Critics Of Reprieve

What resistance do you and Reprieve get?

Well you know, much as they show on movies that people who commit crimes are always trying to cover their tracks. When the CIA and people like that commit crimes, they try to cover their tracks as well. So they make it as difficult as they can. And also there's hostility and stonewalling. The British government has said over and over again that Diego Garcia has not been used for any rendition. That's just not true. General McCaffrey, the American general formally in charge of South Com has said twice publicly that the US has used Diego Garcia. So there's stonewalling of all sorts, and sometimes they get a bit hostile as well. They've done that to me a few times. It's not really funny when it's happening. Like one time, they threatened to lock me up in Guantanamo. It wasn't a lot of fun. At one point I had to set up this thing with my wife where if I didn't email her with the name of our dog in it every night, she would call in to my lawyers to get me out of Guantanamo. And you know, that's so sad in this day and age with the United States, and I'm American, to have to worry about that sort of thing is pitiful. And then they accuse us as the lawyers in Guantanamo constantly of committing what they say are crimes. They try to blame us for everything. The most recent one of this is the Speedogate affair where they accused me of smuggling Speedo swimming trunk into my clients. I mean, it's absurd that I would do that. Of course I didn't. What's ‘Shaka' going to go wear his trunks for? To go paddling in his privy? The only thing he could swim in is his toilet. They do that, but they're very serious. And those things, they view as contraband, and they say you can be prosecuted for that if it's true.

Do you ever feel that your safety is at risk?

Well, I've had times throughout my career when there've been threats, yeah. And in the death penalty, I used to face that every now and then in the Deep South, and in this, too, I was taken in by the secret police in Jordan. I'm not really bothered by it, I mean I think I'm one of the incredibly privileged people, who doesn't have to fear that nearly as much as a Muslim person with a beard who's just walking around a mosque in Britain. So I'm not worried about that. And quite frankly, if they did it to me, that's fine. Bring them on. It's good for fund raising, I'm sure.