Guantanamo defence lawyers rebel against efforts to monitor mail

Jan 12, 2012, 20:48 GMT

Washington - Military attorneys representing Guantanamo detainees are to stop exchanging mail with their clients in rebellion against a commander's order to authorize reading of privileged attorney-client mail, the Washington Post reported Thursday.

Marine Corps Colonel Jeffrey Colwell, the lead military defence counsel at the controversial prison, has instructed his office not to sign an agreement allowing inspection of attorney-client mail for 'contraband' information.

'You can't defend your client without being able to communicate with him confidentially. Without that, the system fails,' said Colwell, who was quoted in the Washington Post.

Under the rules of attorney-client privilege, mail between defence lawyers and those they represent is considered confidential. The rules in Guatanamo, however, fly in the face of accepted legal norms, which guarantee rights to suspects of confidential access to a lawyer, a speedy trial and assumption of innocence.

Late last month, Rear Admiral David Woods, who oversees the detention facility but is not involved in military court procedures, ordered that a 'privileged team' of Defence Department lawyers would inspect the mail and report to him but not to military prosecutors, the Post reported.

Intelligence and law enforcement personnel were also to be given access to the attorney-client communications.

On Sunday, Colwell issued what he called strong guidance to the 40 defence lawyers under his command, including more than 30 military officers, instructing them not to follow Woods's order and to stop sending privileged material to their clients.

Ten years after it opened on January 11, 2002, the detention facility, housed in the US Guantanamo Bay naval base on a corner of Cuba, operates a multi-level security regime for the 171 prisoners still there.

In January 2010 the Obama administration decided that four dozen Guantanamo inmates will neither be prosecuted nor released and will remain in indefinite military detention.