Maze of Injustice

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Maze of Injustice – The failure to protect Indigenous Women from sexual violence in the USA
A recent Amnesty International study on the sexual violence against indigenous women in the United States exposes a disturbing trend in human rights abuse. The reasons why indigenous women are at particular risk of sexual violence are complex. According to the report, more than one in three Native American and Alaska Native women are survivors of rape. Most of the abused women have not followed through in their cases to seek justice because of a general inaction within the tribal government authority and its chronic under-resourced law enforcement agencies which should protect indigenous women. As one support worker said, “Women don’t report because it doesn’t make a difference. Why report when you are just going to be re-victimized? Too many times, as the Amnesty Report identifies, those responsible for the violence are able to get away with it.

Guest – Michael Heflin, the Amnesty International USA Campaign Director.
Guest – Juskwa Burnett, counselor for the Otoe-Missouria Tribe in Oklahoma. Juskwa Burnett has a long history of working on domestic abuse and sexual assault of Native women.

Robert R. Bryan

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Robert R. Bryan
San Francisco

Robert R. Bryan has specialized in death-penalty litigation for three decades and is lead counsel in various murder cases pending at the federal and state level. He is a member of the bar of California, New York, United States Supreme Court, various federal courts, and was elected a Fellow in the American Board of Criminal Lawyers. Also, he serves on the Steering Committee, World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, Paris, is active in the National Lawyers Guild, New York, and formerly served as Chair of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, Washington, D.C.

In 2003 Mr. Bryan became lead counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal, the African-American journalist who is Pennsylvania’s death row. They began corresponding nearly two decades ago, but Mr. Bryan was unable to take the case at that time due to other capital-case commitments.

Nr. Bryan has defended many other people against whom the death penalty was sought with the first being an acquittal in the Ammons case in Birming­ham, Alabama when the lawyer was just 26. He represented Jerry D. Bigelow who had spent years on California’s death row before being granted a new trial. Even though the evidence included the client’s 10 confessions to an execution-style murder, a Monterey County jury returned a non-guilty verdict. Another client was Larry Layton, the only person ever charged in the Peoples Temple case which concerned the death of Congress­man Leo Ryan and over 900 people in Jonestown, Guyana, at the direc­tion of Rev. Jim Jones. Mr. Bryan also defended Buddy Cochran who attacked the leadership of the Klu Klux Klan at their national convention in Plains, Georgia, near the home of the then President Jimmy Carter.

For 15 years Mr. Bryan represented Anna Hauptmann, who died at the age of 95 in 1994 in Pennsylvania. She was the widow of Richard Haupt­mann, a German immigrant who was executed in 1936 in New Jersey for the kidnap-murder of Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr. The attorney uncovered evi­dence from government files establishing that the authori­ties knowingly prosecuted an innocent person and that the Trial of the Century was the greatest fraud in US legal history. He pursued litigation in New Jersey against the FBI and those who prosecuted the case in an effort to officially right the wrong. His findings are the subject of The Airman and The Carpenter by Ludovic Kennedy (Viking, Penguin), various other books, documentaries, and a movie. A section of Mur­ders Die by Denis Brian (St. Martin’s Press) is an interview with the attorney on the Hauptmann case and the death penalty. Mr. Bryan is intermittently working on a book concerning the case.

Mr. Bryan has also been counsel to members of the American Indian Movement. He won a dismissal of all murder charges again Jimmy Eagle, who was indicted for the June 26, 1975 killing of two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, South Dakota (Leonard Peltier, represented by others, was later convicted). Mr. Bryan represented federally Gladys Bissonette, who was actively involved in the 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee, South Dakota. He was also the attorney for the Menominee Warrior Society during its 1975 armed occupation of the abandoned Alexian Brothers’ Novitiate near Gresham, Wisconsin. He successfully demanded that the 65-room mansion, other buildings and its acreage be returned to the Native Americans who had lived on the land long before the white man arrived.

