U.S. Law Firm Partner in Kuwait Is Safe

A Kuwaiti partner in the California law firm Graham & James who had not been heard from since early in the Gulf War has emerged unharmed and will soon help restart the firm’s practice in Kuwait City.

Nader Al-Awadhi, the only Kuwaiti national among the seven Graham & James lawyers who worked in Kuwait before the conflict began, spent the entire war inside Kuwait. He contacted the firm in San Francisco on Wednesday from Saudi Arabia, where he is taking a break from the chaos in Kuwait, according to Graham & James spokesman Dan Moshavi.

Since the war ended, Al-Awadhi has assisted Kuwaiti authorities in locating missing persons and documenting Iraqi war crimes, Moshavi said. Graham & James is the only American law firm with an office in Kuwait; Moshavi said the firm hopes to reopen its practice there by the end of April.

As reported earlier in The Times, four of the lawyers who once were on the staff at Graham & James’ Kuwaiti office--including Anis Kassim, the Palestinian managing partner, two Jordanians and one Sudanese--will not be able to return to the country because their governments were supportive of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.