A former senior investigative counsel for the U.S. Senate, special U.S. attorney for the Department of Justice on criminal cases and successful trial attorney in the corporate world, George Mickum knows his law. Now, in what he calls the most important case of his career, he has put in enough unpaid work, subsidized by his firm, Keller and Heckman, to be worth about $1.4 million (32.4 million Kč) defending two UK residents, Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil al-Banna. The two have been held in the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay for four years on suspicion of associating with an operative of al-Qaida. Mickum passed through Prague after testifying about the lack of evidence against his clients before the All Party Parliamentary Committee on Extraordinary Rendition, chaired by Conservative Andrew Tyrie. He spoke to The Prague Post about what this case, and hundreds of others like it, means for the war on terrorism and for fundamental civil rights in the United States.

The Prague Post: How did your clients find themselves arrested and transported to Guantanamo? Most people think of inmates there as those arrested on the ground in Afghanistan or Iraq, but that's not the case with al-Rawi and al-Banna, is it?

George Mickum: Before they were arrested in Gambia, they were arrested about a week prior to that in Gatwick Airport [in October 2002]. They were going to Gambia, and British police arrested them, allegedly for possessing what they thought would be a bomb component. What it was, in fact, was a battery charger that you can buy at any store; eventually [their attorney] went out and bought the same battery charger and eventually they were released. They were arrested again in Gambia. They were going to start a mobile peanut-oil factory.

TPP: You say British MI5 agents recruited your client Bisher shortly after 9/11 to gather intelligence on a Muslim cleric in the United Kingdom, Abu Qatada. And this cleric has never even been charged with anything?

GM: Abu Qatada is someone the British like to think of in the same breath as bin Laden, but the fact of the matter is they don't have any evidence on him. What they found is several of the men who took part in 9/11 from Germany, in that cell, had some of Abu Qatada's speeches and on that basis they say he's a bad guy. I don't know if he's a good guy; I don't know if he's a bad guy. What I know is he's still free. The British don't like him, but if they had anything on him they would have charged him. It's that simple. They got nothing on him.

TPP: And what was your testimony about in London this past week before British Parliament and Andrew Tyrie?

GM: His concern was not my clients per se; his concern was that Great Britain appeared to be involved in a fairly active way in the rendition process. In this case, they essentially rendered these two guys into the hands of the CIA. There's just really no question about that.

TPP: How do they try to elicit intelligence at the CIA secret prisons?

GM: They were interrogated repeatedly. They were beaten, kicked, punched, dragged while chained, hung up, sleep-deprived. You know, people don't have any idea what sleep deprivation's all about. This is not like, 'Hey, I'm tired and I'm ready to go to bed.' This is being kept up continuously for 72 hours. At that point you will say anything, anything, just to get some sleep and have them leave you alone. It doesn't leave marks. It's a very effective tool. My guys tell me they don't even know what they may have said. They just have no idea. They could have said anything and probably did.

TPP: Are prisoners in Guantanamo now allowed some form of communication with their families and access to attorneys?

GM: This is as ugly a situation as I have ever seen and it's ugly at all levels. Jamil el-Banna is the father of five young children who range in age from about 3 to 10. I have seen some of the letters that his children have sent to him. These are one-page letters, in some cases from children who are 4, 5. They're just saying things: 'Daddy, we miss you, we love you.' They black it all out. It's just their way of screwing you, making life even more unbearable.

TPP: So getting at the inmates psychologically is an important component of their treatment at Guantanamo?

GM: There are interrogation teams down there and each consists of an interrogator, a regional guy, a translator, and what they call the 'biscuit team' member and that's like the Behavioral Science. I can't remember. ... Essentially, what they are is a psychiatrist/psychologist who are physicians who are there for the sole purpose of trying to come up with creative ways to make interrogation more effective. And it will differ from person to person, depending on what your weaknesses are. I mean if your family is your weak link, and there are plenty of people for whom that is the case (and Jamil happens to be one of them) ... these are the kinds of things that the military has felt compelled to do.

TPP: But the U.S. military and the White House still insist that the prisoners are not tortured.

GM: Does that amount to torture? I won't debate that point. It's just part of the process of making life down there unbearable.

TPP: How did you get involved in these cases? You say you were one of several attorneys who have taken on representing Guantanamo inmates since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled they have habeas corpus rights in June 2002.

GM: Once we got that decision, I and about eight other attorneys immediately filed petitions. I was just kind of shocked by the whole thing, that we could just hold people indefinitely without charging anybody. And it's surprising: Most of the legal community in the United States feels exactly the same way. We now have 600 attorneys working these cases. And it's kind of galvanized [attorneys] all across the country. Then the Center for Constitutional Rights called me up and asked me if I'd take a case and I said that I would.

TPP: What changes have you seen now that independent attorneys have started to get access to inmates?

GM: It's better now that we've started to get down there. And we've forced a lot of changes. Major among those changes is that the Marines no longer run the camp. The Navy now runs the camp.

TPP: This case has put quite a toll on you — and you're going up against some pretty big legal guns.

GM: It's a tough business. Trial law is a young man's game. I still think I'm a pretty young 52. But I want to choose those cases pretty carefully. And this is a case that I care about. I don't care if I don't get business as a result of this. In the final analysis, it's clearly the most important case I've ever worked on, although whether it has given me the most satisfaction, I don't know.

TPP: Clearly a lot of Americans aren't as troubled by what's going on in Guantanamo, or even in secret CIA rendition prisons, believing that if it protects our citizens from terrorism, it's justified.

GM: I think a lot of people don't understand the extent of the torture, the amount of evidence; [in] December 2005, the FBI released documents. They're in the public domain. They detail the torture. They've 'defined' the issue of torture away. They've defined certain things as not torture. Leaving [a prisoner] short-shackled, chained hand and foot in such excessive heat that he passes out, but before he passes out he tears out clumps of his own hair. They would chain you for 17 hours ... in freezing temperatures. They just put you in the air conditioning, turn it down to 38, 40 degrees. Put you short-shackled facing a strobe light and speakers. Are you familiar with the old Meow Mix [television commercial]? They turn it up to 110 decibels. And you are staring into that with that going on for 15, 16 hours.

TPP: But if there's no useful intelligence being gleaned and all this is basically just generating hate toward Americans among Islamic fundamentalists, as you say, how is it possible the president doesn't know this?