Often Mr. Bryan speaks on the death penalty and other human-rights issues both in the U.S. and Europe. In 2007 he addressed the erd World Congress Against the Death Penalty, Paris. Since 1994 he has been doing legal commentaries for ABC News, San Francisco, and appears on other news outlets.

Mr. Bryan has written articles on the death penalty and human rights, e.g., Taking A Stand, Verdict (Jan. 1998); What Price Justice?, Parliamentary Review (England, Oct. 1997); Waco: Inferno of Rights, San Francisco Attorney (S.F. Bar Assoc., Sept., 1993), Death Penalty Trials: The Inno­cence of Jerry Bigelow and Defense Creativ­ity, Champion (National Assoc. of Crim. Defenders Law., Dec. 1993), Death Penalty Trials: Lawyers Need Help, Forum (Calif. Attys. for Crim. Justice, May-June, 1989), Champion (Aug., 1988); In Trial By Fury: The Lindbergh Case, SF Examiner (Apr. 3, 1996), he discussed the wrongfulness of the death penalty on the 60th anniversary of the execution of Richard Hauptmann in New Jersey for the Lindbergh kidnap-murder. A longer version of the article appears in the book Frontiers of Justice, Volume 1: The Death Penalty (Biddle). He demon­strated that innocent people are unavoidably put to death in any capital punishment system regard­less of precau­tions to ensure fairness, in The Execution of the Innocent: The Tragedy of the Hauptmann-Lindbergh and Bigelow Cases, 18 N.Y.U. Rev. L. & Soc. Change 831 (1991). Dedicated Defender, Verdict (July 1998) also contains an interview with the attorney.

A chapter entitled “The Defender” in the book A Punishment In Search Of A Crime by Ian Gray and Moira Stanley (Avon Press) describes Mr. Bryan’s work in fighting capital punishment. His work is featured in Modern Trials by Melvin Belli (West). The lawyer has appeared as an expert witness regarding the minimum stan­dards of attorney compe­tence in capital cases.

The activities and memberships of Mr. Bryan have included: World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, Steering Committee, Paris; National Lawyers Guild, NY; National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, Chair and Board (1985-95), Washington; Chopin Foundation, Board (2004-present); Amnesty International; ACLU; National Coalition Concerned Legal Prof., Board (2000-present); Lycée Fran­­çais La Pérouse, Board (1997-98); No. Calif. Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, Board and Chair (1985-92); NY State Defenders Assn.; NY State Assn. of Crim. Defenders Lawyers; Amer. Indians and the Death Penalty, Adv. Council (1985-92); Int’l Soc’ty for Prof. Hyp., Legal Adv. Board; Criminal Trial Law. Assn.; NAACP; Int’l Churchill Soc’ty; Glenn Gould Foundation.

Mr. Bryan is married to Nicole, a French citizen who is actively working on behalf of death-row clients. They live in San Francisco, but also spend time at the family home in France. Their daughter, Auda Mai, is a classical pianist and attends Rugby School, England.

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Contact information:

Law Offices of Robert R. Bryan
2088 Union Street, Suite 4
San Francisco, California 94123-4117
RobertRBryan@aol.com

Statement by former GITMO Prisoner Bisher Al Rawi

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Sunday April 1st: I am delighted to be back home in England, with my
family. After over four years in Guantánamo Bay, my nightmare is finally at
an end.

As happy as I am to be home though, leaving my best friend Jamil El-Banna
behind in Guantánamo Bay makes my freedom bittersweet. Jamil was arrested
with me in the Gambia on exactly the same unfounded allegations, yet he is
still a prisoner. He is the father of five young children, the eldest of
whom is ten. He has never seen his youngest daughter who is nearly five
years old. He too should be released and reunited with his family.

I also feel great sorrow for the other nine British residents who remain
prisoners in Guantánamo Bay. Some are now on hunger strike protesting
against their extended solitary confinement. The extreme isolation they are
going through is one of the most profoundly difficult things to endure. I
know that all too well.

