H. Candace Gorman

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H. Candace Gorman is an American attorney. She is the sole practioner at what she describes as a "boutique firm" in Chicago.^[1]

Gorman has been part of an effort organized by the Center for Constitutional Rights to provide pro bono lawyers for the captives the United States took in the "war on terror", and has held in it Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba.^[2]

[edit] Guantanamo clients

Gorman described learning that one of her clients, Abdel Hamid Ibn Abdussalem Ibn Mifta Al Ghazzawi, had a second Combatant Status Review Tribunal, that determined he was an "enemy combatant", after his first Tribunal unanimously concluded he had never been an enemy combatant, and should be released.^[3] Gorman described requesting a court order for a copy of her client's file. Her judge gave the Department of Defense 60 days to make a photocopy of her client's file.

When Gorman received the unclassified copy of his file she learned that there had been no evidence that he was an enemy combatant at his first Tribunal, but that a second Tribunal had been convened, five weeks later, with different officers, without her client, or his Personal Representative present, that concluded he was an enemy combatant, after all, based on new, secret evidence.^[3]

Gorman describes traveling to the secure facility, the only place where the Guantanamo captive's attorneys are allowed to review classified evidence.^[3] Gorman describes that, when she reviewed the classified portion of his file she found nothing new. She found nothing that hadn't previously been made public, except that some names that had previously been redacted were in the clear.

Gorman reports that Al Ghazzawi has liver disease which the Guantanamo authoriities are not treating.^[3]