GTMO representation by Zina Saunder
The government has illegally detained thousands of people, the most notorious example being the men at Guantánamo. The Center for Constitutional Rights has fought for the right to due process, filing countless cases on behalf of these men and others swept up in the so-called War on Terror. CCR has challenged immigration sweeps, ghost detentions, extraordinary rendition, and every other illegal program the government has devised to lock people up and throw away the key. CCR believes we all become less safe and less free when we trample on the rights of others.
See CCR's page Emergency: 2013 Hunger Strike at Guantánamo for resources and updates on the crisis unfolding at the prison.
Visit CCR's "Close Guantánamo" website.
Please read, sign, and distribute our "Close Guantánamo with Justice" statement, which is gathering support from prominent human rights organizations, activists, scholars, artists, writers, and torture survivors from around the world.
CCR has led the legal battle over Guantánamo for over eight years – sending the first ever habeas attorney to the base and sending the first attorney to meet with a former CIA “ghost detainee” there. On June 12, 2008, CCR helped win a historic Supreme Court victory in Boumediene vs. Bush, securing the right for the men at Guantánamo and other non-citizens to challenge the legality of their detention through habeas proceedings in federal courts.
On January 11, 2012, CCR marked ten years since the first men were imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay without charge or a fair trial. CCR staff, volunteers and supporters spent the day in Washington, D.C. calling for Obama to close Guantánamo:
Listen to Mr. Mohammed Sulaymon Barre's message to President Obama and the American people shortly after his release:
CCR has been responsible for organizing and coordinating more than 500 pro bono lawyers across the country in order to represent the men at Guantanamo, ensuring that nearly all have the option of legal representation. In addition, CCR has been working to resettle the men who remain at Guantánamo because they cannot return to their country of origin for fear of persecution and torture.
However, the Obama admininistration still seeks the power to hold men indefinitely without charge or trial. Guantánamo is now President Obama's prison, and CCR continues fighting to make sure that the men detained there are either charged or released, and to prevent new systems of indefinite detention from being established.
President Obama released four torture authorization memos written by the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) under the Bush administration that devised a legal framework for the justification of the Torture Program. The memos were released as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit the Center for Constitutional Rights helped file with the ACLU and other organizations.
We need your help to impeach one of the legal architects of the Bush administration Torture Program who is now, incredibly, a federal judge.
This set of information and media includes the Faces of Guntanamo Reports, the Guantanamo by the Numbers factsheet, links to our petition to shut Guantanamo down, a Solidarity Calendar with ongoing events, and more tools!
This report, Guantánamo and Its Aftermath: U.S. Detention and Interrogation Practices and Their Impact on Detainees, based on a two-year study, reveals in graphic detail the cumulative effect of Bush Administration policies on the lives of 62 released detainees.
Al-Zahrani v. Rumsfeld, et al. is a civil action filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) on behalf of the families and estates of two men who died at Guantánamo Bay in June 2006.…
On June 28, 2004, the Supreme Court held in Rasul v. Bush, that the nearly-600 men imprisoned by the U.S. government in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba had a right of access to the federal courts, via…
May 17, 2013, Washington – Today, on the 100th day of the hunger strike at Guantanamo Bay, and amid growing pressure on the Obama Administration to close the facility once and for all, activists held a vigil outside the White… Read More >>
Featuring the NYC screening of the short film ISN 310: Djamel Ameziane's Decade in Guantánamo* Special Guest: Vanessa Redgrave Join the Center for Constitutional Rights and the Culture Project for this timely event, as the majority of the men at Guantánamo are on… Read More >>
The Center for Constitutional Rights began this case in February 2002, shortly after the first detainees were sent to Guantánamo. Representing two Australians—David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib—and two men from the U.K.—Shafiq Rasul and Asif Iqbal, CCR filed a petition… Read More >>
United States of America v. Osama Awadallah is a lawsuit in which the Center for Constitutional Rights defended Osama Awadallah against charges of making two false material declarations before a grand jury. CCR maintained that Mr. Awadallah was illegally detained… Read More >>
