Event Notice
November 15, 2011
“Indefinite Detention in the Obama Era”
A Panel Discussion with Gitanjali Gutierrez and P. Sabin Willett
Moderated by Deborah Popowski, Lecturer on Law & Clinical Instructor, Harvard Law School
12:00- 1:00 pm
Griswold 110
Please join us for a discussion of the legal, political, and human consequences of the current administration’s detention policies.
Gitanjali S. Gutierrez was the first habeas attorney to visit the U.S. Naval Prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. She was formerly with the Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York-based human rights organization that has been litigating challenges to the Executive’s post-9/11 anti-terrorism policies. Ms. Gutierrez was a member of the legal team representing detainees held in Guantánamo in U.S. Supreme Court cases Rasul v. Bush (2004) and Boumediene v. Bush (2008). She is currently counsel for Mohammed al Qahtani, a Saudi citizen still detained in Guantánamo, who was subjected to the “first special interrogation plan,” a regime of torture and inhuman treatment authorized by former U.S. Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld.
P. Sabin Willett, JD ’83, is a partner at Bingham McCutchen and has been active in the firm’s representation of Guantánamo detainees since 2005. He led the team that won landmark victories, including the first-ever review of a Guantánamo prisoner’s case under the Detainee Treatment Act in Parhat v. Gates, and the first-ever habeas judgment, ordering prisoners’ immediate release into the United States in Kiyemba v. Bush.
Co- sponsored by the Harvard Law Student Advocates for Human Rights, Harvard Human Rights Journal, National Lawyers’ Guild-HLS Chapter.