Tina Monshipour Foster is an Iranian-American lawyer and director of the International Justice Network. [1] [2]
Tina Monshipour Foster is an Iranian-American lawyer and director of the International Justice Network. [1] [2]
Prior to working in the field of human rights, Foster worked at Clifford Chance LLP in New York City. She later worked for the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) on Guantanamo Bay cases and is one of the plaintiffs in CCR v. Bush, filed on July 9, 2007. [3] Four other individuals filed this suit. Foster and her colleagues sued the US government objecting to the government's interception of their mail, email and phone calls. In 2006 Foster started International Justice Network (IJNetwork) placing focus on detainees held without charge, incommunicado in Bagram Prison in Afghanistan.
Foster submitted a writ of habeas corpus Ruzatullah v. Robert Gates -- 06-CV-01707 on behalf of Ruzatullah a captive held in the Bagram Theater internment facility. [4]
The Washington Post reported on June 29, 2008 on comments Foster made about Jawed Ahmad's detention in Bagram. [5]
It provides a convenient place to hold people who you might not want the world to know you are holding.
On July 20, 2008, Reuters reported the outrage Human Rights organizations are expressing over the seizing of journalists in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the "War on Terror". Foster was quoted as saying "there were no charges against Jawed, who was wounded while serving with U.S. Special Forces. He has not been accused of any crime either under U.S. law, Afghan law or international law," adding that "Jawed, like other detainees held by U.S., was regarded by Washington as an "enemy combatant". [6] Foster, executive director for International Justice Network, said there were no charges against Jawed, who was wounded while serving with U.S. Special Forces.
On September 12, 2009 it was widely reported that unnamed officials told Eric Schmitt of the New York Times that the Obama administration was going to introduce new procedures that would allow the captives held in Bagram, and elsewhere in Afghanistan, to have their detention reviewed. [7] [8] Josh Gerstein, of Politico, reported that Foster, who represents four Bagram captives, was critical of the new rules:
These sound almost exactly like the rules the Bush Administration crafted for Guanatmamo that were struck down by the Supreme Court or at least found to be an inadequate substitute for judicial review. They're adopting this thing that [former Vice President] Cheney and his lot dreamt up out of whole cloth. To adopt Gitmo-like procedures seems to me like sliding in the wrong direction.
On December 15, 2014, the Washington Post published an op-ed by Foster after the United States Senate Intelligence Committee published a 600-page unclassified summary of its classified report on the CIA's use of torture. [9] Foster described how the report devoted a whole section to the CIA's torture of one of her clients, Redha al-Najar. She listed all the torture techniques the CIA used on him, and asserted that the CIA tortured him for nearly 700 days.
Mustafa Ahmed Adam al-Hawsawi is a Saudi Arabian citizen. He is alleged to have acted as a key financial facilitator for the September 11 attacks in the United States.
The Salt Pit and Cobalt were the code names of an isolated clandestine CIA black site prison and interrogation center outside Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. It was located north of Kabul and was the location of a brick factory prior to the Afghanistan War. The CIA adapted it for extrajudicial detention.
Extrajudicial prisoners of the United States, in the context of the early twenty-first century War on Terrorism, refers to foreign nationals the United States detains outside of the legal process required within United States legal jurisdiction. In this context, the U.S. government is maintaining torture centers, called black sites, operated by both known and secret intelligence agencies. Such black sites were later confirmed by reports from journalists, investigations, and from men who had been imprisoned and tortured there, and later released after being tortured until the CIA was comfortable they had done nothing wrong, and had nothing to hide.
Pul-e-Charkhi Prison, also known as the Afghan National Detention Facility, is a maximum security prison located next to the Ahmad Shah Baba Mina neighborhood in the eastern part of Kabul, Afghanistan. It has the capacity to house between 5,000 and 14,000 inmates, but as of February 2023 it only has between 2,000 and 2,500 inmates, most of whom have been arrested and convicted within the jurisdiction of Kabul Province. It is considered the country's largest prison.
Mohammed Ahmad Ghulam Rabbani is a citizen of Pakistan who was extrajudicially detained by the United States military at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba from 2004 to 2023. He was never charged with a crime, was never tried, and was a subject of enhanced interrogation techniques.
Sharqawi Abdu Ali al-Hajj, also known as Riyadh the Facilitator, is a Yemeni alleged Al-Qaeda associate who is currently being held in the United States' Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba.
