Thomas Wilner

Thomas B. Wilner (born 1944) is the managing partner of Shearman & Sterling's International Trade and Global Relations Practice. Wilner has also represented the high-profile human rights cases of a dozen Kuwaiti citizens detained in the United States naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.cite news
url=http://www.justicetalking.org/viewprogram.asp?progID=508
title=Guantanamo Bay: Dealing with the Enemy in an Age of Terror
publisher="Justice's talking"
date=May 16 2005
accessdate=2007-02-05] cite news
url=http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-op-wilner26feb26,0,1383538.story?coll=la-home-commentary
title=American gulag: Torture, force-feeding and darkness at noon -- this is Guantanamo, a lawyer for prisoners says
publisher=Los Angeles Times
date=February 26 2006
accessdate=2006-03-02] cite news
url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/18/AR2008091803396.html
title=Guantanamo Detainees and the Courts
page=A18
publisher=Washington Post
author=Thomas Wilner
date=2008-09-19
accessdate=2008-09-19
quote=The habeas corpus review ordered by the Supreme Court is modest but fundamental. It simply requires the government to demonstrate to an independent judge that it has a reasonable basis for detaining a prisoner. It is the most basic protection against arbitrary and mistaken imprisonment. U.S. courts have handled these cases since our country was founded. They are fully capable of handling these cases now without further legislation. ]

Wilner earned his law degree in 1969 from the University of Pennsylvania Law School.cite web
url=http://pview.findlaw.com/view/2125885_1
title=Findlaw Lawyer Directory]
publisher="Findlaw"
accessdate=2007-02-05]

Wilner has been admitted to the bar in a number of jurisdictions, including the US Supreme Court in 1975.

Washington Post Op-Ed

The Washington Post published an op-ed by Wilner on January 1 2008.cite news
url=http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_7857785
title=Guantanamo detainees deserve a chance to defend themselves
publisher=Salt Lake Tribune
author=Thomas B. Wilner
date=January 1 2008
accessdate=2008-01-04] He noted: quotation|"All these prisoners have asked for is a fair hearing, one in which they have the chance to learn the charges against them and to rebut the accusations before a neutral decision maker."

Guantanamo cases

Wilner has been critical of the conditions under which the US holds Guantanamo detainees. In a February 26 2006 op-ed in the Los Angeles Times Wilner reported:
*It took two and a half years of legal wrangling before he won access to interview his clients.cite web
url=http://www.supremecourtus.gov/docket/03-343.htm
title=Fawzi Khalid Abdullah Fahad Al Odah, et al., Petitioners v. United States, et al.
publisher="US Supreme Court"
date=July 30 2004
accessdate=February 5
accessyear=2007]
*None of his clients were "captured on the battlefield".
*None of his clients were accused of engaging in hostilities.
*All of his clients claim they were captured by warlords, and sold to the US forces in return for a bounty.
*All of his clients describe brutal beatings and other abuse while they were held in Afghanistan. Several of them describe brutal beatings after their arrival at Guantanamo.
*Wilner described the brutality of the forcefeeding of the Guantanamo hunger strikers in great detail.

Wilner has also reported that interrogators have warned Guantanamo captives that the Guantanamo attorneys were all jewish, and they couldn't trust them.cite web
url=http://oversight.house.gov/documents/20050826092507-27353.pdf
title=Reply of June 30, 2005, to Henry Waxman
publisher=United States Department of Defense
author=Estaban Rodriguez
date=June 30 2005
accessdate=2008-05-07
quote=
format=PDF [http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http%3A%2F%2Foversight.house.gov%2Fdocuments%2F20050826092507-27353.pdf&date=2008-09-19 mirror] ]

On September 19 2008 the "Washington Post" published a letter to the editor from Wilner in reply to a recent editorial on whether the Congress should pass legislation on how the Justice system should conduct captives' habeas corpus appeals.The United States Supreme Court's ruling in Boumediene v. Bush had overturned Congress's proscription on allowing captives access to the US justice system.

Senators Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman had introduced a bill "..to mandate the procedures the courts must follow in the habeas hearings for Guantanamo Bay detainees."The Washington Post's editorial had applauded the Senator's proposed bill.Wilner's letter expressed concern that the bill was unnecessary, and could::

References

External links

* [http://www.kuwaitifreedom.org/index.php Kuwaiti Family Committee]