Diary of a Guantánamo Attorney & The Shopkeeper Caught In Bush's Evil Web

[kpete]

Views > January 16, 2007
Diary of a Guantánamo Attorney
By H. Candace Gorman
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Eventually, after what then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld would call a “long hard slog,” the protective order was entered. In July, eight months after filing the habeas petition, I was finally allowed to go to Guantánamo and meet with my client, a sick and visibly jaundiced man who pined for his wife and young daughter.

Al-Ghizzawi was a shopkeeper who sold bread, honey and other goods in Jalalabad, Afghanistan. When the American bombs started falling, he took his wife and daughter to the village where his in-laws lived. He then became one of those unlucky foreigners captured and turned in for a bounty. According to the Bush administration, all of the detainees were apprehended “on the battlefield”—in this case, the quiet home of Al-Ghizzawi’s in-laws.

My ultimate aim is to release Al-Ghizzawi and reunite him with his family. However, my immediate goal is to keep him alive. The medical staff at Guantánamo have diagnosed Al-Ghizzawi with tuberculosis and hepatitis B but failed to inform or treat him for either condition. I have been fighting for access to Al-Ghizzawi’s medical records, but a D.C. district judge ruled that we had not demonstrated that he would suffer “irreparable harm” in being denied his records. Imagine, I need his records in order to prove that he will suffer “irreparable harm,” but cannot access them without first proving “irreparable harm.” (I have appealed that ruling.)

more at:
http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2966/