees at the Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba. They have to go through security screening first. And they must agree that they can't speak from the notes they took during their meetings with their clients until they have been cleared for release.

Complaints from the detainees' attorneys

 * Many of the lawyers have repeated claims that their clients have been abused, and are receiving inhumane treatment.
 * Lawyers have reported that it was hard to establish trust with their clients, because:
 * Guantanamo guards had warned them that the lawyers were either Jews or homosexuals.
 * Guantanamo interrogators had previously used the interrogation technique "false flag", and represented themselves as their lawyers, in attempts to get the captives to divulge information they had withheld during their interrogations.
 * Lawyers reported that the DoD had interfered with their ability to meet with their clients, telling them that they weren't spelling their names correctly.
 * Lawyers reported that the DoD interfered with their ability to meet with their clients by both refusing to provide a government translator, and raising bogus national security concerns about the translators they proposed.
 * The body that reviewed their notes, before they were able to consult them, was arbitrarily classifying their notes, so they couldn't consult them. Omar Khadr's lawyer Muneer Ahmad found, on his first visit to the secure centre which is the only place where the lawyers can review their notes, that almost the entire twenty pages of notes he took when he first met Khadr had been classified above his level of security clearance.

However, an Army investigation found these charges unfounded. US Department of Defense spokesmen state “It is our policy to in no way interfere with legal counsel.”

The Department of Defense maintains that "they see evidence of the al Qaeda-directed misinformation campaign in allegations of detainee abuse and mishandling of the Koran at Guantanamo Bay."

Firms and institutions represented

 * John Adams Project
 * Allen & Overy
 * Baker & McKenzie
 * Bingham McCutchen
 * Blank Rome
 * Bondurant, Mixson & Elmore
 * Burns & Levinson
 * Center for Constitutional Rights
 * Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton
 * Clifford Chance
 * Cohen Milstein
 * Covington & Burling
 * Davis Wright Tremaine
 * Debevoise & Plimpton
 * Dechert
 * Dickstein Shapiro
 * Dorsey & Whitney
 * Fredrikson & Byron
 * Freedman Boyd Hollander Goldberg & Ives
 * Fulbright & Jaworski
 * Garvey Schubert Barer
 * Gibbons, Del Deo, Dolan, Griffinger & Vecchione
 * Holland & Hart
 * Hunton & Williams
 * Jenner & Block
 * King & Spalding
 * Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel
 * Mayer Brown
 * McCarter & English
 * Nixon Peabody
 * Northwestern University School of Law
 * Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison
 * Pepper Hamilton
 * Perkins Coie
 * Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman
 * Reed Smith
 * Reprieve
 * Richards Spears Kibbe & Orbe
 * Schiff Hardin
 * Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis
 * Schwabe, Williamson & Wyatt
 * Seton Hall University School of Law
 * Shearman & Sterling
 * Shook, Hardy & Bacon
 * Sutherland Asbill & Brennan
 * Venable
 * Weil, Gotshal & Manges
 * Willkie Farr & Gallagher
 * Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr