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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08/02/2012
Military Commissions

Guantánamo Military Judge Grants ACLU’s Request to Argue Against Censorship of 9/11 Defendants’ Testimony

By Hina Shamsi, Director, ACLU National Security Project at 6:18pm

In an order made public today, a military commissions judge at Guantánamo Bay announced that he will hear oral argument on the ACLU’s challenge to censorship of torture at the trial of the 9/11 defendants.

In May, we filed a motion asking the military commission to deny the government’s request to suppress statements by the defendants about their treatment while in U.S. custody, including torture and other abuse.  As we said in our motion,

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09/30/2008

Honor Bound

By Hina Shamsi, Director, ACLU National Security Project at 1:11pm

(Originally posted on Daily Kos.)

It's a safe bet that future generations will judge the U.S. military's detention, treatment and trial of prisoners at Guantánamo harshly, as one of the lowest points in this country's history. But the full story has to include accounts not just of leaders who betrayed this country's most fundamental values, but also of the lower-ranking military personnel who stood up to confront their own government. During the military commissions hearings last week, military defense lawyers and a prosecutor reminded us, again, that there are men and women of courage and honor who are willing to risk their careers and livelihood to speak out against injustice.

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09/25/2008

Prosecutors Desert a Sinking Ship

By Hina Shamsi, Director, ACLU National Security Project at 12:37pm

(Originally posted on Daily Kos.)

As previously noted, we learned late yesterday that Army Lieutenant Colonel Darrel Vandeveld, the lead prosecutor in the military commissions case against Mohammed Jawad, has resigned in protest because the prosecution team was withholding exculpatory evidence from the defense. Jawad was a teenager when he was captured in Afghanistan and he’s one of the two youngest prisoners at Guantanamo.

The reason for the prosecutor’s resignation is only the latest in a series of deeply disturbing revelations in Jawad’s case. In July, we learned that Jawad was subjected to the euphemistically-named “frequent flyer” program, in which detainees at Guantanamo were subjected to sleep deprivation for days on end as punishment for failing to cooperate with their jailors or for misbehaving. Jawad’s treatment, which his lawyers say is chronicled in prison logs, appears to have been particularly harrowing. In May 2004, a few months after Jawad tried to hang himself in his cell, prison officials deprived him of sleep for two weeks by moving him 112 times in 14 days – and they did so after the government claims it officially discontinued the “program.”

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01/07/2008

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
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