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.
 
  • 1
  • 2
  • Next Page
03/25/2013
No-Fly List

The Constitution Applies When the Government Bans Americans From the Skies

By Nusrat Choudhury, Staff Attorney, ACLU National Security Project & Hina Shamsi, Director, ACLU National Security Project at 2:58pm

The government does not have the unchecked authority to place individuals on a secret blacklist without providing them any meaningful...

Read More»
04/11/2013
Guantánamo Hunger Strike

Urgent White House Action Needed to Avert Guantánamo Human Rights Crisis

By Hina Shamsi, Director, ACLU National Security Project & Jamil Dakwar, Director, ACLU Human Rights Program at 10:37am

There is a serious human rights crisis brewing at the prison at Guantánamo Bay. A hunger strike that began in early February has spread...

Read More»
11/14/2007

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
Read More»
10/15/2012
Guantánamo Dispatch

At Guantánamo Today: ACLU Asks Judge Not to Censor Torture Testimony

By Hina Shamsi, Director, ACLU National Security Project at 9:53am

I’m in Guantánamo today, expecting to argue the ACLU’s constitutional challenge to the censorship of torture in the military commissions this afternoon or tomorrow. 

The Guantánamo military commissions were created in part to hide the government’s illegal torture program while permitting the use of information obtained through torture. Because of improvements in 2009 in the law governing the commissions, it’s harder (though not impossible) for coerced evidence to be used in the proceedings. But the government still wants to hide from the public what it did to prisoners in CIA and military custody.

Read More»
06/13/2011

DHS Should Focus on Criminal Activity, Not Beliefs

By Hina Shamsi, Director, ACLU National Security Project & Nusrat Choudhury, Staff Attorney, ACLU National Security Project at 4:34pm

Last week, The Washington Post reported that for the last two years, the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) intelligence gathering and analysis unit devoted to rightwing groups and militias has been "effectively eviscerated," while reports on so-called Islamic extremism "got through without any major problems."

Read More»
11/29/2010

Wikileaks Doc: U.S. Tried to Stop Accountability Abroad

By Hina Shamsi, Director, ACLU National Security Project at 6:50pm

We’re still reviewing the most recent mass of Wikileaks documents, but already they reveal improper government conduct: Bush administration officials pressured Germany not to prosecute CIA officers responsible for the kidnapping, extraordinary rendition and torture of German national Khaled El-Masri, an ACLU client. Mr. El-Masri was kidnapped from Macedonia in 2003, taken to a secret CIA-run prison in Afghanistan where he was held for several months and tortured before being released on a hillside in Albania.

Read More»
12/07/2010

Targeted Killing: "A Unique and Extraordinary Case"

By Hina Shamsi, Director, ACLU National Security Project at 4:55pm

"A unique and extraordinary case" is how a federal judge described our lawsuit, with the Center for Constitutional Rights, challenging the Obama administration's targeted killing policy.

We brought the case on behalf of Nasser Al-Aulaqi, whose U.S. citizen son, Anwar Al-Aulaqi, has been put on a secret hit list by the government. In a decision issued today, the judge emphasized that the case raises critically important questions, including whether "the Executive [can] order the assassination of a U.S. citizen without first affording him any form of judicial process whatsoever, based on the mere assertion that he is a dangerous member of a terrorist organization." The court nevertheless dismissed the case on the basis of "standing" — ruling that our client does not have the right to represent the interests of his son — and on the grounds that the case raises "political questions" that are not subject to judicial review. He did not rule on the merits of the case.

Read More»
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,

Read More»
09/24/2008

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).

Read More»
09/23/2008

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.

Read More»
  • 1
  • 2
  • Next Page
Statistics image