[1]The following article is from TheJewishAdvocate.com [2].
Over the past six years, the U.S. government has detained scores of men at the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba. Many are held without any knowledge of their alleged crimes or access to legal defense.
But on June 3, 2008, the Anti-Defamation League of New England honored five Massachusetts lawyers who are working, free of charge, to challenge the legality of those detentions.
"This is about civil rights, and that is at the forefront of what the ADL is doing," said Jonathan Kappel, interim regional director of ADL New England. "And as a Jewish community, this is the perfect example of reaching out and helping others."
The ADL presented the Honorable David A. Rose Civil Rights Award to Doris Tennant and Ellen Lubell, of Tennant Lubell, LLC; Michael E. Mone and Michael E Mone, Jr., of Esdaile, Barrett & Esdaile; and Joseph S. Berman, of Looney and Grossman, LLP.
The award is named for the late Judge David A. Rose, former national chairman of the ADL and a leading civil rights justice in Massachusetts for more than 60 years.
"It means a lot to have the work we are doing recognized, but what is more meaningful is that people are paying attention and fighting against a total abrogation of civil liberties," said Lubell.
Until two years ago, Lubell and Tennant watched events unfold at Guantanamo without thinking that they might be able to help. Like their fellow ADL honorees, they represented a small firm with limited resources, and providing pro-bono services would require enormous out-of-pocket expenses for travel and filing fees.
But when three Guantanamo prisoners committed suicide in June 2006, they decided to act.
"It felt so painful to see what our country was doing," Lubell said. "When I hear people talk about a calling, that's what happened. We were incapable of not doing something."
Lubell and Tenant are now two of more than 30 Massachusetts lawyers representing Guantanamo prisoners in federal court. They have spent years petitioning the federal courts to rule against the detention of men who have been held indefinitely without being charged with a crime. The Supreme Court will issue a ruling by the end of the month.
But for Michael E. Mone Jr.'s client, a 30-year-old Uzbekistan man, the court's decision can offer little comfort.
"[The U.S. government] has put forward no credible evidence to sustain any charge against my client, and he has been cleared for release since February 2007 because they know he is harmless; he was simply in the wrong place at wrong time," said Mone. "But now, in a scene out of Catch 22, he is stuck in Guantanamo. He cannot go back to Uzbekistan because he fits the very profile of someone who will face persecution and torture if he returns."
Mone, along with his father, Michael E. Mone Sr., has been working for his client pro-bono since 2005. At that time, his colleagues were not entirely supportive of the decision to represent a Guantanamo prisoner.
"When we first started, people looked at me like I had two heads," he said. "But there has been a total 180 in terms of people's perception. They now realize what a grave mistake our country has made."
Mone admitted that some of the men detained at Guantanamo might be "the worst of the worst," as the Bush administration has asserted. But without an opportunity to hear the charges and face a fair trial, he said, there is no way to determine who is truly guilty.
Joseph Berman, one of the ADL's honorees and a member of the organization's New England board of directors, agreed.
"There is no reason that the people detained at Guantanamo, if they are in fact guilty, cannot be tried in federal court with the requisite civil protections they're entitled to," Berman said.
Berman and the ADL have been working for two years to force the courts to recognize the detentions as illegal. In 2006, the ADL filed an amicus brief expressing its objection to the U.S. government's actions at Guantanamo. It has been a long and arduous process, but Berman said he is confident the Supreme Court will rule in favor of his client and the rest of the Guantanamo prisoners now being held without trial.
"The government would have you think that a choice needs to be made between civil rights and the security of U.S. citizens, but that is a false choice," he said. "We can do both."
Source: TheJewishAdvocate.com [3]
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