Duke law students help Guantanamo Bay detainees

Duke law students help Guantanamo Bay detainees
Friday, November 18, 2005
Duke law students help Guantanamo Bay detainees

The Associated Press


DURHAM - Students participating in a new clinic at Duke University law school are helping U.S. military lawyers defend some of those being held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The Guantanamo Bay Defense Clinic is helping attorneys for the nine detainees charged with offenses before a military commission, said Duke Law School professor Madeline Morris, director of the clinic.

The government says it is holding 505 detainees at Guantanamo, most of whom have not been charged.

"Just as a serial killer has a right to a defense, so do the most dangerous detainees," Morris said. "Our purpose is not to encourage the release of anyone who under our system of justice ought not be released."

Students are getting both sides of the cases because they have to understand the government's arguments in order to defend the detainees, she said.

Morris, an expert in international and humanitarian law, said she believes Duke is the only law school with a program of this kind and is the only school assisting Col. Dwight Sullivan, the chief counsel for the detainees.

National security necessarily entails weighing individual liberty and other interests, said Katherine Bartlett, law school dean.

"Our system requires that all individuals ought to have access to legal representation," she said.
Law students have drafted briefs and legal memoranda included with motions filed on detainees' behalf with the commission and federal courts. They're now working on a friend-of-the-court brief to the U.S. Supreme Court, which said it will hear a legal challenge to the commission's jurisdiction over Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a former driver for Osama bin Laden.

Six students are participating in the clinic now, and 24 are registered for next semester, with more on a waiting list.

The clinic combines assigned reading and classroom instruction and discussion with hands-on experience, Morris said.

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