Blog of Rights

Hina
Shamsi
Hina Shamsi is the Director of the ACLU’s National Security Project, which is dedicated to ensuring that U.S. national security policies and practices are consistent with the Constitution, civil liberties, and human rights. She has litigated cases upholding the freedoms of speech and association, and challenging targeted killing, torture, unlawful detention, and post-9/11 discrimination against racial and religious minorities.
 
Her work includes a focus on the intersection of national security and counterterrorism policies with international human rights and humanitarian law. She previously worked as a Staff Attorney in the National Security Project and was the Acting Director of Human Rights First's Law & Security Program. She also served as Senior Advisor to the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions.
 
Hina appears regularly in the media and has been quoted as a national security expert by numerous outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Associated Press, and Reuters, and has appeared on MSNBC, Fox News, CNN, NPR, ABC News, and the BBC. She is the author and coauthor of publications on targeted killing, torture, and extraordinary rendition, and has monitored and reported on the military commissions at Guantánamo Bay. She is also a lecturer-in-law at Columbia Law School, where she teaches a course in international human rights. Hina is a graduate of Mount Holyoke College and Northwestern University School of Law.
 
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High-Stakes Absurdity in Guantánamo

By Hina Shamsi, Director, ACLU National Security Project at 12:30pm
(Originally posted on Daily Kos.)

When the 9/11 defendants first emerged from years of torture and detention in secret CIA custody, it was for arraignment in a Guantanamo courtroom. The government immediately made it clear that any public mention of the prisoners' abuse was off limits. The audio feed to the spectators' room (where we observers and the media sit behind soundproof glass) was cut off any time a defendant mentioned being tortured. In today's hearing, though, it was perfectly acceptable for Khalid Shaikh Mohammed to mention he was waterboarded (the government apparently realized it's futile to censor what the head of the CIA himself admits).

Almost Back to Square One

By Hina Shamsi, Director, ACLU National Security Project at 2:29pm

Even as the proceedings in the 9/11 defendants' cases were stalled, the chief military commissions prosecutor, Col. Lawrence Morris, was telling journalists yesterday he wants trials in five other cases to be finished before the next president takes office. In two of Morris' flagship cases, the United States has the distinction of being the first nation in modern times to prosecute child soldiers for war crimes: Omar Khadr was 15 when he was picked up, and Mohammad Jawad was about 16. Each was severely abused in U.S. custody and Jawad appears to have been subjected to deliberate and systematic cruelty; he has tried to commit suicide. The third case on Morris' list is against Ahmed al-Darbi, who has said he was subjected to torture at the U.S. detention center at Bagram, in Afghanistan, during the time that some of the worst abuses there took place. In the remaining cases, those of Ibrahim al-Qosi and Ali Hamza Ahmed al-Bahlul, it doesn't look like the accused will participate in the trial; each defendant has said he will boycott the proceedings because he thinks the system is stacked against him.

Raise the Red Flags

By Hina Shamsi, Director, ACLU National Security Project at 5:03pm
The lead article in today's New York Times raises all sorts of red flags about the likelihood of prisoner abuse in U.S. custody in Afghanistan. The article describes a Red Cross complaint about the treatment of prisoners at the United States' Bagram military base, just outside Kabul, as well as t

The First and Fifth Amendments are Not Optional

By Hina Shamsi, Director, ACLU National Security Project at 11:51am
Ponder this: A U.S. citizen joins an organization to advance political goals. Some in the group engage in illegal activity but the citizen's own goals and activities are legitimate. The government blacklists the organization and says that working for it or taking a leadership role in it is a crime. May the government prosecute the citizen for her activities even though
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