Arrests in ACLU Organized Protest of Guantanamo
Washington Post:
They were charged with violating an ordinance that prohibits demonstrations of any kind on the court's grounds. Those arrested inside the building also were charged under a provision that makes it a crime to give "a harangue or oration" in the court building. The maximum penalty is 60 days in jail, a fine or both.
Most reports are saying that at least 80 moonbats were arrested. The following report was made by a witness that was:
Since today is the sixth anniversary of the first group of terrorist thugs to arrive in Guantanamo, the ACLU and Amnesty International pooled their resources in DC and organized Wear Orange Day to protest the isolation of murderous thugs from the rest of the world
For good reasons - the organizers and the police had collaborated to stage arrests.
But it was all very carefully crafted. While I was taking pictures behind the podium, one guy ran up to another and said “OK, the police want to go ahead and arrest them now”. That was a pretty good hint to me.
Associated Press reports 81 people were arrested. Not while I was there. I doubt there 81 protesters - but the only people I saw arrested were the 15 or so who went up the steps of the Supreme Court Building against the warnings of the Capitol Police.
In case you are curious as to who is funding the Gitmo lawyers that are organizing all of this crap, follow the money. You will find Arab governments.
Debra Burlingame testifies about terrorists, lawyers and Guantanamo.
First, I learned that the widely-held belief that all of the Guantanamo attorneys are working pro bono is simply not true. The FN Radio interview raised the issue of lawyer fees, and who might be paying them. The DOD official answered, “It’s not clear, is it? Some will maintain that they are doing it out of the goodness of their heart, that they’re doing it pro bono, and I suspect they are; others are receiving moneys from who knows where, and I’d be curious to have them explain that.”
Michael Ratner, head of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), subsequently told the New York Times that none of the 500 lawyers associated with Guantanamo detainee representation are being paid. The article reported that Tom Wilner, from the Washington D.C. firm of Shearman & Sterling and the lead attorney who joined the CCR in filing the first Guantanamo case in 2002, Rasul v. Bush, said that his firm received money from the families of the 12 Kuwaiti detainees but all of it was donated to charities related to the September 11 attacks. This is lawyerly wording. Perhaps Shearman did “receive money from detainee families,” but the government of Kuwait has acknowledged that they are paying all of the detainees’ and their families’ legal fees, which were reported to run in the millions of dollars. According to one news report in 2004, the fees had reached at least two million dollars. This raises several questions. Why would Shearman hide that information? Which, if any “9/11 charities” received donations and how much were they? Mr. Wilner isn’t saying. He gave an interview in which he dodged questions about Shearman’s pro bono billable hours.
In addition to its legal services, the firm registered as an agent of a foreign principal under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 (FARA) as well as the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995 (LDA) to press the Kuwaiti detainees’ cause on Capitol Hill. Shearman reported $749,980 in lobbying fees under FARA for one six-month period in 2005 and another $200,000 under the LDA over a one-year period between 2005 and 2006. Those are the precise time periods when Congress was engaged in intense debates over the Detainee Treatment Act and the Military Commissions Act, legislation that the government of Kuwait and Shearman & Sterling hoped would pave the way for shutting down Guantanamo permanently and setting their clients free.
After my Wall Street Journal piece ran, Shearman reported another $300,000 dollars in lobbying fees under FARA. In response to my article, the firm’s managing partner, Rohan S. Weerasinghe, denied in a letter to the editor that his firm was lobbying on behalf of the government of Kuwait. I suppose this means that while the nominal clients are the detainees and their families, the interests and motives of the entity footing the millions of dollars in legal and lobbying bills don’t count. This raises more questions. These aren’t ordinary criminal cases. These are cases in which individuals committed to martyring themselves in pursuit of the deaths of thousands of American civilians and U.S. soldiers are agitating through their attorneys for access to the federal courts, as well as for access to classified information. Shearman & Sterling’s reluctance to publicly acknowledge the entity financing this litigation may be nothing more than a high-profile firm being embarrassed that it is making millions of dollars in fees in furtherance of acquiring the release of committed jihadis from U.S. custody while men and women of the U.S. armed services are under fire in Iraq and Afghanistan. I submit that the ordinary rules of confidentiality which pertain to the matter of legal fees are a great problem in these cases. It is not too hard to imagine Al Qaeda’s sympathizers and the terrorist fund-raisers whom the U.S. Treasury Department is trying to apprehend might subsidize these cases in the federal courts and generate more bad press for American and anti-U.S. propaganda while they do it.
To be fair, Shearman & Sterling isn’t the only law firm cashing in. Arnold & Porter, another D.C. firm, also reported $380,000 in lobbying fees on behalf of the “International Counsel Bureau”—which is nothing more than a P.O. Box in Safat, Kuwait—and “the Kuwaiti Detainees Committee.” Their FARA registration indicates that they “contacted members of Congress, congressional staffers, and media representatives, in an effort to obtain due process for the Kuwaiti detainees in U.S. custody at Guantanamo Bay.” These lobbying efforts appear to be having a tremendous effect.
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