Anant Raut

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Anant Raut is an American lawyer. He was formerly an associate at Weil, Gotshal & Manges. He was also formerly Counsel to the Committee on the Judiciary of the U.S. House of Representatives. He was formerly an attorney at Pepper Hamilton LLP in Washington, DC. He is currently a Counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

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Anant Raut is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School. After working for two years litigating antitrust cases at the Federal Trade Commission, he joined Weil, Gotshal & Manges. He has provided habeas representation to 5 Saudi Arabian detainees held at Guantanamo Bay detention camp, [1] including two of the 16 Saudis released from Guantanamo in early September 2007: Abdullah Al Anazi, and Abdul Aziz Sad Al Owshan. [2] Another one of his clients, Adel al Nusairi, was featured in an April 22, 2008 story in The Washington Post [3] as one of a number of detainees who were allegedly drugged with unknown substances prior to being interrogated. As stated in the article, during one such interrogation in which a groggy Mr. al Nusairi was forcibly kept awake in an ice-cold room, eventually signing a false confession professing involvement in al Qaeda. The article further stated that a 2003 Department of Justice memo [4] by John C. Yoo explicitly condoned the use of drugs on detainees.

Mr. Raut and fellow habeas attorney Candace Gorman were two of the first people to dispute the administration's charge that approximately 30 former Guantanamo detainees had returned to the battlefield, a claim later substantiated [5] by researchers at Seton Hall Law School.

In response to statements by the Department of Defense that it only intended to charge between 60 and 80 of the prisoners being held in Guantanamo Bay, Mr. Raut prepared a series of slides in June 2007 showing the high cost of continuing to hold the remaining 300. [6]

In late 2007, Mr. Raut joined the Al Odah v. United States trial team, one of the cases decided as part of the Supreme Court's decision in Boumediene v. Bush , decided on June 12, 2008.

Mr. Raut is a recipient of the 2007 National Legal Aid & Defender Association Beacon of Justice Award and the 2007 Southern Center for Human Rights Frederick Douglass Human Rights Award.

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References

  1. ↑ 'About the author', http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/01/17/guantanamo/
  2. ↑ Andy Worthington (2007-09-11). "Guantanamo: The Stories of the 16 Saudis just released". The Huffington Post . Retrieved 2009-03-14.
  3. ↑ Joby Warrick, "Detainees Allege Being Drugged, Questioned", The Washington Post , April 22, 2008
  4. ↑ Memorandum for William J. Haynes II, "Re: Military Interrogation of Alien Unlawful Enemy Combatants Held Outside the United States" (March 14, 2003)]
  5. ↑ Mark Denbeaux et al., "Justice Scalia, the Department of Defense, and the Perpetuation of an Urban Legend: The Truth About Recidivism of Released Guantanamo Detainees" (June 2008)
  6. ↑ The Guantanamo Blog, "What About the Other 300+?"
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