Uncategorized

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 Pentagon official who helped craft the Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, discussed how human rights and national security must go hand in hand in the panel discussion “Why Human Rights Matter:  Human Rights as Public Service” on Wednesday, October 21. […]

By Mary Ostberg, HLS 2012 NSJ Staff Writer On Friday, October 16, 2009, the United Kingdom’s High Court ruled that seven paragraphs of UK-U.S. exchanges detailing the alleged torture of Binyam Mohamed should be disclosed.  In reversing its 2008 ruling, the High Court called the public interest in disclosing the paragraphs “overwhelming.” Mr. Mohamed, a British resident who was born in Ethiopia, was arrested in Pakistan in 2002 for using a false passport.  After his arrest, Mr. Mohamed was taken to Morocco and then to Afghanistan.  In 2004, Mr. Mohamed was brought to the U.S. prison at Guantánamo Bay.  Then-Attorney

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 genocide” in Darfur, assisting the upcoming referendum on the status of South Sudan, and preventing terrorist groups from establishing themselves in Sudan. As part of the first objective, the policy lists as an imperative “sustained and broad” talks with both

By NSJ Staff Writer The Obama Administration is one step closer to achieving its goal of closing the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay by January 22, 2010.  On Tuesday, October 20, 2009, the Senate, by a vote of 79 to 19, passed the $44.1 billion budget for the Department of Homeland Security, which includes a provision that would permit the continued transfer of Guantanamo detainees to U.S. soil for prosecution.  Before transfer, the executive branch would have to conduct a risk assessment of each detainee and notify Congress of its transfer decision.  If cleared, the detainees would not be permitted

By NSJ Staff Writer Today’s Wall Street Journal features an op-ed from former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, in which he argues that alleged terrorist detainees should not be tried in US civilian courts. In particular, Mukasey criticizes Attorney General Holder’s August decision to try Ahmed Ghailani in New York rather than Guantanamo for the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. Ghailani was only captured in 2004 after the US invaded Afghanistan, but he had already been indicted in New York in 1998, providing Holder with an opportunity to test the trial of terrorist detainees in civilian court. As a

By Anthony Palermo and Lindsay Schare “DADT is government-sanctioned discrimination. There are thousands of closeted gay women and men serving in our armed forces today, and we disrespect their service by clinging on to this insulting law,” said Captain Joe Lopez, a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point and a current JD/MBA candidate at Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School. He served as a Captain in the U.S. Army for almost five years, during which he was a Black Hawk helicopter pilot and a platoon leader in Iraq, before being discharged under Don’t Ask Don’t