Historical/Biographical Note

With approximately 650 lawyers and 850 support staff, Dorsey & Whitney, LLP, is the 60th largest law firm in the United States with 19 offices in the U.S., Europe and Asia-Pacific The firm's home base and its largest office is in Minneapolis. It offers services in more than 50 different areas of legal practice. Dorsey was a 1993 charter signatory of the Law Firm Pro Bono Challenge, which asks firms to contribute 3% of billable hours to pro bono work. As of 2008, Dorsey had met the challenge for 16 consecutive years. One of its many pro bono activities involved Guantanamo Bay detainees. At the request of the Center for Constitutional Rights in 2004, a team of Dorsey attorneys provided representation for six detainees from Bahrain.

In mid-2004 Dorsey lawyers filed an initial petition in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia for writ of habeas corpus on behalf of the detainees (Isa Ali Abdulla Al Murbati, et al. v. George Walker Bush, et al.), beginning a process that lasted over three years. The case for the six Bahraini detainees was at times consolidated with others such as  Khaled A.F. Al Odah, et al. v. United States of America, et al. and  In re Guantanamo Detainee Cases, as there were many similar efforts underway to obtain for the detainees the right to challenge in federal courts their detention and conditions of confinement.

Dorsey attorneys visited the detainees a number of times at the Guantanamo Bay Camp and also traveled to Bahrain to meet with family members and government officials.

By August 2007 all six of the men had been released -- Adel Kamil Abdulla Haji (Al Wadi), Salman Bin Ibrahim Bin Mohammed Bin Ali Al Khalifa, and Abdullah Majed Sayyah Hasan Al Noaimi, in November 2005; Salah Abdul Rasul Ali Al Bloushi in October 2006; Jum'ah Mohammed Abdul Latif Al Dossari in July 2007; and Isa Ali Abdulla Al Murbati in August 2007.