Charles "Cully" Stimson has resigned. Stimson, deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, is the guy who made the offensive comments about the law firms representing Guantanamo detainees.

Stimson said he was leaving because of the controversy over a radio interview in which he said he found it shocking that lawyers at many of the nation's top law firms represent detainees held at the U.S. military prison in Cuba.

"He believed it hampered his ability to be effective in this position," Whitman said of the backlash to Stimson's comments.

Resignation was his only course of action after his disturbing and contemptible comments. And, Stimson's troubles might not be over.

The Bar Association of San Francisco last week asked the California State Bar to investigate whether Stimson violated legal ethics by suggesting a boycott of law firms that represent Guantanamo Bay detainees.

Notwithstanding the long hours spent in the Scooter Libby trial this week, Judge Reggie Walton had time yesterday to make a ruling in the 16 cases involving Guantanamo detainees.

Shorter version: he put the cases in the freezer until the DC Circuit Court of Appeals rules on whether there's been an ouster of habeas jurisdiction.

In a Daily Kos diary defense attorney David Seth has more on how the decision in practical terms means that there won't be an inquiry into the justification for detaining Gitmo prisoners, some for more than 5 years in our civilian courts.

Justice delayed is justice denied.

Via Scribe in the diaries:

Today, a prosecutor in Munich disclosed the existence of arrest warrants for 13 members of Ghost Air crews, relative to the kidnapping of Khaled al Masri from Macedonia to a US prison in Afghanistan. He was left to molder there for months while Condi and others debated exactly what to do with him, seeing as he really was the wrong guy. Ultimately, they had him flown back to and dumped off pretty close to the same spot he'd been kidnapped from. The US District Court has dismissed his tort suit, on the "state secrets" doctrine; he's appealing to the Fourth Circuit.

TalkLeft background on al Masri is here.

At last, a little bit of justice for Maher Arar.

The prime minister of Canada apologized Friday to Maher Arar and agreed to give $9 million in compensation to the Canadian Arab, who was spirited by U.S. agents to Syria and tortured there after being falsely named as a terrorism suspect.

Arar, 36, a former computer engineer who was detained while changing planes at a New York airport in 2002 and imprisoned in a Syrian dungeon for 10 months, said after the announcement that he "feels proud as a Canadian."

Military law expert Donald G. Rehkoff, for whom I have the utmost respect, being familiar with his work, had this to say on a message board today about Charles "Cully" Stimson, the Bush deputy for detainee affairs who made reprehensible comments about lawyers who represent the detainees. (He has graciously given me permission to reprint it.)

First, he reminds us of President John Adams, quoting from Key Figures in Public Trials:

John Adams, in his old age, called his defense of British soldiers in 1770 "one of the most gallant, generous, manly, and disinterested actions of my whole life, and one of the best pieces of service I ever rendered my country." That's quite a statement, coming as it does from perhaps the most underappreciated great man in American history.

The day after British soldiers mortally wounded five Americans on a cobbled square in Boston, thirty-four-year-old Adams was visited in his office near the stairs of the Town Office by a Boston merchant , James Forest. "With tears streaming from his eyes" (according to the recollection of Adams), Forest asked Adams to defend the soldiers and their captain, Thomas
Preston.

The Boston Globe reports today that House Democrats may try to force a closure of Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and other secret prisons by cutting off funding for them.

Representative John P. Murtha, the chairman of the powerful Defense Appropriations subcommittee and a close ally of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, said he wants to close both prisons by cutting their funding, "to restore our credibility worldwide." If he succeeds, it would force the administration to find a new location for high-value terrorism suspects.

Murtha said Nancy Pelosi supports the closure move.

The Washington Post in this great editorial took Cully Stimson to task Friday. Stimson is the deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs.

" MOST AMERICANS understand that legal representation for the accused is one of the core principles of the American way. Not, it seems, Cully Stimson, deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs. In a repellent interview yesterday with Federal News Radio, Mr. Stimson brought up, unprompted, the number of major U.S. law firms that have helped represent detainees at Guantanamo Bay."

"....Mr. Stimson proceeded to reel off the names of these firms, adding, 'I think, quite honestly, when corporate CEOs see that those firms are representing the very terrorists who hit their bottom line back in 2001, those CEOs are going to make those law firms choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms, and I think that is going to have major play in the next few weeks. And we want to watch that play out.'"

Stimson hinted at nefarious connections, rather than a desire to do pro bono work, as the firms' motives:

The U.S. is beginning preparations for trials of the 14 terror suspects flown from secret prisons abroad to Guantanamo. It has set up a secret war room in a suburb of Virginia.

The Bush administration has set up a secret war room in a Virginia suburb where it is assembling evidence to prosecute high-ranking detainees from Al Qaeda including the man accused of being the mastermind of the September 2001 attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, government officials said this week.

What kind of room do the detainees' lawyers get? If you answered "none," I suspect you are correct.

Update: Check out this great editorial in the Washington Post today.

Detainee 940, Adel Hamad, a husband, father, aid worker and teacher, is from Sudan. Here's his story, told by his public defender's investigator and others.

Update: Related: This article appeared in last Sunday's New York Times.

January 11 is the International Day to Shut Down Guantanamo. There will be protests all over the world, including England, Australia and Holland. In the US major protests will take place in Washington DC and New York City, plus dozens of cities throughout the country, including outside the US Southern Command in Miami.

The biggest may be this:

On January 9-13, a first-ever international delegation of former prisoners, families of current prisoners, US lawyers and human rights activists will travel to Guantanamo, Cuba to hold a conference on prison abuses and march to the Cuban-side security gate of the US Naval Base to call for the closure of the illegal prison. The protest in Cuba is part of the January 11 International Day to Shut Down Guantanamo, the day that marks the 5-year anniversary of the first prisoners being sent to Guantanamo.

The FBI has released new documents pursuant to the ACLU's Freedom of Information Act request showing Guantanamo detainee abuse. They detail abuses witnessed (but not performed by) FBI personnel. (You can view the released documents here.)

FBI agents documented more than two dozen incidents of possible mistreatment at the Guantanamo Bay military base, including one detainee whose head was wrapped in duct tape for chanting the Quran and another who pulled out his hair after hours in a sweltering room.

In addition to the Afghan detainees released last week, the Pentagon has announced that an additional 33 detainees have been sent back to their home countries. There are 395 detainees still at Guantanamo, only a small fraction of whom have been charged with a crime.

Despite the fact that 16 were sent to Saudi Arabia, the Washington Post says:

State Department officials have been working to reducesignificantly reduce the number of Guantanamo detainees through lengthy negotiations with other countries, although the United States is unwilling to release detainees into the custody of nations where they would likely be abused, tortured or killed.

Hello? Saudi Arabia doesn't torture prisoners?