Intelligencer coverage of January 11 talk

Lawyer blasts prison
By Edward Levenson, Intelligencer, January 12, 2007

Foreigners being held for years without charges in the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are worse off than death row inmates in American jails, according to a lawyer who represents several so-called enemy combatants.

“These conditions (at Guantanamo) really outstrip those on death row. We've got a real damaged population down there,” said Cristi Charpentier, a lawyer with the Federal Defender's Office in Philadelphia.

Charpentier, a graduate of Central Bucks West High School and the City University of New York Law School, spoke to about three dozen people at a meeting in the Plumstead Township building sponsored by Upper Bucks for Democracy, a peace advocacy group.

Her talk, originally scheduled for last week, came the same day as protests against the Guantanamo prison held outside the American base in Cuba, Washington and London.

About 450 detainees are held in the military prison, many of whom were captured in the early stages of the American invasion of Afghanistan launched in October 2001. While the government refuses to let their lawyers see the alleged evidence, Charpentier said the facts show few are al-Qaida fighters and even fewer among the terrorist ringleaders.

“Most of the men at Guantanamo Bay are not going to go to trial,” said Charpentier, whose clients include citizens of Afghanistan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Uzbekistan. She and four colleagues in the Philadelphia defender's office were appointed in 2005 to represent detainees. Her regular duties in Philadelphia federal court involve filing appeals on behalf of death row inmates.

Rather than terrorists, the “enemy combatants” may be farmers and villagers who were turned in by neighbors eager to collect a bounty offered by the Americans, according to Charpentier. She passed out a copy of an Afghanistan leaflet that offered, in translation, “wealth and power beyond your dreams” for helping American forces.

After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the detainees were entitled to know why they are being held, Congress last year passed the Military Commissions Act to revoke the fundamental right of habeas corpus for enemy combatants. Charpentier said that flies in the face of America's traditional commitment to the rule of law, and the legislation is being challenged in a federal appeals court.

“Stripping of that right of habeas corpus is important to all of us,” she said. Even accused mass murderers are guaranteed that right in American courts.

Charpentier, who has made three trips to Guantanamo, said the tropical setting, with “wildflowers of every imaginable color,” belies the harsh environment for the prisoners. Lawyers stay in motel-like quarters far from the prison and are subjected by the military to very restrictive conditions in meeting with their clients.

“I'm not being told the truth. I'm being tolerated in the most stressed-out way possible,” she said.

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