Legal Logjam May Be Ahead

Lawyers representing many of the 265 detainees at Guantanamo Bay say they are heading for a unexpected logjam that could delay federal court hearings: a shortage of interpreters.

After the Supreme Court ruled that terrorism suspects held at the military prison in Cuba have a right to seek their release in federal court, lawyers are gearing up for what they expect to be an avalanche of legal briefs and new evidence filed by the Justice Department. Lawyers say they are trying to rush to meet with their clients in advance of cases that judges may want to hear quickly.

"The shortage of interpreters will pose a problem, because it's already difficult enough to get to Guantanamo and to see one's client," said Martha Rayner, a lawyer who represents two detainees and is also a clinical associate professor of law at Fordham University Law School in New York. "But without an interpreter, the meeting can't take place."

The issue concerns lawyers so much that they clashed with the Justice Department recently when the security clearances for several Arabic interpreters were rescinded for unexplained reasons. Worried the pool would grow even smaller, the lawyers said they enlisted the help of U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth, who prodded Justice officials into fixing the clearance problems

Just over a dozen interpreters, who speak languages ranging from Arabic to Russian and work for more than 400 lawyers, have performed critical work in recent years, acting as interpreters of not only language but also culture. The prisoners' attorneys say they have played a vital role in helping them build trust with often-suspicious detainees.

The lawyers hire the interpreters, who must be U.S. citizens and pass a rigorous background check. The government and military contractors have already snapped up many interpreters, further reducing the pool of available talent for the detainees' lawyers, according to outside experts.

The interpreters can charge as much as $1,400 a day, a rate that is three times what they would charge for similar work in the United States, interpreters and lawyers said. Several interpreters said they are already booked through mid-November.

In response to the shortage, the lawyers said they are asking the government to increase the hours and days they may talk to their clients at Guantanamo to maximize use of their interpreters. Currently, lawyers may only visit their clients on work days for two three-hour stints each day.

Some lawyers are pushing the military to allow telephone and video conferences with the detainees, a move that attorneys say would probably reduce the security clearance requirements for interpreters working with lawyers on the U.S. end of calls because they would not have to visit the secure military base.

"If we got them to change the rules, the number of hours, and we worked New York lawyers' hours instead of a European auto plant workers' schedule, there would be less of a problem," said Shayana Kadidal, a lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has spearheaded the detainees' legal efforts.

The Defense Department, however, has no plans to change the hours or security requirements, said Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey D. Gordon, a spokesman for the department. Gordon said the government is working as quickly as possible to clear interpreters to work at Guantanamo and that restrictions on who may speak to detainees "are necessary to protect national security."

When lawyers first were allowed to visit the detainees in 2004, they searched frantically for months to find interpreters -- in languages including Pashto, Farsi, Arabic and Uighur, spoken by a group of detainees from western China.