Gitmo Troubles...Yes, Again

More Legal Trouble at Gitmo

On Thursday July 6, eight days after winning an important victory in the Supreme Court, Salim Hamdan met with his lawyers in Guantanamo to discuss legal strategy. After polishing off his favorite meal of Jamaican jerk chicken, Hamdan took hand-written, Arabic notes on a page of yellow legal paper, as his lawyers outlined a series of strategic questions. After the meeting, Hamdan's notes were confiscated, according to a sworn affidavit given by Hamdan and obtained by TIME.

In the previous weeks, the government had carted away over half a ton of similar materials from the cells of other prisoners — much of which, like Hamdan's notes, are protected by attorney-client privilege. "In these notes the government knows all of my future legal strategy," Hamdan writes in his affidavit. The government has said it seized the material as part of its investigation into the suicides of detainees at Guantanamo.

"At midnight they took from me my notes that dealt with our future legal strategy and my questions," writes Hamdan, who was allegedly Osama bin Laden's driver. "I got mad and I called the guard in a raised voice because he was getting far away from me. At that moment the guard returned and took out a pepper spray can and put it in my face and demanded I be quiet and told me the discussion is over. I sat down complying with the guard's orders."