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By Ellen Ratner
Bureau Chief, Talk Radio News Service

Today is my brother Michael Ratner’s birthday and it is a “milestone” year, which we celebrated as a family last night. We toasted him, not just because he reached a great age, but because the Supreme Court handed him the best birthday gift a human rights attorney could possibly have; detainees are entitled to petition the courts in the time honored legal principal known as habeas corpus.



Guantanamo Bay prisoners. Photo credited to CBS News


Michael is the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, the legal organization that brought the first case on behalf of the Guantanamo detainees. He has been working day and night, through family vacations and weekends since 2002 on behalf of men (and even boys) detained without trial. It has not been without lots of hate e-mails and calls from people who consider him a terrorist sympathizer.