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Jenner Wins Transfer of Iraqi Gitmo Detainee Cleared for Release Six Years Ago
The American Lawyer
June 16, 2009
In 35 years of practice, Jeffrey Colman of Jenner & Block has represented clients in the most dire legal and physical circumstances imaginable. He's been to maximum security prisons and worked for death row prisoners in Illinois and Georgia. But trying to represent four inmates imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay has been the "most depressing, difficult, frustrating experience of my legal career," he said. "Never have I seen the kind of disrespect for the attorney-client relationship as at Guantanamo."
To Colman's relief, this chapter is now over. On Thursday his last Guantanamo client, Jawad Jabbar Sadkhan Al-Sahlani, was transferred to the custody of the Iraqi government.
According to the account of the case Colman gave to us, Al-Sahlani and his family fled Iraq in 1996 and sought refuge in Pakistan. In 1998 they applied for asylum with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, but it was not granted. Al-Sahlani and his family then sought to go to Iran but were left stranded by guides in Afghanistan. In January 2002 Al-Sahlani was turned over (for a ransom) to U.S. forces, allegedly by guards to whom he could not pay a bribe. He was subsequently imprisoned in Guantanamo.
In 2003 senior U.S. military leaders and the head of the Department of Defense's criminal investigation task force recommended he be released. That was six years ago.
But only on May 15, Colman said, was he advised that Al-Sahlani had been cleared for release by an Obama administration task force. The transfer occurred as Jenner & Block lawyers were preparing for a habeas corpus hearing scheduled to start June 18, before Washington, D.C., federal district court judge Rosemary Collyer.
What took so long? Colman said he has asked and "gotten no answers." He said many detainees who have been cleared for release but are still in custody are men without countries, such as the Uighurs who were transferred to Bermuda on Thursday. Al-Sahlani, however, "wanted to go home from the start," Colman said.
Colman has traveled to Guantanamo 10 times in the past several years, he said, on behalf of Al-Sahlani and three Saudi men who have already returned home. "It's unlike any other institution," he said. "There's a level of isolation and hopelessness unlike anything I have ever seen." And his clients, he said, didn't understand what was happening to them. "How do you say to a client that we've been talking about the same question -- does a court have the power to hear your case -- for six years?"
In addition to Colman, Sapna Lalmalani and Sarah Crane of Jenner & Block, and William Wertheimer, who is in solo practice in Detroit, also worked on Al-Sahlani's case.
This article first appeared on The Am Law Litigation Daily blog on AmericanLawyer.com.
