An Air Force lawyer fights to free a Guantanamo inmate

[struggle4progress]

Wednesday, May. 13, 2009
Julie Sell - McClatchy Newspapers

... Claiming that Binyam Mohamed, a former British resident who's on a hunger strike at Guantanamo, will leave prison "insane" or "in a coffin" if he's not released soon, Air Force Reserve Lt. Col. Yvonne Bradley has made herself a thorn in the side of her military superiors, her commander-in-chief and other officials on both sides of the Atlantic.

All the charges against Mohamed have been dropped, and in a private meeting on Wednesday, Foreign Secretary David Miliband told Bradley, and subsequently the news media, that the Obama administration had agreed to make reviewing Mohamed's case a "priority." A British delegation plans to visit Mohamed in prison "as soon as possible", and it will include a doctor who can assess his ability to travel, Miliband said.

Part of Bradley's reception in London stems from her "novelty," said Clive Stafford Smith, a member of Mohamed's legal team and the director of the human rights group Reprieve. She's an African-American woman and a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force Reserve who doesn't flinch when she describes her client's treatment or criticizes her country's policies.

"I think this comes as quite a shock to a lot of people in England that a serving military officer would say the things she says," Stafford Smith said. "It illustrates the very best about America" ...

http://www.thestate.com/166/story/785377.html