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Lisa Hajjar
US Detention Post-9/11: Birth of a Debacle (Part 1 of 5 Part Series)
![[First prisoners arrive at Guantanamo on 11 January 2002. Image from Gallo/Getty]](/content_images/3/sm_birthofadebacle.jpg "[First prisoners arrive at Guantanamo on 11 January 2002. Image from Gallo/Getty]")
Days after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, the Bush administration started making decisions that led to the official authorization of torture tactics, indefinite incommunicado detention and the denial of habeas corpus for people who would be detained at Guantánamo, Bagram, or “black sites” (secret prisons) run by the CIA, kidnappings, forced disappearances and extraordinary rendition to foreign countries to exploit their torturing services. While some of ...
Keep Reading »The Legal Campaign Against American Torture
Torture, like genocide and crimes against humanity, is a gross crime under international law. The right not to be tortured is constituted through the prohibition of practices that purposefully cause harm (physical and/or psychological) to persons who are in custody but have not been found guilty of a crime. (The international legal definition excludes lawful punishments regardless of their brutality.) The right not to be tortured is exceptionally strong, at least in ...
Keep Reading »Following the Torture Trail through the Arab Spring: First Speculations
![[Egyptian protester stenciling image of Khaled Said on Egyptian Ministry of Interior. Image from Hossam El-Hamalawy]](/content_images/3/sm_KhaledSaidstensil.jpg "[Egyptian protester stenciling image of Khaled Said on Egyptian Ministry of Interior. Image from Hossam El-Hamalawy]")
Torture and anti-torture are everywhere. Are the revolutions sweeping through the Arab world, and being confronted with violent counter-revolutions, in part a battle over the use of torture? It is, perhaps, too early to know how significant or central torture is to the protest movements that have disposed of the torture-prone regimes in Tunisia and Egypt, and the ongoing battles against authoritarians in Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, not to mention the Palestinian Authority, Saudi ...
Keep Reading »Update from Islamophoberia
![[Glenn Beck. Image from The Daily Awesome]](/content_images/3/sm_GlennBeck_thedailyawesome.jpg "[Glenn Beck. Image from The Daily Awesome]")
Islamophoberia, a place millions of Americans call home, will get a lot colder come 2012 because the main gasbag is being shut down in December. The decision of Fox News to cancel The Glenn Beck Show will leave the idiosphere scrambling for a new source of fuel to motor anti-Muslim ranting. Sure, there are alternative sources, like bacon-bookmarked Qur’an burning proponent Ann Barnhardt, who admonished her blog readers: “Go out, buy a Koran, video yourself burning it and ...
Keep Reading »What Emergency? The ADL, Academic Freedom, Lawfare, and Palestine
![[Palestinian boy crawling through the wall. Image by Baz Ratner/Reuters]](/content_images/3/sm_wall-openingBazRatnerReuters.jpg "[Palestinian boy crawling through the wall. Image by Baz Ratner/Reuters]")
On the evening of March 24, the board of directors of University of California – Hastings College of the Law held an emergency meeting that lasted until midnight. The putative emergency was a two-day conference titled “Litigating Palestine” scheduled to start at 3 pm the following day. What resulted was the following statement: BE IT RESOLVED by the Board of Directors…in its EMERGENCY CLOSED SESSION that it is in agreement that the College should take all steps ...
Keep Reading »And the Late Night Comedians Shall Lead Us
![[Stephen Colbert and John Stewart. Image from Pulse2.com]](/content_images/3/sm_colbert-stewart.jpg "[Stephen Colbert and John Stewart. Image from Pulse2.com]")
For those of you lucky readers who are able to access Al Jazeera or Al Arabiya on your televisions, you can stop reading now. This is for those of us, in the US, who either have to sleep with our laptops streaming the “real” news or who, for fear that our batteries may die, have to set our cell phone alarm clocks to wake up at 3:00 a.m. to watch reporting of a firefight in Benghazi or the de-powerification of another corrupt politician in (pick one) Palestine, Yemen, ...
Keep Reading »Egypt's New Vice President is Washington's Proxy Torturer [Counterpoint Interview]
![[Image from unknown archive]](/content_images/3/sm_torture.jpg "[Image from unknown archive]")
After almost three weeks of intense street protests in Egypt demanding the removal of President Hosni Mubarak from power, more than 300 people were reported to have died in clashes between demonstrators, police and government supporters. Despite concessions such as Mubarak's pledge to not run in the presidential election scheduled for September and constitutional reform, the number of protesters in Tahrir Square in central Cairo swelled on Feb. 8. On that day, the crowd gave ...
Keep Reading »The "Anderson Cooper Effect" on American TV Reporting from Cairo (Updated Feb 3)
![[Anderson Cooper in Cairo. Image from Huffington Post]](/content_images/3/sm_AndersonCooper.jpg "[Anderson Cooper in Cairo. Image from Huffington Post]")
UPDATE BELOW. On February 2, CNN journalist Anderson Cooper was one of many victims of violence by Mubarakoids who turned Tahrir Square into a battle zone. Cooper was beaten by thugs, as were other members of his crew. A BBC crew was arrested, blindfolded and taken into custody for several hours before being released. MSNBC’s Richard Engel and his NBC colleague Brian Williams reported throughout the night from a vantage point where they could see, film and comment on the ...
Keep Reading »Omar Suleiman, the CIA's Man in Cairo and Egypt's Torturer-in-Chief
![[Omar Suleiman speaking to world leaders. Image from LIFE]](/content_images/3/sm_Suleiman_LIFE.jpg "[Omar Suleiman speaking to world leaders. Image from LIFE]")
On January 29, Omar Suleiman, Egypt’s top spy chief, was annointed vice president by the tottering dictator, Hosni Mubarak. By appointing Suleiman, part of a shake-up of the cabinet in a (futile?) attempt to appease the masses of protesters and retain his own grip on the presidency, Mubarak has once again shown his knack for devilish shrewdness. Suleiman has long been favored by the US government for his ardent anti-Islamism and willingness to talk and act tough about ...
Keep Reading »The Year in Torture
![[Image from Huffingtonpost.com]](/content_images/3/sm_ObamaTorture.jpg "[Image from Huffingtonpost.com]")
As 2010 winds to an end, it is time to reflect on the year in torture. Let’s review, shall we? January marked the end of Barack Obama’s first year in office; while the president may still be smoking cigarettes, he did keep his 2009 New Year’s “looking forward, not backward” resolution not to prosecute any US officials for the crime of torture. Unaccountability for all, and a happy new year! What about his promise (enshrined in a 2009 executive order) to end torture? ...
Keep Reading »Is There A Pill For This?
![[Image from OliviaB]](/content_images/3/sm_IsThereaPillforThis_image.jpg "[Image from OliviaB]")
In my first Jadaliyya post, I described my “great and terrible obsession” with torture. Generally speaking, I love my obsession; thinking and talking about torture in an age of torture seems not only rational and reasonable but politically responsible. I’d bet my torture-related information command center (i.e., the part of my brain that stores, categorizes and operationalizes torture data) would be a source of great riches if there was a Jeopardy-Torture game ...
Keep Reading »Bio
Lisa Hajjar teaches sociology at the University of California – Santa Barbara. Her research and writing focus on law and legality, war and conflict, human rights, and torture. She is the author of Courting Conflict: The Israeli Military Court System in the West Bank and Gaza (University of California Press, 2005). In addition to being a Co-Editor at Jadaliyya, she serves on the editorial committees of Middle East Report and Journal of Palestine Studies. She is currently working on a book about anti-torture lawyering in the United States.
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