Current Analysis

"Journalists Are the Eyes of the World" on Guantánamo

Lisa Hajjar’s spring lecture tour, entitled “Let’s Go to Guantánamo! An On-the-Ground Perspective on the Military Commissions,” explores secret renditions, black sites, torture, suppression of evidence, clandestineness and what it means to provide “legal counsel” to detainees in the post-September 1

Sheila Carapico • 2 min read

Current Analysis

Zero Dark Thirty's Losing Premise

Zero Dark Thirty is a movie the CIA wants you to see. It tells a tale of the search for Osama bin Laden wherein the key lead comes from a man softened up by waterboarding, sleep deprivation, confinement in a coffin-like box and other forms of pain and humiliation. It shows CIA agents extracting sub

Chris Toensing • 2 min read

Current Analysis

Khaled el-Masri and Empire's Oblivion

Two of today’s headlines together provide a good example of the work of imperial forgetting. On the front page of the New York Times, a story [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/13/us/zero-dark-thirty-torture-scenes-reopen-debate.html?hpw&pagewanted=all&_r=1&] about the depiction of torture in the forth

Darryl Li • 6 min read

MER Article

Bagram, Obama's Gitmo

On President Barack Obama’s second day in office, one of the three executive orders he signed was a commitment to close the detention facility on the naval base at Guantánamo Bay as soon as possible but no later than one year thence. An inter-agency task force headed by White House counsel Greg Crai

Lisa Hajjar • 28 min read

MER Article

Sulayman the Malevolent

‘Umar Sulayman, the director of Egyptian military intelligence from 1993 until his appointment as vice president in late January 2011, has had a close relationship with the United States for decades. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reportedly favored him to lead an “orderly, peaceful transition” away from ex-President Husni Mubarak.

Katherine Hawkins • 8 min read

Current Analysis

Grave Injustice

On June 14, the Supreme Court buried the prospect of justice for Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen of Syrian origin who was “extraordinarily rendered” by the United States (via Jordan) to Syria in 2002. Arar was suing the US officials who authorized his secret transfer, without charge, to a country inf

Lisa Hajjar • 20 min read

MER Article

On Torture

BOOKS REVIEWED: Darius Rejali, Torture and Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007). Marnia Lazreg, Torture and the Twilight of Empire: From Algiers to Baghdad (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008).

Laleh Khalili • 18 min read

Current Analysis

Israel's Military Court System Is the Model to Avoid

Should the United States, seeking to recalibrate the balance between security and liberty in the “war on terror,” emulate Israel in its treatment of Palestinian detainees? That is the position that Guantanamo detainee lawyers Avi Stadler and John Chandler of Atlanta, and some others, have advocated

Lisa Hajjar • 3 min read

Current Analysis

Torture and the Lawless “New Paradigm”

The president who campaigned on a pledge to “restore honor and dignity to the White House” has now been compelled to declaim: “We abide by the law of the United States, and we do not torture.” In the closing months of 2005, President George W. Bush has been forced to repeat this undignified denial s

Lisa Hajjar • 14 min read

Current Analysis

Banning Torture Affirms America's Humanity

Torture, as President George W. Bush clearly knows, is against the law. The administration keeps reasserting this point because the US torture saga keeps deepening. Under fire for the “enhanced interrogation techniques” employed in secret CIA jails and at Guantánamo Bay, Bush rejoined that the US f

Lisa Hajjar • 2 min read

Current Analysis

Morocco’s Justice and Reconciliation Commission

From independence in 1956 through the 1990s, the Moroccan state sent thousands of dissidents and political opponents to prison. During these decades, known to Moroccans as the “black years,” the act of expressing an “unauthorized opinion” could earn years of arbitrary detention. Political opponents of King Hassan II’s regime,

Susan Slyomovics • 10 min read

Current Analysis

Torture and the Future

There is a popular belief that Western history constitutes a progressive move from more to less torture. Iron maidens and racks are now museum exhibits, crucifixions are sectarian iconography and scientific experimentation on twins is History Channel infotainment. This narrative of progress deftly b

Lisa Hajjar • 24 min read