Charles R. Church
The Law Office of Charles R. Church is devoted to a single client, a detainee named Zayn al Abidin Muhammad Husayn and commonly known as Abu Zubaydah, who has been imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay since September 2006. Captured by CIA and other forces in March 2002, Abu Zubaydah soon was moved by the CIA from secret "black site" to secret "black site" in various corners of the world where he was tortured to a fare-thee-well. Before that, he was captured and nearly killed in Faisalabad, Pakistan on March 28, 2002. Regarded incorrectly as the government's first "high-value detainee," Mr. Husayn was rendered to a secret CIA "black site" in a Thailand where he was interrogated and tortured with what were euphemistically termed "enhanced interrogation techniques," or "EITs." These were approved (based primarily on falsehoods supplied by the CIA) by the Bush Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel in a now-infamous August 1, 2002 memo titled "Interrogation of Al Qaeda Operative." (The government now concedes that Mr. Husayn never belonged to Al Qaeda.) Before they began his torture, the CIA interrogation team sought "reasonable assurances that [Mr. Husayn] will remain in isolation and incommunicado for the remainder of his life." Their superiors soon replied with precisely the assurances the interrogators wanted. After Thailand, Mr. Husayn was moved from black site to black site situated in various countries pursuant to the U.S. Rendition, Detention and Interrogation Program, before President Bush finally disclosed the program in September 2006 and declared that, henceforth, the captives involved in it would be transferred to Guantánamo where they would be placed under military control.
For their complicity with the CIA in holding him in black sites located there, the European Court of Human Rights has granted judgments in favor of Mr. Husayn against Poland and Lithuania, each being required to pay him 100,000 euros.
Mr. Church is a member of Mr. Husayn's habeas corpus team, which works for his freedom in the District of Columbia federal district court, in a case pending before the Honorable Emmet G. Sullivan.
Lead counsel for the habeas team is Solomon B. Shinerock, Lewis, Baach, Kaufmann and Middlemiss PLLC, with offices in New York City, Washington, D.C. and London, England.
Interested persons are encouraged to contact Mr. Church at his Salisbury location. Details at left.