Prof. Marc Falkoff gave a solid talk at MCC tonight about the detainees confined at Guantanamo Bay and the poems they wrote during their confinement. There were approximately 100 men and women in the audience, along with campus security and officers from the Crystal Lake Police Department.
Marc has represented 17 detainees, and he described the legal battle to get them out of no-man's land and into the legal system. All of those whom he represented were from Yemen. Marc said that he had no doubt that there were some enemy combatants at Gitmo, but that many of the detainees were innocent.
Marc explained the rules under the Geneva Convention that apply to persons grabbed as enemy combatants. They are to have a hearing promptly and also near where they were grabbed; e.g., in the first Gulf War, there were 1,190 hearings, and all but 380 were mistaken arrests. That was a 74% error rate.
In the Afghan conflict, no hearings were held. Eighty-six percent (86%) were picked up by Afghan troops near borders. And there was a bounty of up to $5,000 per head. Just imagine what an incentive that amount of money would have been.
The lawyers involved with the detainees are working pro bono, even the sole practitioners who don't have a law firm's gross income to support their work. An important legal battle was to get habeus corpus hearings. Of 41 such hearings, there were 32 victories; i.e., 32 of the 41 were deemed wrongly detained.
Marc also described the process by which the book of poems came together, and he read two of the poems.
Marc clearly had concerns for his family and his own health and life tonight, due to threats he received when the topic was first scheduled. Even tonight he was cautious that some lunatic might show up tonight to do harm to him. Police security was alert right to the time he left for home.
2 comments:
I commend Prof. Marc Falkoff for the courage of his convictions. I however have a few questions to ask:
1.Why aren't the countries of these detainees supplying funds (money) or lawyers for there own people? Could it be because a large majority of them are from Saudi Arabia and the public relations of that country would take a big hit.
2.Where are these "pro bono" lawyers when it comes to helping the mothers, fathers, wives, sons and daughters of the more than 4000US military that have been killed by the associates of these detainees?
3.Is there an Association of US Islamic Attorneys in the states and where are they in helping to sort out the guilty from the innocent?
These are but a few questions I could ask.
1.Why aren't the countries of these detainees supplying funds (money) or lawyers for there own people?
I guess they could be. The Center for Constitutional Rights could be the recipient of donations for their work.
2.Where are these "pro bono" lawyers when it comes to helping the mothers, fathers, wives, sons and daughters of the more than 4000US military that have been killed by the associates of these detainees?
That question was asked by Mrs. Alger. Marc said he felt no obligation to defend his choice of pro bono work. In fact, his firm had represented families of victims of the WTC attacks.
3.Is there an Association of US Islamic Attorneys in the states and where are they in helping to sort out the guilty from the innocent?
I don't know. You might try a search on Google.
Post a Comment