Thomas P. Sullivan

“ Under the doctrine of equivalence, the sauce for the gander will be our sanction of every other country to treat our citizens taken into custody in the very same way, allowing indefinite imprisonment without meaningful hearings or fair procedures. ”

“ The lawyers who represent the prisoners believe that if the prisoners' habeas corpus petitions are permitted to proceed, only a few of the requested habeas hearings will occur; most of the prisoners will be returned to their homes, because the government has no evidence which justifies their continued detention. ”

“ Members of the Senate and House should reflect on the effect of the bills in their present form. They strip the federal court of jurisdiction over the pending habeas petitions and they do not substitute any alternative trial or hearing procedure, except for the relatively few prisoners who will be charged before the newly formed military commissions. As to the rest of these men – the overwhelming majority of the Guantanamo Bay prisoners - the purported legislation endorses the proceedings held in 2004 and 2005 by so-called Combatant Status Review Tribunals - CSRTs. ”

“ Unless amended, the pending bill will retroactively ratify and approve what may fairly be described as "kangaroo court" proceedings, and purport to repeal the constitutional and statutory right to file petitions for writ of habeas corpus to all alien prisoners of the United States, past and present. The bill would remit the vast majority of Guantanamo Bay prisoners to legal limbo, without any effective way to seek fair hearings to test whether there is an evidentiary justification to extend their five years of isolated confinement. ”

“ Rahman was blind-folded and taken to an airplane. The interrogators who took custody of him said he was not Abdur Rahman but was Abdur Rahman Zahid, the Deputy Foreign Minister of the Taliban. At his CSRT proceeding, Mr. Rahrnan testified he had been accused by interrogators of being three different people: a Taliban Deputy Foreign Minister, a Taliban security guard, and a Taliban military judge. Mr. Rahman vehemently denied these charges and insisted that he was a chicken farmer, that his detention was a case of mistaken identity, and he was being confused for another man with a similar name. ”

“ After graduating from Loyola Law School in Chicago in 1952,I served in the Army for two years, including a year in Korea. In the fall of 1954, I joined the law firm of Jenner & Block in Chicago. I've been a lawyer there since then, except for my term as United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois from June 1977 to April 198 1. My resume is attached as Tab 1. ”

“ Here is a comparison of the procedures followed in the CSRTs and those to be followed in the military commissions, demonstrating the many ways in which the proposed bill will afford important due process protections to prisoners charged before the commissions that did not exist for prisoners who had CSRT proceedings: '
1. Burden of proof and presumption of innocence Commission: The accused is presumed innocent and cannot be convicted unless proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt. ”

“ To illustrate the total unfairness of the CSRT proceedings and findings, I attach at Tab 2 a summary of the non-classified portion of the CSRT proceeding involving one of my clients, Abdul-Hadi Al Siba'i, and the official, non-classified non-verbatim transcript of that hearing which was provided by the government. Mr. Al Siba'i was imprisoned in virtual isolation for over four years at the Guantanamo Bay prison. ”