"Enhanced interrogation techniques" or "enhanced interrogation" was a program of systematic torture of detainees by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and various components of the U.S. Armed Forces at remote sites around the world—including Bagram, Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and Bucharest—authorized by officials of the George W. Bush administration. Methods used included beating, binding in contorted stress positions, hooding, subjection to deafening noise, sleep disruption, sleep deprivation to the point of hallucination, deprivation of food, drink, and medical care for wounds, as well as waterboarding, walling, sexual humiliation, rape, sexual assault, subjection to extreme heat or extreme cold, and confinement in small coffin-like boxes. A Guantanamo inmate's drawings of some of these tortures, to which he himself was subjected, were published in The New York Times. Some of these techniques fall under the category known as "white torture". Several detainees endured medically unnecessary "rectal rehydration", "rectal fluid resuscitation", and "rectal feeding". In addition to brutalizing detainees, there were threats to their families such as threats to harm children, and threats to sexually abuse or to cut the throat of detainees' mothers.
The Parwan Detention Facility is Afghanistan's main military prison. Situated next to the Bagram Air Base in the Parwan Province of Afghanistan, the prison was built by the U.S. during the George W. Bush administration. The Parwan Detention Facility, which housed foreign and local combatants, was maintained by the Afghan National Army.
Ameen Mohammad Albakri is held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Bagram Theater Internment Facility.
Mohamed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah is a citizen of Yemen who is reported to have been a subject of the United States' controversial extraordinary rendition program. The American Civil Liberties Union states that he was apprehended by the Jordanian General Intelligence Department and tortured and interrogated for days, in Jordan, where he was: "turned over to agents who beat, kicked, diapered, hooded and handcuffed him before secretly transporting him to the U.S. Air Force base in Bagram, Afghanistan." They report that Bashmillah was held in extrajudicial detention in the United States' Bagram Theater Internment Facility, and the CIA network of black sites.
Haji Rohullah is a citizen of Afghanistan held in the United States' Bagram Theater detention facility, in Afghanistan. Rohullah worked as a driver before being seized at his farm in Jalalabad in August 2006.
Ruzatullah is a citizen of Afghanistan who was held in United States' custody in its Bagram Theater Internment Facility, in Afghanistan.
Jawed Ahmad (Jojo) was an Afghan reporter working for Canadian media outlet CTV who was arrested by American troops and declared an enemy combatant, while working with NATO at Kandahar Airport on October 26, 2007.
George Brent Mickum IV is an American lawyer and currently the General Counsel of ERP Compliant Fuels, LLC. Mickum represented three British residents, Bisher Al Rawi, Jamil El Banna, and Martin Mubanga in El Banna v. Bush. The three were captured in Africa, held first in CIA custody, then transported to the Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba.
El Mashad v. Bush is a writ of habeas corpus filed on behalf of several Guantanamo detainees, including Sherif el-Mashad, Adel Fattouh Aly Ahmed Algazzar and Alladeen.
Rafiq Bin Bashir Bin Jalud al Hami is a citizen of Tunisia, who was formerly held for over seven years without charge or trial in the United States's Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba. His Guantanamo Internment Serial Number was 892. The Department of Defense reports that he was born on 14 March 1969, in Tunisia.
Redha al-Najar is a citizen of Tunisia who was held in US custody in the Bagram Theater Internment Facility. He is notable for being one of a very small number of the detainees held in Bagram to have had a writ of habeas corpus submitted on his behalf.
On January 16, 2010, the United States Department of Defense complied with a court order and made public a heavily redacted list of the detainees held in the Bagram Theater Internment Facility. Detainees were initially held in primitive, temporary quarters, in what was originally called the Bagram Collection Point, from late 2001. Detainees were later moved to an indoor detention center until late 2009, when newly constructed facilities were opened.
Lutfi al-Arabi al-Gharisi is a citizen of Tunisia held in extrajudicial detention by the United States.
CIA black sites refer to the black sites that are controlled by the CIA and used by the U.S. government in its War on Terror to detain enemy combatants.
He has not been accused of any crime either under U.S. law, Afghan law or international law," she said, adding that Jawed, like other detainees held by U.S., was regarded by Washington as an "enemy combatant".
An entire section of the U.S. Senate intelligence committee's executive summary of the CIA torture report focuses on the sadistic abuse of one of my clients. The excerpt, titled "CIA Headquarters Recommends That Untrained Interrogators in Country . . . Use the CIA's Enhanced Interrogation Techniques on" Redha al-Najar, contains detailed descriptions of the specific methods of torture my client was subjected to while in CIA custody.