Detainee To Testify Tuesday About Experiences At Guantanamo Bay

05/19/2008

WASHINGTON, DC – On Tuesday, Congressman Bill Delahunt, the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights, and Oversight will hold the third in a series of hearings and briefings to examine the prison at Guantanamo Bay.

Tomorrow’s hearing marks the first time ever that a committee of Congress will hear testimony from an individual who has been imprisoned at the base. The panel will hear testimony from Murat Kurnaz, a Turkish national living in Germany who was wrongfully imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay.  A Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from his attorney demonstrated that early in his captivity, American and German authorities concluded he was not a threat. Nevertheless, it took four years for him to be released. In an opinion about Kurnaz’s detention, US District Judge Joyce Hens Green noted that the failure to take into consideration exculpatory evidence about Kurnaz when determining that he was an enemy combatant, demonstrated a lack of elemental due process.  Mr. Kurnaz was recently the subject of a piece on 60 Minutes. To read more, please click here.

The panel will also hear testimony from Lieutenant Colonel Steven Abraham, a retired military intelligence specialist who was stationed at Guantanamo. Abraham is the first person to come forward and speak out about the flawed processes used to determine the guilt or innocence of detainees at Guantanamo.  According to him, the Combatant Status Review Tribunals or “CSRTs” were merely rubber stamping earlier decisions by the military that the detainees were guilty. His affidavit about his experience there was considered instrumental in the Supreme Court’s decision to reverse its earlier cert. denial and hear the case of a Guantanamo detainee. 

WHO:  House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights, and Oversight

WHERE:  Room 2172 of the Rayburn House Office Building

DATE:      Tuesday, May 20, 2008

TIME:      2:00 p.m.

SUBJECT:  City on the Hill or Prison on the Bay? The Mistakes of Guantanamo  and the Decline of America's Image, Part II

WITNESSES:

Panel I

Mr. Murat Kurnaz
(Former detainee, Naval Base, Guantanamo)
(Via videoconference)

Panel II

Stephen Abraham, Esq.
Fink and Abraham, LLP
(Retired Lieutenant Colonel, U.S. Army, Reserve)

Mark P. Denbeaux, Esq.
Professor of Law
Seton Hall University School of Law

Clive Stafford Smith, Esq.
Director
Reprieve

P. Sabin Willett, Esq.
Partner
Bingham McCutchen

Glenn M. Sulmasy, Esq.
National Security and Human Rights Fellow
John F. Kennedy School of Government
Harvard University

 

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