Guantanamo Bay military judge arrests military defense lawyer
By
Alan Gilman
6 November 2017
A series of events involving the defense of Guantanamo detainee Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri has exposed the dictatorial and brazenly anti-democratic methods being employed by the military as they continue to prosecute detainees through Military Commissions.
The three civilian attorneys for al-Nashiri resigned from the defense team on October 11, 2017 over a classified ethical conflict. The attorneys, Rick Kammen, a longtime death-penalty defense lawyer, and his colleagues Rosa Eliades and Mary Spears, indicated that past and potentially ongoing surveillance of attorney-client conversations, as well as rules that made it hard to communicate with their client, rendered it impossible for them to represent him properly.
Because of rules imposed upon them by the military, al-Nashiri’s lawyers are prevented from revealing in public any details about their complaints. In the past, however, it has come to light in other detainee cases that additional forms of surveillance included the government placing a FBI mole on a defense team, and the secreting of listening devices in rooms where defense attorneys and clients would meet, as well as in court rooms.
Al-Nashiri is accused of orchestrating the October 12, 2000 suicide bombing of the USS Cole, a warship off Aden, Yemen, that killed 17 US sailors. He has been in US custody since 2002 and is facing the death penalty.
Marine Brigadier General John Baker, who is the second highest-ranking lawyer in the Marine Corps and is the chief defense counsel for Military Commissions, had sent the chief prosecutor a memo on June 14, 2017 stating that he feared defense communications with clients might be compromised. Baker said he had information…