Chicago lawyer volunteers for Sept. 11 case

Military prosecutors say Ramzi Binalshibh helped plan the 9/11 attacks and should be put to death.

Binalshibh doesn't disagree -- at least with the claim he was involved in the attacks. He says he tried to be on hand for 9/11 but hit a snag and couldn't make it.

"I have been seeking martyrdom for five years," Binalshibh, alleged to have been main intermediary between the 9/11 hijackers and al-Qaida leaders, told a hearing last week. "I tried for 9/11 to get a visa, but I could not."

None of that makes the job of defending him easy for his lawyers.

Despite the challenge, Chicago attorney Thomas Anthony Durkin says Binalshibh must be defended because doing so is in keeping with the highest ideals of American law. He's volunteering.

"Anybody can give law to his friends -- it's the essence of law to give it to our enemies," Durkin says, quoting Supreme Court justice Felix Frankfurter.

Binalshibh is one of five so-called high-value prisoners being held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. The government is planning to try him before a military commission, and conviction on the charges could mean capital punishment.

Durkin, Binalshibh's only civilian lawyer so far, and two Navy attorneys who also represent him have their work cut out for them.

Durkin said in an interview Thursday that the military commission planning to try the prisoners is unfair and that Guantanamo itself should be shut down and the prisoners moved to a normal prison.

"It's wrong that somehow we have to create a gulag in order to keep them there," he said, comparing Guantanamo to the string of miserable Siberian prison camps where the Soviet government once sent its exiles.

"We have a prison system that is plenty capable of keeping them," he said.

The interview came as the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a 5-4 ruling that foreign terrorism suspects being held at Guantanamo may challenge their detention in civilian courts.

"It's a tremendous victory for civil rights in this country and further repudiation of the Bush administration's misuse of Guantanamo and their awful policy of indefinite detention," Durkin said.

But he said it was a complex opinion and that it would be premature to say that it would help his client or those who are in the same position.

President Bush has argued that the detentions are needed to protect the U.S. in a time of unprecedented threats from al-Qaida and other foreign terrorist groups.

Durkin, whose mane of black hair and walrus mustache have been a common sight for years around Chicago's federal courthouse, has experience in defending unpopular defendants.

Among others, he represented avowed white supremacist Matt Hale, who was convicted of soliciting the murder of a federal judge.

More recently, Durkin represented Michael Mahoney, who was acquitted of paying $20,000 in kickbacks to the state corrections director while simultaneously lobbying and serving as the head of a prison reform group.

Durkin said he was asked by officials at the American Civil Liberties Union to join a project organized with the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers to defend the five high-value prisoners.

The lawyers are hoping to be paid by private donations because federal law bars them from getting government funds for representing the five men. They flew to Guantanamo aboard a military plane last week and spent three days meeting with their clients. They slept in trailers.

"It was like a small college dormitory room where you share a bathroom," Durkin said. Reporters brought along to witness the arraignment of the five slept in tents. "They were fancy tents, but they were tents."

Durkin said he could not say anything about what passed between him and his client because anything Binalshibh says is considered a military secret.

"I had a secret clearance that has been upgraded to top secret," he said.

All five of the prisoners asked to represent themselves. Binalshibh and another man were not allowed to do so.

"There was an issue raised in open court regarding the fact that the military said he had been on psychotropic medication," Durkin said. He declined to give details but said that was why his client was not allowed to represent himself.

The court did allow three of the prisoners to represent themselves but assigned their lawyers to be with them to give any needed advice.

Durkin indicated there has been no obstacle to talking with Binalshibh.

"The meetings we had I was very satisfied with," he said.