By Mat Trachok, HLS 2012 NSJ Staff Writer According to surgeon and best-selling author Robin Cook, the world is at risk from an imminent, serious pandemic. Cook has written a new medical thriller entitled Plague, which he hopes will raise consciousness about this potential threat. In his recent article “Plague: A New Thriller of the Coming Pandemic,” Cook explains the […]

By Jonathan Abrams, HLS 2012 NSJ Staff Writer On October 14th, a Canadian Federal Court judge dismissed the Canadian government’s case against a Montreal resident arrested under a controversial deportation program. In 2003, Adil Charkaoui was arrested under a security certificate-an administrative tool by which the Canadian government can detain non-citizens without charge and without showing them or their lawyers […]

By NSJ Staff Writer On November 4th, an Italian court convicted in absentia 23 Americans-twenty-two purported CIA agents and one Air Force Officer-for their role in the kidnapping and rendition of Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, better known as Abu Omar. Twenty-two Americans were given sentences of five years in prison, and the former CIA Milan station chief, Robert Seldon Lady, […]

By Jonathan Abrams, HLS 2012 NSJ Staff Writer On September 4th, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit handed down an important ruling on preventive detention, holding that the federal government’s use of the material witness statute, 18 U.S.C. § 3144, to detain suspected terrorists is unconstitutional. The case, al-Kidd v. Ashcroft, 580 F.3d 949 (9th Cir. […]

By NSJ Staff Writer On October 11, 2009, The New York Times reported that, “Afghanistan’s judiciary is so weak that Afghans increasingly turn to a shadow Taliban court system,” especially in rural areas where people lack access to the judicial process. As the Obama Administration continues to review its Afghanistan strategy to determine whether or not to increase U.S. troop […]

By Peter Dickos, HLS 2012 NSJ Staff Writer The interests of national security and human rights often seem in opposition to each other. If that is the rule, then it is one that Sarah Sewall, former Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, breaks every day. Sewall, also a former […]

By Brian Itami, HLS 2012 NSJ Staff Writer The Obama Administration’s Sudan policy, unveiled on Monday, October 19, 2009, maintains support for the prosecution of President Omar al-Bashir in the International Criminal Court (ICC) despite seeking greater engagement with the Sudanese government. The three major policy objectives include bringing about an end to the “conflict, gross human rights abuses, and […]

A federal judge ruled Friday that the government may withhold portions of records that allegedly describe torture and abuse in a case related to detainees held at Guantanamo Bay. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for information on 14 detainees and unredacted Combatant Status Review Tribunal (“CSRT”) hearing transcripts. In response, the CIA […]

In what appears to be a sudden reversal of policy, Congressional leaders on the Homeland Security Appropriations Conference Committee on Wednesday included compromise language in the FY 2010 Homeland Security Appropriations Act that would allow detainees currently held in the Guantanamo Bay detention facility to be transferred to the United States for prosecution. Members of the Defense Authorization Conference Committee […]

The Obama Administration announced last week that it no longer plans to seek new legislation creating a framework for preventive detention of Guantanamo Bay detainees. The move represents a departure from the plan for such legislation laid out by President Obama in his May 2009 speech at the National Archives. In that speech, the President described a category of detainees […]