From Page 36
Assistance of counsel was particularly important here
because the detainees were isolated at Guantanamo with
virtually no ability to communicate with the outside world.
In these circumstances, assistance of counsel was essential to
test the allegations and gather evidence to disprove them.
For instance, one of the principal reasons for detaining
Murat Kurnaz as an enemy combatant was that he was a
friend of Selcuk Bilgin, who was "alleged to have been a
suicide bomber." App. 107. Detained at Guantanamo,
without counsel or access to the outside world, Mr. Kurnaz
could only express shock at that allegation. He did not know
and could not find out that that his friend, Mr. Bilgin, far
from being a suicide bomber, was alive and well and living
peacefully and without criminal suspicion in their hometown
of Bremen, Germany.37 That is something his counsel could
have found out and proved in short order, had he been
allowed counsel. Because he was not, the allegation that his
friend was a suicide bomber was accepted by the CSRT as
true, as it would be on review under the DTA, even though it
was objectively false. Thus, even when the detainees were
informed of the accusations against them, without the assistance of counsel, they were deprived of a meaningful
opportunity to rebut the accusations and to develop and
present the evidence needed to establish their innocence.

From Page 39
Judge Green, in her opinion,
refers to a number of cases of alleged abuse there and quotes
from a memorandum by an FBI agent, produced in response
to a Freedom of Information Act request, summarizing his
observations of interrogation methods used at Guantanamo:
On a couple of occassions [sic], I entered interview
rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal
position to the floor, with no chair, food, or water. Most
times they had urinated or defacated [sic] on themselves,
and had been left there for 18-24 hours or more. On one
occassion [sic], the air conditioning had been turned
down so far and the temperature was so cold in the room,
that the barefooted detainee was shaking with cold.
When I asked the MP's what was going on, I was told
that interrogators from the day prior had ordered this
treatment, and the detainee was not to be moved. On
another occassion [sic], the A/C had been turned off,
making the temperature in the unventilated room
probably well over 100 degrees. The detainee was almost
unconcious [sic] on the floor, with a pile of hair next to
him. He had apparently been literally pulling his own
hair out throughout the night. On another occassion [sic],
not only was the temperature unbearably hot, but
extremely loud rap music was being played in the room,
and had been since the day before, with the detainee
chained hand and foot in the fetal position on the
tile floor.

Fresh Air's Terry Gross interviewed her in 1984.

When you write, you illuminate what's hidden, and that's a political act.

Shall we dispatch hordes of lawyers to every battlefield?