Weaving a Net of Accountability

Conference Speakers

Scott Horton
Scott Horton is a Contributing Editor of Harper's Magazine and writes “No Comment” for this website.A New York attorney known for his work in emerging markets and international law, especially human rights law and the law of armed conflict, Horton lectures at Columbia Law School. A life-long human rights advocate, Horton served as counsel to Andrei Sakharov and Elena Bonner, among other activists in the former Soviet Union. He is a co-founder of the American University in Central Asia, and has been involved in some of the most significant foreign investment projects in the Central Eurasian region. Horton recently led a number of studies of abuse issues associated with the conduct of the war on terror for the New York City Bar Association, where he has chaired several committees, including, most recently, the Committee on International Law. He is also a member of the board of the National Institute of Military Justice, the Andrei Sakharov Foundation, the EurasiaGroup and the American Branch of the International Law Association.
Keynote address, The Unresolved Legacy of Guantanamo: Bisher al-Rawi
Al-Rawi survived extraordinary rendition in 2002 from the Gambia to Afghanistan, where he was imprisoned, interrogated and tortured at two CIA facilities, and subsequently transferred to Guantanamo. Mr. al-Rawi was released without charges in 2007, and returned to his home in the UK.: Tony Asion
Asion is the executive Director of El Pueblo, Inc., the largest Latino Advocacy organization in North Carolina. Born in Havana, Cuba Tony moved to the United States in 1962. After serving in the US Army, Tony became a State Trooper in Delaware and rose to the rank of Lieutenant. After retiring, with the Delaware State Police, Tony became the Director of Public Safety at El Pueblo, then executive director. Tony has a master Degree in Criminal Justice from the Wilmington University and is an Adjunct professor at the University of Nevada National Judicial College.: Cynthia Brown
Cynthia Brown is the principal consultant of The Sojourner Group, a business she founded to help non-profit groups strengthen their leadership and address their organizational development issues. She also is a grassroots organizer and leader, former Durham City Councilwoman and a 2002 candidate for the United States Senate. In 2005-2006, Brown served as a Commissioner on the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which examined the context, causes, sequence and consequence of the events of November 3, 1979, in which five people were killed. native of Reidsville, North Carolina, she has an undergraduate degree in political science from Bennett College for Women and a Master of Public Affairs degree from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. As a W.K. Kellogg National Fellow, Brown studied cultural, racial and economic justice issues in Australia, Brazil, Guatemala, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Egypt, New Zealand and Chile. Brown's many organizational affiliations include the N.C. Coalition on Black and Brown Civic Participation, of which she is a founding member, the Latino Community Development Center, the N.C. Conservation Network, Democracy NC and Delta Sigma Theta Sorority.: Allyson Caison
Caison is a Johnston County-based real estate broker. She lives in Johnston County and has been involved in NCSTN since its inception.: Christina Cowger
Christina Cowger is a facilitator of North Carolina Stop Torture Now (NCSTN), an award-winning grassroots anti-torture coalition. NCSTN was founded in 2005 to expose and stop North Carolina’s support for the U.S. policy of extraordinary rendition. Cowger has a PhD in plant pathology and has worked in several social justice and solidarity organizations, including the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador.: Steven Edelstein
Edelstein has been a partner in the firm of Edelstein & Payne since 1982. Edelstein chairs the National Lawyers Guild Working Group on Torture He is a former staff member and director of Farm Workers Legal Services of North Carolina (1978-1982) and was a board member until 1998; In the 1970s, he was general counsel for the ACLU in Vermont. He co-authored a mental health law for the state of New York and was a housing specialist with St. Louis Legal Services from 1969-72. He is a member of NC Stop Torture Now.: Julia Hall
Julia Hall is a human rights lawyer and Amnesty International’s expert on counter-terrorism and human rights in Europe in the organization’s international secretariat in London, England. She has conducted extensive research and advocacy in a number of areas, including: the prohibition against torture; unlawful (“extraordinary”) rendition; the nonrefoulement obligation; the use of diplomatic assurances; administrative and preventive detention; oversight of intelligence agencies; the use of control orders; and unfair trial procedures, including the use of special advocates and secret evidence. Hall was previous senior legal counsel in the Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism Program at Human Rights Watch, where she worked from 1996-2009. She has authored numerous reports, articles, and amicus briefs on a range of counterterrorism topics; conducted sustained advocacy at UN, Council of Europe, European Union, and national levels; and served as an expert in individual cases before UN treaty-bodies, the European Court of Human Rights, the UK Special Immigration Appeals Commission, the Commission of Inquiry into the Actions of Canadian Officials in Relation to Maher Arar, and in US federal court. In July 2008, she monitored the military commission of Salim Hamdan, Osama bin Laden’s former driver, at Guantanamo Bay. Hall is a member of the International Bar Association’s Terrorism Task Force.: Dr. Edward Horgan
