Blogging Lawyer Decries High Court Refusal to Grant Access to Gitmo AIDS Records
A lawyer is blasting the United States’ treatment of a Guantánamo detainee after the U.S. Supreme Court’s rejection of her emergency request for his medical records.
The request for information about the detainee’s diagnosis and treatment for AIDS was turned over to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. who denied it without comment, the lawyer, H. Candace Gorman, says on her Guantánamo Blog. Gorman says she needs the records to make sure the prisoner, Abdul Hamid Abdul Salam Al-Ghizzawi, is getting adequate treatment, the Associated Press reports.
Gorman’s civil rights firm is providing pro bono legal help to Al-Ghizzawi as well as a second Guantánamo detainee. She alleges on her blog that Al-Ghizzawi became infected after his capture.
“We kidnapped him in exchange for a bounty, took him from his wife and daughter, tortured him, infected him with TB and HIV, aggravated a preexisting exposure to Hepatitis B (that had shown no signs prior to his incarceration in our legal black hole), and we have hidden him away in solitary confinement with no medical treatment,” she wrote.
“The American courts don’t care, the American politicians don’t care, the American people don’t care.”
