Walid Mohammad Haj Mohammad Ali of Sudan has never met Thomas Durkin.
But Durkin, a Chicago defense attorney, is fighting to see all the evidence the United States government has compiled against Ali, his client. He is working for Ali as a volunteer.
That evidence has not been fully revealed even though Ali has been in a Guantanamo Bay prison for several years.
Along with defense work for local public figures like Gary developer Jewell Harris Sr., Durkin is among a group of lawyers challenging the United States government's right to hold "unlawful combatants" indefinitely without legal recourse.
A federal judge in Hammond agreed last week to move Harris' fraud trial to September, partly because of Durkin's time restraints from his ongoing legal work on behalf of Ali.
"I think it's a frightening proposition from a civil liberties standpoint, that the administration, without any checks and balances from anyone, can simply declare someone an enemy combatant and detain him indefinitely without access to the courts," Durkin said.
"I think that's a tremendously frightening prospect and I hope the Supreme Court will agree."
Ali's case is among several dozen bound together as a single case before the U.S. Supreme Court.
All are men detained at the American prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and are represented by defense lawyers challenging the Bush administration's policies for detention of terrorism suspects.
The first brief was filed Monday with the Supreme Court. Specifically, the attorneys are challenging a law passed shortly before the 2006 general election called the Military Commissions Act, which allows the CIA to continue its ongoing program of detaining suspected terrorists.
Signing the bill into law last October, President Bush said the CIA's detainee program has prevented attacks on America and has been a "vital tool" in the war on terror.
U.S. Rep. Steve Buyer, R-Ind., a 26-year Army Reserve veteran who attended the signing ceremony, said the law underlying the program is sound.
"The legislation as enacted strikes the necessary balance between protecting national security interests while ensuring that the proceedings are conducted with all of the judicial guarantees recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples," Buyer said in an e-mail Friday.
An unclassified document on the U.S. Department of Defense Web site says Ali was arrested after he took part in the prison riot at the Al Janki Castle in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif. The document says Ali was a Taliban military commander who fought on the front lines and reported directly to an Al Qaeda commander.
Ali said he never fought against or even saw an American troop while fighting in northern Afghanistan, and claimed that he had intended to travel to Pakistan to teach Islamic studies, the document says.
Durkin said actual documents labelling Ali an enemy combatant are classified. Even the notes from another defense lawyer who has interviewed him are still classified.
"I'd like to see him obtain due process, which is ample notice of the charges, notice of witnesses," Durkin said. "I'd like to see him have access to counsel and to be afforded a meaningful hearing."
