Kramer Levin attorneys brought three separate habeas proceedings in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in September and December of 2005 on behalf of seven prisoners held by the U.S. military in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and obtained the release of three of the clients in May 2006. Our efforts also resulted in September 2008 in the first ever release order by a district court judge in over six years of Guantánamo habeas litigation. All of our clients are Uighurs, a Turkic Muslim minority group native to Western China that has been brutally oppressed by the Chinese government. Shortly after 9/11, they had been abducted by bounty hunters, sold to the U.S. military, and later imprisoned in Guantánamo. Prior to our representation, these men had been held, virtually incommunicado, for over four years without basis, without charge, without access to counsel, and without being afforded any fair process by which they might challenge their detention.

After the filing of our first habeas petition, the government admitted that three of our clients were not enemy combatants. While the military acknowledged their innocence, they could not be returned to China where they were likely to face torture or execution. The Kramer Levin team met with these men in Guantánamo early in 2006. We also advocated before the United Nations and worked with members of the Uighur-American and international human rights communities to locate a suitable country or countries where they could be resettled after being released. This work led to these three clients being released in Albania in May 2006.

Kramer Levin continued litigating on behalf of our remaining four clients to ensure that they would eventually have their day in court and the opportunity to contest the basis for their indefinite detention. On June 12, 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its historic decision in Boumediene v. Bush, striking down the portion of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 that sought to strip habeas jurisdiction over petitioners imprisoned at Guantánamo. The Supreme Court’s decision allowed our clients’ habeas cases to proceed, and shortly thereafter the Justice Department at long last acknowledged that these men were not enemy combatants.

On October 7, 2008, Judge Ricardo Urbina ordered that all 17 Uighur prisoners at Guantánamo, including our four clients, be released into the United States. After nearly seven years of litigation and imprisonment, Judge Urbina’s order was the first time that a district court judge had ordered Guantánamo prisoners released on a habeas corpus petition. The government immediately requested a stay of the decision and appealed the case to the DC Circuit. In February 2009, the DC Circuit reversed the lower court’s decision, effectively prolonging the unlawful detention of the Uighurs. On April 3, 2009, Kramer Levin and three other law firms representing the Uighurs submitted a Petition for Writ of Certiorari to the Supreme Court, asking them to hear their case.

The Kramer Levin team has included former partner Paul Schoeman, Eric Tirschwell, Wells Dixon, Darren LaVerne, Seema Saifee, Michael Sternhell, Matthew Keller, Nadia Asancheyev, Joel Taylor, Alison Sclater, then-summer associate Joseph Shifer and paralegal Marina Trad. We have been assisted by the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has spearheaded the campaign to secure due process and basic human rights for Guantánamo detainees and coordinated the widespread efforts of the private bar to support this effort.

Home: 2008 Pro Bono Report