Scott L. Fenstermaker

Scott L. Fenstermaker is an American criminal defense lawyer based in New York City, known for his work on behalf of Guantanamo Bay detainees.

Education

Fenstermaker received a Bachelor of Science from the United States Air Force Academy in 1984 and a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School in 1992.

Legal career

Fenstermaker is notable for volunteering to serve detainees at Guantanamo Bay detention camp in their attempts to access the U.S. justice system.

He described writing to, and receiving authorization to serve as the counsel for two of the fourteen "high value detainees" transferred to military custody in Guantanamo from covert detention in the CIA's network of black sites in September 2006.

On June 1, 2009, the New York Times published an article about the dispute over who was going to represent Ahmed Ghailani, the first Guantanamo detainee to be transferred from military custody to face trial in the US civilian court system. The proposed order would have ordered the Department of Defense to stop interfering with Fenstermaker's ability to communicate with Ammar Al Baluchi and Mustafa Bin Ammad Al Hawsawi, and to allow Fenstermaker to travel to Guantanamo to meet with them. On January 13, 2009, Hogan issued the order that Fenstermaker had proposed.

On March 25, 2009, Fenstermaker filed a "preliminary statement" in Ammar al-Baluchi v. Robert Gates. His statement was a response to a March 2, 2009, filing from the Department of Justice which they called an "Opposition to motion to file a document under seal". Fenstermaker said that Al Baluchi had authorized him to serve as his attorney in a letter he drafted on May 26, 2008, but that the letter had not reached him until August 2008.

Fenstermaker told the court that he still hadn't been allowed to meet with Al Baluchi, that physical letters were the only way he and Al Baluchi had communicated, and that since July 2008 the Department of Defense had been returning his letters to him, rather than delivering them. He moved to Maine and was suspended from the practice of law for three years in March of 2024.