The hopelessness you feel in Guantánamo can hardly be described. You are
asked the same questions hundreds of times. Allegations are made against
you that are laughably untrue, but you have no chance to prove them wrong.
There is no trial, no fair legal process. I was alleged to have
participated in terrorist training in Bosnia and Afghanistan. I’ve never
been to Bosnia and the only time I visited Afghanistan was thanks to the
hospitality of the CIA in an underground prison – the Dark Prison – outside
Kabul.

But now, finally, I am back home.

I want to thank everyone who campaigned tirelessly for both me and Jamil
during this long saga of misery, suffering and injustice, a saga in which
Jamil still finds himself enmeshed. My overwhelming feelings of gratitude
and thanks extend to an extremely large number of people. I would love to
mention them all by name, but that would make this statement among the
longest on the record. However, there are individuals whose names are
imprinted in my mind and heart whom I cannot but mention today.

I would like to start with thanking my family, who have suffered greatly
with me throughout. The late Mark Jennings, a person whom I wished very
much to meet and thank in person but it was not to be, and his wife Celia
to whom I extend my hand in friendship for a lifetime. My British lawyer
Gareth Peirce whom I consider to be the best in her field, together with
Irene Nembhard and all those at Birnberg Peirce who were on this case
helping us from day one. My American lawyer Brent Mickum who got on this
case very early on, despite the overwhelming difficulties, restrictions and
complexities imposed by the American regime. Clive Stafford Smith and
Zachary Katznelson whose visits to Guantánamo were a lifeline for me and
meant so much, and of course all those with them at Reprieve. My MP Edward
Davey, who took on what seemed to be an impossible mission, facing high
walls of bureaucracy and doors that refused to be opened. It was a task
very few people would have volunteered to take on. Sarah Teather, my best
friend Jamil’s MP, who is continuing to push for Jamil’s release and his
long-overdue reunion with his wife and children. Victoria Brittain, a name
I will always remember and to whom both Jamil and I feel extremely
indebted.

I would like to thank Amnesty International and all those there whose good
work through out the world is a blooming flower of hope. I sincerely
believe that without Amnesty’s immediate intervention in our case during
those extremely difficult first days after our arrest in The Gambia, we
probably would have been goners. I have to also thank all the other
humanitarian groups who have stood up against the injustices in Guantánamo
Bay and other places, who have kept the pressure on the U.S. government,
and helped as much as possible under these difficult circumstances. All the
good people in this country and elsewhere who have supported us in various
ways, including the many many who have written letters to both me and Jamil
in support and solidarity. Among these, I should mention especially the
young boys and girls whose words were most heart-warming – and whose
hand-writing was much nicer and more legible than mine! My friends in the
UK of all backgrounds who have tolerated me and my many shortcomings for
years, starting from a long time before Guantánamo Bay, and whose memories
I had on replay throughout my imprisonment. My friends at Guantánamo Bay
who were my family, and meant everything to me, in that strange and wearied
land.

I couldn’t but feel happiness, though together with a great deal of
embarrassment, when I read my name in debate transcripts and speeches in
Parliament. I thank the MPs for their interest and concern in what took
place and continues to take place in Guantánamo Bay. Staying on the
political side but a bit further away from home, I would like to thank the
European Parliament for keeping things a bit more sane than would have
been.

I want to thank the officials at the British Embassy in Washington, D.C.,
who worked extremely hard to secure my release, together with all the
extremely nice and welcoming guys who brought me back home aboard the
really lavish flight (no expense spared). You made me feel comfortable and
welcomed. I thank you for that.

Finally I would like to express my gratitude to the media. This experience
made me understand better your role in making the wheel of life turn.
Please don’t make me bite my tongue!

I ask that you please allow me some time with my family to come to terms
with the horrific experience I have had. But, I hope everyone who believes
in justice and the rule of law will join with me to work for the release of
Jamil and the other British residents. They have been unjustly imprisoned
for over 4 years without charge or trial. They too should come home.

Thank you.