Authors

For better or worse, my expertise is what is legal in war. It may seem, for those of you who are unfamiliar with the laws of war, that it’s almost oxymoronic. Legal in war? But there is a thing called international humanitarian law. And “humanitarian” signals the centrality of protecting civilia..

Now that Henry Kissinger is dead, the time is ripe to reveal my personal relationship with him. In 1969 when I was eight years old and for several years thereafter, Kissinger was my role model. Why, you might wonder, would a child want to emulate Kissinger? My answer is a coming of age tale of p..

The War in Court traces the fight against US torture in the context of the “war on terror” and the complicated legacy it has left. My long-running interest in 

There was no fight against [US] torture, per se, before a trifecta of events in the spring and early summer of 2004 pulled back the curtain on interrogation and detention operations to reveal that the Bush administration had instituted a torture program. Before that, I was always on the lookout ..

As I was reading Lynn Welchman’s rich and unsparing new book, Al-Haq: A Global History of the First Palestinian Human Rights Organization (University of California Press, 2021), I was struck by a line on page 149 about one of the organization’s founders: “Back in the early eighties when..

Since 2010, I have been to Guantánamo 13 times. I can’t go as a scholar conducting research or a concerned citizen, so I go as a journalist. When I tell people that I am heading off to Guantánamo, responses tend to range from bafflement to curiosity. Highly educated and pol..

“The Mauritanian,” directed by Kevin Macdonald, is the first feature film to dramatize how the war on terror became a war in court.

In a highly unusual move considered illegal by many analysts, US President Donald Trump deployed federal forces to suppress demonstrations in Washington, DC, as well as Portland, Oregon. Insisting he possesses the authority to deploy such troops to any US city, critics have accused Trump of enga..

Being someone’s lawyer entails more than appearing in court and arguing their case passionately. It means being there for them in their daily life. Especially if they are sentenced to prison for political reasons. Given the miserable prison conditions, I could not just say, “Case closed” and dro..

On 10 September 2018 US National Security Advisor John Bolton gave an address at the conservative Federalist Society in Washington, DC, in which he denounced the International Criminal Court as “illegitimate” and announced measures the Trump administration will pursue to ensure it is unable to o..

Around 9 p.m. on 4 December 2017, two FBI documents were delivered to the defense teams representing the five Guantánamo detainees on trial in the military commissions for their alleged roles in the 11 September 2001, terrorist attacks. These documents, which the lawyers had been requesting sinc..

On 3 May 2018, the last item on the docket in the 9/11 case at Guantanamo was a defense motion to dismiss because of prejudicial comments President Donald Trump had made about military justice and the defendants. Whereas the proceedings in this military commission ca..

Donald J. Trump ran for president on a platform that included a pledge to bring back the torture technique of waterboarding and “a hell of a lot more.” On the campaign trail, Trump told his supporters: “We have to fight so viciously and violently because we’re dealing with violent people…We have..

On 17 January 2018, the Guantanamo military detention facility marks its sixteenth anniversary. At its peak, the prison population was 779. Today, forty-one people remain imprisoned, a few of whom are facing trial in the military commissions. These special tribunals were established by the Bush ..

“Who is that guy?” Barack Obama’s impressive oratorical skills rocketed him onto the national..