Legal News

Mr. Amji?s Case: Reprising the Pro Bono-at-Gitmo Debate

By Ashby Jones

It’s a fair bet that no high-powered American law firm will lend a caring hand to the relatives of the seven Iraqis murdered last month by a suicide bomber named Abdullah Salih Al Ajmi and two accomplices. That’s too bad, seeing as how Ajmi was himself a beneficiary of some of that high-powered legal help. WSJ Editorial, May 9, 2008

The “high-powered legal help” came courtesy of Shearman & Sterling and other firms, and has landed squarely in the sights of the WSJ’s editorial board for offering pro-bono assistance to a group of Kuwaiti detainees released from Guantanamo Bay in 2005. Today’s editorial takes specific aim at the firm’s representation of a group that included Abdullah Salih Al Ajmi, who was 29 when he blew himself and several Iraqis up in a suicide mission last month.

Ajmi was one of 12 Kuwaiti petitioners in whose favor the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2004 in Rasul v. Bush, which held that the detainees were entitled to a habeas corpus hearing. The ed board railed against that ruling; other articles critical of U.S. law firms’ pro-bono help for the detainees followed (click here and here.) The issue came to light in a different forum when Cully Stimson, a former Defense Department official, made comments critical of the firms lending pro-bono help to Guantanamo detainees.

At the time, many legal leading lights rallied to the support of Shearman and others. Karen J. Mathis, a Denver lawyer who was, at the time, the president of the American Bar Association, said: ”Lawyers represent people in criminal cases to fulfill a core American value: the treatment of all people equally before the law. To impugn those who are doing this critical work — and doing it on a volunteer basis — is deeply offensive to members of the legal profession, and we hope to all Americans.”

LB readers, we’ve asked you to kick around this issue before, and you’ve done an admirable job. But does the fact that someone who benefited from BigLaw’s help went on to become a killer change the equation at all? Let’s hear your thoughts.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on May 09, 2008 (boomark / email).