Assistance To Guantanamo Captives
Attorneys from Debevoise & Plimpton worked on behalf of captives held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba. Jeff Lang, of Debevoise & Plimpton, was one of the first Guantanamo Bay attorneys to file an appeal in the Federal appeal court in Washington DC of captives' Combatant Status Review Tribunal proceedings. The Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 included provision for captives to challenge whether the Tribunals' decisions complied with the Tribunal's mandate.
Charles "Cully" Stimson, then Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs, stirred controversy when he went on record criticizing the patriotism of law firms that allowed employees to assist Guantanamo captives: "corporate CEOs seeing this should ask firms to choose between lucrative retainers and representing terrorists." Stimson's views were widely criticized. The Pentagon disavowed them and Stimson resigned shortly thereafter.
Read more about this topic: Debevoise & Plimpton
Famous quotes containing the words assistance and/or captives:
“Each [side in this war] looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“Ants are the only creatures on earth, other than man, who make war. They campaign, they are chronic aggressors, and they make slave laborers of the captives they don’t kill.”
—Ted Sherdeman, and Gordon Douglas. Dr. Medford (Edmund Gwenn)