Vijay Padmanabhan is a law Professor at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University, who was formerly a senior lawyer for the United States Department of State. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]
Padmanabhan's duties at the State Department included negotiating for other countries to seek homes for former Guantanamo captives. [4] After leaving government service Padmanabhan called the Guantanamo military commissions "an abject failure". [8]
Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al Qosi is a Sudanese militant and paymaster for al-Qaeda. Qosi was held from January 2002 in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba. His Guantanamo Internment Serial Number is 54.
The 2005 Quran desecration controversy began when Newsweek's April 30, 2005, issue contained a report asserting that United States prison guards or interrogators had deliberately damaged a copy of the Quran. A week later, The New Yorker reported the words of Pakistani politician Imran Khan: "This is what the U.S. is doing—desecrating the Quran." This incident caused upset in parts of the Muslim world.
Salim Ahmed Salim Hamdan is a Yemeni man, captured during the invasion of Afghanistan, declared by the United States government to be an illegal enemy combatant and held as a detainee at Guantanamo Bay from 2002 to November 2008. He admits to being Osama bin Laden's personal driver and said he needed the money.
Hadj Boudella is a citizen of Bosnia who was wrongfully detained for over six years in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba.
Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif, also known as Allal Ab Aljallil Abd al Rahman, was a Yemeni citizen imprisoned at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, from January 2002 until his death in custody there, ruled a suicide.
The Guantanamo Bay detention camp is a United States military prison within the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, also referred to as Gitmo, on the coast of Guantánamo Bay in Cuba. As of May 2024, of the 779 people detained there since January 2002 when the military prison first opened after the September 11 attacks, 740 had been transferred elsewhere, 30 remained there, and nine had died while in custody.
Starting in 2002, the American government detained 22 Uyghurs in the Guantanamo Bay detainment camp. The last 3 Uyghur detainees, Yusef Abbas, Hajiakbar Abdulghupur and Saidullah Khali, were released from Guantanamo on December 29, 2013, and later transferred to Slovakia.
Abdul Rahman Ma'ath Thafir al Amri was a citizen of Saudi Arabia, held in extrajudicial detention as an enemy combatant in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba.
The United States Department of Defense (DOD) had stopped reporting Guantanamo suicide attempts in 2002. In mid-2002 the DoD changed the way they classified suicide attempts, and enumerated them under other acts of "self-injurious behavior".
The Center for Constitutional Rights has coordinated efforts by American lawyers to handle the habeas corpus, and other legal appeals, of several hundred of the Guantanamo detainees.
Susan Jean Crawford is an American lawyer, who was appointed the Convening Authority for the Guantanamo military commissions, on February 7, 2007. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates appointed Crawford to replace John D. Altenburg.
David H. Remes is an American lawyer.
Shayana D. Kadidal is an American lawyer and writer. Kadidal has worked at the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York City since 2001, and is senior managing attorney of the Guantánamo Global Justice Initiative there, coordinating legal representation for the captives held in extrajudicial detention in the United States' Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba. Previously a writer on patent, drug and obscenity law, since 2001 he has played a role in various notable human rights cases, including:
After the United States established the Guantanamo Bay detention camp at its naval base in Cuba, officials occasionally allowed Guantanamo captives' phone calls to their family. In 2008 the Joint Task Force Guantanamo that manages the camps developed rules regarding phone calls: all detainees who met certain conditions were allowed to make one call home per year.
He told the AP Friday that 'Guantanamo was one of the worst overreactions of the Bush administration.'
One of the lesser-known aspects of Guantánamo is the complicated negotiation the State Department conducts with countries around the world before releasing their nationals and sending them home. To understand more about the Hamdan repatriation and other cases, NEWSWEEK's Dan Ephron spoke with Vijay Padmanabhan, who served until August of this year as an attorney adviser in the State Department with responsibility for detainee issues. He now teaches at the Cardozo School of Law in New York.