at least, that is what seems to be the case at Gitmo. From the Washington Post:Three suicides at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, may have been part of a broader plot by detainees who were using confidential lawyer-client papers and envelopes to pass handwritten notes their guards could not intercept, according to documents that government lawyers filed yesterday in federal court.
Detainees could apparently hide documents in their cells -- including instructions on how to tie knots and a classified U.S. military memo regarding cell locations of detainees and camp operational matters at Guantanamo -- by keeping the materials in envelopes labeled as lawyer-client communications. Notes that investigators found after the suicides on June 10 were apparently written on the back of notepaper stamped "Attorney Client Privilege," which allowed detainees to communicate secretly without interference, according to government officials.
So, the detainees are abusing the attorney/client privilege for their own devices, hiding and passing notes to one another. In this case it was suicide, who knows what else may have been passed. Also, did you see that passing of a classified military memo? Where could the detainees have gotten that? I think that may have come from one of their lawyers, so the lawyers are passing illegal info as well, it doth appear. Or, maybe there is a sympathetic soldier there at Gitmo. Either way, there needs to be investigation into how a classified memo got passed around by prisoners. So, here is what has been done and is ongoing:
The alleged discoveries have led military commanders to suspend allowing detainees to have paper provided by defense lawyers. Government lawyers have also asked a judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to allow them to assemble "filter teams" to scour more than 1,100 pounds of documents seized by investigators, some of which are protected by lawyer-client privilege and would usually be off-limits to authorities.
Or, these filter teams are scouring for things to keep from incriminating themselves? Let us not forget the case of Lynne Stewart, who abused the attorney clinet privilege with Abdul Rahman in the first WTC attacks. There is a precedent for attorneys acting above the law.
As is typical, the apologists for the terrorists are clamoring about ruses and hidden agendas. However, according to the investigations and the filings by government lawyers:
"The materials uncovered in these initial searches comprising a very small amount of detainee materials demonstrated, however, that detainees had developed practices for misusing the existence of a privileged attorney-client communication system," the government lawyers wrote, "presumably to shield the communications from the suspicion or scrutiny of JTF-Guantanamo guards, who have not been permitted to inspect or review attorney-client communications."
The defense lawyers ask what could be the purpose of the supposed suicide plot? Well, hmmm, let's see. 1) to prevent further information from being given to authorities, to silence themselves and/or others through martyring.
2)to martyr themselves in order to discredit and make the United States look like brutal repressors, even though the reality is the opposite, or at the very least that the troops treat them with more respect than the terrorists do to their prisoners.
Of course, the lawyers, and most liberals, really don't understand this. Why would people do this? It has to be because of the hopelessness of being the brutally beaten and repressed prisoners of the US, right? Wrong. These people are not rational. They do not have the same values of human life that we do. The terrorists at Gitmo, those who truly are terrorists and the enemy, are desperate to further the causes of radical Islam. They are true fascists in the sense that they have no other value except to the cause, and if they can inflict further damage to the US by killing themselves, then so be it. Just something to think about as this investigation goes forward, and we continue to debate the "due process" of prisoners.
Note that the lawyers aren't thanking the government for saving their clients, because by God, it is more important to have due process and let them kill themselves than to see them stand trial, I guess....
