Robert D. Rachlin is a Vermont, U.S. lawyer. [1] He is a partner in Downs Rachlin Martin PLLC, the state's largest law firm, practicing in the firm's Burlington, Vermont office. [2]
Rachlin spent most of his legal career handling cases for business clients.
He volunteered to the Center for Constitutional Rights to serve as an attorney for detainees at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, who originally were given no access to counsel. In landmark decisions from 2004 to 2008, United States Supreme Court decisions have upheld the detainees rights to habeas corpus to challenge their detentions before an impartial tribunal, rights to counsel, and rights to access to United States federal courts.
In a 2006 interview Rachlin said: [2]
This is not a question of whether they deserve a lawyer," he said. "This is a question of whether the system should be allowed to function. The minute you're depriving the most unpopular person of a lawyer, you're setting a precedent. The next thing that happens is you deprive someone a little less popular, and then eventually you're depriving your political opponents. We're protecting our fellow citizens, as well as these people.
Rachlin represented two clients who are Guantánamo detainees: Algerian Djamel Saiid Ali Ameziane, an Algerian citizen, and Ghassan Abdullah al Sharbi, from Saudi Arabia. [2] Between August 2005 and April 2006, Rachlin made five trips to Guantánamo to see his clients.
In 2006, al-Sharbi was one of the ten Guantánamo detainees facing charges before a military commission. Al-Sharbi wanted to decline legal representation. Rachlin tried arranging for al-Sharbi to talk, by phone, with his parents, hoping they would be able to convince him to accept Rachlin's legal assistance and that of the military counsel assigned by the Department of Defense.
In reply to the allegations against Ameziane as contained in the record of his Administrative Review Board, released in March 2006, Rachlin has said:
There's nothing here that shows that he so much as held a firearm or did anything against the United States -- he's one of those guys who were at the wrong place at the wrong time. There's nothing more here than guilt by association. [3]
Rachlin serves as a faculty member of Vermont Law School. He is also a concert pianist and co-founder of the Vermont Chamber Group.
Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al Qosi is a Sudanese militant and paymaster for al-Qaeda. Qosi was held from January 2002 in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba. His Guantanamo Internment Serial Number is 54.
Mohammed Mani Ahmad al-Qahtani is a Saudi citizen who was detained as an al-Qaeda operative for 20 years in the United States's Guantanamo Bay detention camps in Cuba. Qahtani allegedly tried to enter the United States to take part in the September 11 attacks as the 20th hijacker and was due to be onboard United Airlines Flight 93 along with the four other hijackers. He was refused entry due to suspicions that he was trying to illegally immigrate. He was later captured in Afghanistan in the battle of Tora Bora in December 2001.
Ahcene Zemiri, also known as Hassan Zumiri, is an Algerian citizen who was for seven years a legal resident of Canada, where he lived in Montreal. He and his Canadian wife moved to Afghanistan in July 2001. They were separated when trying to leave in November 2001 and Zemiri was arrested and turned over to United States forces. He was transferred to the United States Guantanamo Bay detention camp in 2002, where he was detained for eight years without charge.
Camp Iguana is a small compound in the detention camp complex on the US Naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Camp Iguana originally held three child detainees, who camp spokesmen then claimed were the only detainees under age 16. It was closed in the winter of 2004 when the three were sent back to their native countries.
Extrajudicial prisoners of the United States, in the context of the early twenty-first century War on Terrorism, refers to foreign nationals the United States detains outside of the legal process required within United States legal jurisdiction. In this context, the U.S. government is maintaining torture centers, called black sites, operated by both known and secret intelligence agencies. Such black sites were later confirmed by reports from journalists, investigations, and from men who had been imprisoned and tortured there, and later released after being tortured until the CIA was comfortable they had done nothing wrong, and had nothing to hide.
Jabran Said Bin Wazir al-Qahtani is a Saudi who was held in extrajudicial detention for almost fifteen years in the United States Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba. Joint Task Force Guantanamo analysts estimate he was born in 1977, in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia.
Ghassan Abdallah Ghazi al-Sharbi is a Saudi citizen who was held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba. His Guantanamo Internment Serial Number was 682.
The Algerian Six were six Algerian men, who gained citizenship of Bosnia and Herzegovina during the Bosnian War, five of whom will continue to hold a dual Algerian and Bosnian citizenship, and who were imprisoned without charges at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba from January 2002.
Hadj Boudella is a citizen of Bosnia who was wrongfully detained for over six years in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba.
Thomas Fleener is an American military officer and lawyer. Fleener, a major in the United States Army Reserve, has been appointed to serve as a defense lawyer in the Guantanamo military commissions. He has been appointed to serve as the defense lawyer for Ali Hamza Ahmed Sulayman al Bahlul.
Abdul Zahir (عبدالظاهر) is a citizen of Afghanistan currently held in extrajudicial detention in the United States' Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba. He was the tenth captive, and the first Afghan, to face charges before the first Presidentially authorized Guantanamo military commissions. After the Supreme Court ruled that the President lacked the constitutional authority to set up military commissions, the United States Congress passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006, he was not charged under that system.
Mohammed Nechle is a Bosnian citizen who was wrongly held for almost seven years as an "enemy combatant" in the United States's Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba.
Djamel Saiid Ali Ameziane is an Algerian citizen, and former resident of Canada, who was held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba.
The Guantanamo Bay detention camp is a United States military prison within Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, also referred to as Gitmo, on the coast of Guantánamo Bay in Cuba. Of the roughly 780 people detained there since January 2002 when the military prison first opened after the September 11 attacks, 740 have been transferred elsewhere, 31 remain there, and 9 have died while in custody.
Faiz Mohammed Ahmed Al Kandari is a Kuwaiti citizen who was held in extrajudicial detention in the United States' Guantanamo Bay detainment camp in Cuba, from 2002 to 2016. He has never been charged with war crimes.
The Center for Constitutional Rights has coordinated efforts by American lawyers to handle the habeas corpus, and other legal appeals, of several hundred of the Guantanamo detainees.
In United States law, habeas corpus is a recourse challenging the reasons or conditions of a person's detention under color of law. The Guantanamo Bay detention camp is a United States military prison located within Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. A persistent standard of indefinite detention without trial and incidents of torture led the operations of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp to be challenged internationally as an affront to international human rights, and challenged domestically as a violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth and Fourteenth amendments of the United States Constitution, including the right of petition for habeas corpus. In 19 February 2002, Guantanamo detainees petitioned in federal court for a writ of habeas corpus to review the legality of their detention.
David H. Remes is an American lawyer.
Alan Kay is a United States magistrate judge for the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.
Sufyian Ibn Muhammad Barhoumi is an Algerian man who was held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba. The Department of Defense reports that he was born on July 28, 1973, in Algiers, Algeria.