Medical Malpractice 2

by hilzoy and Katherine

(This is the third in a series of posts addressing specific arguments and statements that Senator Lindsey Graham made in the floor speech in support of his amendment ending habeas for Guantanamo detainees. A Word doc of Graham's speech is here.)

Two medical malpractice claims have come out of this…. Never in the history of the rule of law of armed conflict has an enemy combatant, POW, person who is trying to kill U.S. troops, been given the right to sue those same troops for their medical care"—Senator Lindsey Graham.

Last night, when we wrote our post on medical malpractice, we did not know the content of the claims Graham was referring to. We have now found one. It was filed on behalf of Sami Al-Laithi:

"An Egyptian-born teacher imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for the past 3 1/2 years recently convinced the U.S. military that he is not an enemy combatant, but rather what he said he was: a pro-democracy English teacher swept up when the military seized fighters and suspected terrorists from the battlefields of Afghanistan.

In newly declassified records of statements to his attorney, Sami Al-Laithi said that as a result of his detention at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, he is now confined to a wheelchair with two broken vertebrae. He said military personnel and interrogators stomped on his back, dropped him on the floor and repeatedly forced his neck forward soon after his arrival at the prison.

He said he has been denied an operation that could save him from permanent paralysis and is being held at Camp V, a maximum-security wing of isolation cells reserved for the most uncooperative and high-value inmates, while he awaits transfer"

Here is a pdf of the medical malpractice motion filed by Al-Laithi's attorney (publicly available, from PACER.) Anyone who wants to know which frivolous cases Graham is talking about should read this motion in its entirety. For now, I'll just say this:

Lindsey Graham says: "ladies and gentlemen, if we do not rein in prisoner abuse, we are going to lose the war. But if we do not rein in legal abuse by prisoners, we are going to undermine our ability to protect ourselves." As an example of this "legal abuse by prisoners" that has to be "reined in", he cites medical malpractice claims. And this is one of those malpractice claims: a claim, by a detainee, that having been beaten so badly that two of his vertebrae were broken, he was denied the operation that would save him from permanent paralysis.

Lindsey Graham says: "Do not give the terrorists, the enemy combatants, the people who blow up folks at weddings, who fly airplanes into the Twin Towers, the ability to sue our own troops all over the country for any and everything." But at the time he made his complaint, Al-Laithi had already been found innocent by a CSRT. He was found not to be an enemy combatant. And yet he was still in custody, and still not getting his operation.

Bear in mind that Al-Laithi would not have been able to make this claim, nor would any of this information have come out, had Lindsey Graham's amendment already been in force. As we noted earlier, Graham's amendment allows courts to review only the question whether Guantanamo tribunals meet their own standards. It does not allow people, like Al-Laithi, who have been cleared by those tribunals but not released to ask the courts to release them; nor does it allow any relief for plainly inhumane treatment, like, say, being denied an operation needed to save a person from permanent paralysis.

Al-Laithi was returned to Egypt by US authorities about a month ago. He was immediately hospitalized.

Comments

[rilkefan]

I said no more head-exploding posts, hilzoy. You don't want to make Mrs. Rilkefan mad at you.

[Katherine]

I take no credit for this one.

[hilzoy]

rilkefan: then you definitely do not want to read the next one that's coming.

[pacanukeha]

Blow up people at weddings? He wants to remove rights from the brave men and women of the US Armed Forces?