Many POWs at Guantánamo Rebuff Lawyers

May 5, 2007
Many POWs at Guantánamo Rebuff Lawyers

Some of the lawyers accuse Guantánamo officials of feeding the detainees' suspicions of the lawyers, a charge Pentagon officials deny.

Lawyers said many of the relationships appeared to have deteriorated as the detainees' legal cause has suffered setbacks in Congress and the courts, and as Justice Department officials have begun efforts to limit lawyers' access to detainees, raising new concerns among the detainees about their lawyers' effectiveness.

"Every lawyer is afraid, every time they go down there, that their clients won't see them," said Mark P. Denbeaux, a professor at Seton Hall University School of Law who represents two Guantánamo detainees. "And it's getting worse, because it's pretty hard to say we're offering them anything."