Horgan, is the co-founder of Shannon Watch, former officer Irish Defence Forces and United Nations Peacekeeper, experienced international election monitor, peace and human rights activist, International Secretary of the Irish Peace and Neutrality Alliance.: Robin Kirk
Kirk is the executive director of the Duke Human Rights Center. She has authored three books, including More Terrible Than Death: Massacres, Drugs and America’s War in Colombia (PublicAffairs) and The Monkey’s Paw: New Chronicles from Peru (University of Massachusetts Press). She is the coeditor of The Peru Reader: History, Culture, Politics (Duke University) and helps edit Duke University Press’s World Readers series. An award-winning poet, Kirk also won the 2005 Glamour magazine non-fiction contest with her essay on the death penalty, available in the November 2005 issue. In 2005-2006, she was a consultant to the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the first-ever truth commission within the United States. Kirk authored, co-authored and edited over twelve reports for Human Rights Watch, all available on-line.: Paula Kweskin
Kweskin is a 3rd Year Law Student and works with the Immigration and Human Rights Policy Clinic. She serves as the Notes & Comment Editor of the North Carolina Journal of International Law and Commercial Regulation. She is a former Robertson Scholar and received her B.A. at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.: Lisa Magarrell
Lisa Magarrell is Director of US Programs at the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), and is a recognized expert on truth commissions and reparations. The US Accountability Project focuses on accountability for human rights abuses in US counterterrorism operations after 9/11, through acknowledgment of the truth, prosecutions of those most responsible, redress and reforms. A lawyer with extensive experience in the human rights field, since joining the ICTJ in 2001 Ms. Magarrell has provided technical assistance on transitional justice issues in Peru, the United States and a number of other countries around the world, and has written widely on the subject.: Eric Muller
After earning his Phi Beta Kappa key from Brown and serving as current topics editor for the Yale Law and Policy Review while at Yale, Muller clerked for United States District Judge H. Lee Sarokin in Newark, New Jersey from 1987 to 1988. He then practiced in the litigation department of a private law firm in Manhattan from 1988 to 1990, before joining the United States Attorney's Office in Newark, where he served as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Criminal Appeals Division from 1990 to 1994. After several years of adjunct teaching at Seton Hall Law School while still in government practice, Muller moved to the University of Wyoming College of Law in 1994 to begin full-time teaching, specializing in criminal justice and constitutional issues. In 1997, he was named the outstanding teacher at Wyoming College of Law. Muller joined the UNC faculty in the fall of 1998. He has published articles in the Yale Law Journal, the Harvard Law Review, and the University of Chicago Law Review, among many other academic journals. His book “Free to Die for their Country: The Story of the Japanese American Draft Resisters of World War II,” was published in August of 2001 by the University of Chicago Press, and was named one of the Washington Post Book World's Top Nonfiction Titles of 2001. His second book, “American Inquisition: The Hunt for Japanese American Disloyalty in World War II,” was published by the University of North Carolina Press in October of 2007. In 2008, Muller became Associate Dean for Faculty Development at UNC Chapel Hill.: Taiyyaba Qureshi
Qureshi is a 3rd Year Law Student and works with the Immigration and Human Rights Policy Clinic. Her B.A. is from the University of North Carolina. She authored “State of Emergency: General Pervez Musharraf's Executive Assault on Judicial Independence in Pakistan,” in the forthcoming North Carolina Journal of International Law and Commercial Regulation.: Jennifer Rudinger
Rudinger graduated from Duke University with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science in 1991 and received her law degree from The Ohio State University College of Law in 1996. During law school, she volunteered for the ACLU of Ohio and for the Ohio chapter of N.O.W., clerked for an attorney who handles employment discrimination and civil rights cases, and completed a judicial externship with the Ohio Supreme Court. From 1997 - 2004, Rudinger served as the Executive Director of the Alaska Civil Liberties Union where among other accomplishments, after 9/11, she worked with (primarily Republican) local, state and Congressional leadership from Alaska to find ways of striking the appropriate balance between keeping Americans safe and preserving the fundamental values of privacy and individual liberty that define America's character as a nation. Rudinger moved from Anchorage to Raleigh in May 2004 to serve as the Executive Director of the ACLU of North Carolina.: Margaret Satterthwaite
