Synopsis

In New York on April 12, 2005, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) proudly announced the launch of a new litigation and advocacy project dedicated to challenging rendition, arbitrary detention, and interrogation under torture committed as part of the United States’ global “war on terror.”  The Center for Constitutional Rights Guantanamo Global Justice Initiative will continue CCR’s groundbreaking work on behalf of individuals detained at Guantanamo Bay and will expand CCR’s defense of human rights and the rule of law to combat abuses of Executive power by the U.S. throughout the world.

Description and Status

One of the nation’s oldest human rights organizations, the Center for Constitutional Rights has been litigating on behalf of victims of torture and arbitrary detention for nearly forty years. CCR was first to represent detainees held indefinitely at Guantanamo and successfully argued their case before the Supreme Court in Rasul v Bush in 2004. Rasul v. Bush continued the legacy established by CCR in the groundbreaking case, Filartiga v. Peٌa-Irala, which established the right to sue for human rights violations occurring anywhere in the world under the then-obscure Alien Tort Claims Act. CCR has created the Global Justice Initiative to provide infrastructure and support to the hundreds of attorneys and organizations who have been working with the Center on these issues, to coordinate the handling of cases and assist in their litigation, and to centralize resources and expertise both for the legal community and the families and individuals directly affected.

Barbara Olshansky is moving from her post as Deputy Legal Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights to serve as Director Counsel of the Guantanamo Global Justice Initiative.  “The Center for Constitutional Rights' Guantanamo Global Justice Initiative of the Center for Constitutional Rights will bring together many different resources previously uncollected to focus on problems that have outraged people all over the world and alienated our country from the world community of nations. The Guantanamo Global Justice Initiative represents a concerted effort to work on the issues that will help bring our government back under the rule of law.  By focusing on abuses such as arbitrary detention, rendition, and torture, we hope to raise the public's awareness of how far this country has strayed from the democratic ideals of justice, and equality upon which it was founded.

Michael Ratner, President of the Center for Constitutional Rights, stated that “The Center for Constitutional Rights' Guantanamo Global Justice Initiative will concentrate CCR’s expertise to provide resources and assistance to individuals and groups challenging secret detention, torture, and other inhumane and impermissible practices.  We are achieving tremendous victories in Guantanamo as a result of the collaboration among CCR, hundreds of members of the private bar, and other human rights organizations.  As the Administration attempts to circumvent the law by ‘outsourcing’ its unlawful activities to other parts of the world, CCR and our colleagues will be there.”
In addition to its Guantanamo work, CCR is litigating several cases involving rendition and prisoner abuses.  These include Saleh v. Titan, a suit seeking to hold private contractors accountable for prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib and other detention facilities in Iraq, as well as Arar v. Ashcroft, the case challenging the unlawful rendition-to-torture of Canadian citizen Maher Arar by the United States to Syria. 

CCR's Guantanamo Global Justice Initiative will be staffed by Director Counsel Barbara Olshansky, and Counsel Tina Foster and Gitanjali Gutierrez.  CCR attorneys Jennie Green, Shane Kadidal, Maria LaHood, Rachel Meeropol, and Matthew Strugar will also be lending their expertise to the new project.

 GLOBAL JUSTICE INITIATIVE STAFF

Barbara Olshansky, Director Counsel, Guantanamo Global Justice Initiative
Barbara Olshansky served as Deputy Legal Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights prior to launching CCR’s Global Justice Initiative for which she serves as Director Counsel.  She was a key attorney in the successful Guantanamo Supreme Court case, Rasul v. Bush, and filed the first ever law suit to challenge the government’s practice of extraordinary rendition. Her docket at the Center for Constitutional Rights includes class action lawsuits concerning immigrants’ rights, prisoners’ rights, Native American rights, and, race discrimination in employment, education, the environment, and public health.  Ms. Olshansky graduated from Stanford Law School in 1985 where she wrote for the Stanford Law Review , and clerked for two years for Rose E. Bird, Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court.  She is the author of Secret Trials and Executions and Blinding Justice:  How Democracy Dies Behind Closed Doors, co-author of  Against War with Iraq and a contributor to America’s Disappeared: Secret Imprisonment, Detainees, and the “War on Terror.”  She has also written numerous articles on democratic institutions, immigrants’ rights, public access to radio programming and ownership, environmental racism, and book chapters on occupational and environmental exposures for the 2000 ABA treatise on environmental justice, and the evolution of the civil rights movement for the 2005 treatise “Awakening from the Dream: Civil Rights Under Siege and the New Struggle for Equal Justice.” 

Gitanjali S. Gutierrez, Counsel, Guantanamo Global Justice Initiative
Gitanjali S. Gutierrez will be joining the Center for Constitutional Rights Guantanamo Global Justice Initiative from her current position as a Gibbons Fellow in Public Interest & Constitutional Law at the law firm of Gibbons, Del Deo, Dolan, Griffinger & Vecchione. As a Gibbons Fellow, Ms. Gutierrez worked as cooperating-counsel with CCR on Rasul v. Bush in the United States Supreme Court.  Following CCR's victory in Rasul, she represented two British citizens detained in Guantanamo and conducted the first habeas counsel visit to Guantanamo in September 2003.  Along with attorneys from the Center for Constitutional Rights, Ms. Gutierrez assisted with the recruitment, training, and coordination of over 250 attorneys providing habeas representation to 150 prisoners in Guantanamo.  Ms. Gutierrez is a graduate of Cornell Law School, where she was Managing Editor of the Cornell Law Review, and clerked for the Honorable Guido Calabresi, United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.

Tina Foster, Counsel, Guantanamo Global Justice Initiative
Tina Foster formally joined CCR’s Guantanamo Global Justice Initiative as Counsel earlier this month. In her previous position as Human Rights Fellow at CCR, she worked primarily on CCR’s litigation on behalf of Guantanamo detainees.  Prior to joining CCR, she was an Associate at Clifford Chance US LLP in New York, where she worked on complex securities litigation and white collar criminal defense.  While at the firm, she did substantial pro bono work on behalf of Clifford Chance and CCR’s clients in Khalid v. Bush, a habeas corpus petition brought on behalf of several French citizens – now repatriated –who were being held at Guantanamo.  Ms. Foster is a graduate of Cornell Law School, where she was an editor of the Cornell International Law Journal and President of the Cornell Law Students Association.  Upon graduation, she served as law clerk to the Honorable Delissa A. Ridgway at the United States Court of International Trade. 

 http://www.ccr-ny.org/v2/reports/report.asp?ObjID=YtYTKb2sZZ&Content=563