MANAMA, 2 August 2004 — A US-based human rights lawyer has left Bahrain with authorization from their families to file suit on behalf of 33 Arabs he believes are unjustly detained at Guantanamo Bay.
In what he calls an “emotionally draining experience,” Clive Stafford-Smith spent a week in an office at the Bahrain Center for Human Rights meeting with the relatives of terror suspects detained without charge for more than two years by the United States at its military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Stafford-Smith left Bahrain on Sunday.
Stafford-Smith ‘s New Orleans-based human rights group, Justice in Exile, began filing lawsuits after the Supreme Court ruled June 28 that the Guantanamo detainees have a right to challenge their detention in civilian courts. The US Defense Department had maintained the nearly 600 detainees could be deprived of normal legal rights because they were an exceptional security threat.
“We have received an overwhelming response here and, like most people, they are desperate to help their loved ones,” Stafford-Smith told the Associated Press Saturday. “Some broke down in tears as they provided details about their loved ones.”
Some 50 relatives came to see him, from as far as Libya and Syria. He finished with a portfolio that authorizes his New Orleans-based human rights group, Justice in Exile, to represent 19 Saudi detainees, six Bahrainis, three Jordanians, two Libyans and a detainee each from Qatar, Syria and Yemen.
Justice in Exile, which is offering free legal assistance to the families of detainees, plans to file lawsuits in a US federal court to try to win the detainees’ release.
The group has already filed suits on behalf of 80 detainees in a federal court in Washington, he said.
Stafford-Smith said the US government has made it difficult to trace detainees’ families.
“The US government keeps the names (of the detainees) secret and yet they tell us that we can’t represent them (detainees) until we get permission from their family members,” Stafford-Smith said. “It’s like Alice in Wonderland.”
“We are up against the might of the American government, and we need all the help we can get,” he said.
Stafford-Smith said the Bahrain Center for Human Rights will be the regional center for assisting detainees’ families from Afghanistan to Algeria.
Families could not be reached for comment. But Nabeel Rajab, president of the Bahraini group, said they were very optimistic after meeting Stafford-Smith.
“They see this as a ray of hope for their imprisoned relatives,” Rajab said.
Bahrain sent a delegation in May 2002 to identify Bahrainis detained at Guantanamo and assess their condition. A Foreign Ministry official said at the time that contacts would continue at various levels until the detainees returned home to their families.
