Guantanamo/Detainees
Editorial Raps Lawyers and Liberals in Guantanamo Due Process Debate
Posted May 9, 2008, 10:14 am CDT
By Debra Cassens Weiss
A Wall Street Journal editorial takes aim at liberal critics of the Guantanamo Bay detention center and the law firms representing detainees there.
The editorial notes that a Kuwaiti detainee released from Guantanamo in 2005 became a suicide bomber in one of three suicide attacks last month in the Iraqi city of Mosul. The detainee, Abdullah Salim Ali al-Ajmi, was tried and acquitted by a Kuwaiti court after his release.
Al-Ajmi was represented by Shearling & Sterling partner Thomas Wilner, who told the Associated Press his client may have become “radicalized” because of his incarceration at Guantanamo.
The editorial says those who argue that people like al-Ajmi are a creation of Guantanamo are ignoring evidence of humane treatment of detainees there. It notes that Shearman & Sterling has donated its fees to charity, but nonetheless questions the role of lawyers and their efforts to ensure due process.
“Liberals claim they are only fighting for ‘due process,’ but they are doing so for foreign enemies who want to kill innocents and don't deserve such protections,” the editorial says.
“It's a fair bet that no high-powered American law firm will lend a caring hand to the relatives of the seven Iraqis murdered last month" by al-Ajmi and two accomplices, the editorial says. “That's too bad, seeing as how Ajmi was himself a beneficiary of some of that high-powered legal help.”
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