Margaret Satterthwaite is a Faculty Director of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (CHRGJ) at NYU School of Law, and Assistant Professor of Clinical Law of the International Human Rights Clinic. She also serves as Faculty Direcor of the Root-Tilden-Kern program. Her recent scholarship includes Rendered Meaningless: Extraordinary Rendition and the Rule of Law (published in the George Washington Law Review in 2007) and Human Rights Advocacy Stories (co-edited with Deena Hurwitz and Douglas Ford, forthcoming), a volume in the Law Stories series. After receiving her law degree from NYU in 1999, Satterthwaite clerked for Judge Betty Fletcher of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The following year she was the Furman Fellow at the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, where she focused on emergency law and collusion in Northern Ireland. In 2002, Satterthwaite clerked at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Between 2002 and 2003, Satterthwaite was a human rights consultant for the United Nations, working with the human rights section of the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM). In 2003, she was hired as Research Director of NYU's Center for Human Rights and Global Justice. She joined the full-time faculty in January 2006. Satterthwaite's research interests include human rights in the “war on terror,” economic and social rights, and the human rights of migrants. She a member of the National Security Task Force of the City Bar of New York and is Co-Chair of the Human Rights Interest Group of the American Society of International Law.: Sarah Shields
Sarah Shields teaches the history of the Middle East at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Her research focuses on the development of collective identities during the 1920s and 1930s in Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. Named a “favorite geek” by the Independent, she speaks frequently on issues of public interest, including the Israel/Palestine conflict, the war in Iraq, and the history of Muslim societies. She is currently directing (with Banu Gokariksel, Geography) a year-long exploration of diversity and conformity in Muslim societies.: Gavin Simpson
Simpson worked as Lead Investigator and Advisor to Senator Dick Marty, since 1998 a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. In June 2006, Marty’s report, Secret detentions and illegal transfers of detainees involving Council of Europe member states, contained evidence that European states had assisted disappearances, secret flights, and underground prisons linked to the Central Intelligence Agency. Mr. Simpson has also worked for nearly five years for the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (TRCs) of Sierra Leone and Liberia.: Stephen Soldz
Soldz is director of the Center for Research, Evaluation, and Program Development at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis, where he also teaches and practices as a psychoanalyst, clinical psychologist, and active researcher. His research has focused on problems in psychotherapy process and outcome, personality processes in development and pathology, substance abuse, and youth tobacco use. He co-edited the book Reconciling Empirical Knowledge and Clinical Experience: The Art and Science of Psychotherapy. Dr. Soldz is a co-founder of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology, which has made international news with its campaign to challenge the participation of psychologists in interrogation and torture. He is president-elect of Psychologists for Social Responsibility.: Marianne Twu
Twu is a 3rd Year Law Student and works with the Immigration and Human Rights Policy Clinic. She is the Articles Editor of the North Carolina Journal of International Law and Commercial Regulation. She received her B.A. from Duke University.: Steven Watt
Steven Watt is a senior staff attorney with the ACLU Human Rights Program, specializing in litigation before federal courts and international tribunals; counsel in El Masri v. Tenet and Mohamed v. Jeppesen, challenges to the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program.: Deborah Weissman
Weissman is the Reef Ivey II Distinguished Professor of Law and Director of Clinical Programs at the University of North Carolina School of Law. Her current teaching interests include immigration, human rights, and gender violence. She has directed clinical projects that have focused on local law enforcement of immigration laws, immigration detention, reparations for families of murder victims in Cd. Juárez, legislation relating to extraordinary rendition and torture, and other related immigration and human rights matters. Her recent publications include Gender and Human Rights: Between Morals and Politics, in Gender Equality: Dimensions of Women’s Equal Citizenship (Cambridge Press, Linda C.McClain & Joanna L. Grossman, eds. 2009), Legal and Social Perspectives on Local Enforcement of Immigration under the Section 287(g) Program (with Hannah Gill, Mai Thi Nguyen, and Katherine Lewis Parker) 3 Popular Government Spring/Summer 2 (2009) Public Power and Private Purpose: Odious Debt and the Political Economy of Hegemony (with Louis A. Pérez, Jr.), and Proyecto de Derechos Humanos: Una Perspectiva Crítica, Revista Temas, Número 47 Julio-Septiembre 2006.

For more information or to R.S.V.P, please contact NC Stop Torture Now at contact@ncstoptorturenow.org, or Duke Human Rights Center at rights@duke.edu or (919) 668-6511.