User:Geo Swan/Guantanamo/not ready yet/Peter M. Ryan

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Peter M. Ryan is an American lawyer with the firm Cozen O'Connor. He received the Samuel E. Klein Pro Bono Award in 2005 and the Clifford Scott Green Bill of Rights Award in 2008. In addition to his work on behalf of 16 Afghans held in extrajudicial detention at the Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba, he is also recognized for his pro bono defense when he successfully challenged the sentence verdict issued to a mentally disabled man held on Pennsylvania's death row.

Guantanamo cases
Ryan's team represented fifteen Afghan captives in Guantanamo. Malvish Khan, now a lawyer herself, and author of My Guantanamo Diary, an account of her experience with Afghans held in Guantanamo, first traveled to Guantanamo when she was a law student, as part of Ryan's team. As an Afghan-American she was able to translate for Ryan and his colleagues. When Khan got her law degree she worked with Ryan as a lawyer for Guantanamo captives.

Quaker interview
In 2007 Ryan was interviewed by the Friends Committee on National Legislation, which describes itself as "a Quaker lobby in Washington." His interview was publishined under the title "Habeas Corpus is Essential to Due Process".

Hiring private investigator for investigations in Afghanistan
Ryan hired Jonathon Horowitz of One World Research to interview witnesses to confirm or refute his client's accounts of themselves.

Comments on Abdullah Ghulam Rasoul's detention in Pul-e-Charkhi prison
After reports another former Afghan captive Abdullah Ghulam Rasoul had emerged as a senior Taliban leader Ryan was quoted about conditions at Pul-e-Charkhi prison. Like Rasoul one of Ryan's clients had been transferred to nominal Afghan custody in the American wing of Pul-e-Charkhi prison.