"Tortured Reasoning: Has the United States Abandoned the Geneva Conventions After 9/11?” is the title of a free talk at the UNM School of Law Thursday, Feb. 17, from noon to 1 p.m. in the forum.
Joshua Dratel, defense counsel in several high profile U.S. terrorism prosecutions, is the guest speaker.
Dratel served as counsel for Sami Omar Al-Hussayen, acquitted in federal court in Idaho last spring. He also defended Wadih El-Hage in United States v. Usama bin Laden , which involved the 1998 bombings of the United States embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. He represented Mohamed El-Mezain, a defendant in the federal prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, and Mohamed Suleiman al-Nalfi, another defendant in the embassy bombings case.
Dratel is lead counsel for David Hicks, an Australian detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Prosecution on the case is the U.S. military commission.
He has written and lectured on terrorism issues, the USA Patriot Act, the Classified Information Procedures Act and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Dratel was a guest on ABC Nightline in regard to civil liberties and security in the wake of the events of Sept. 11, 2001. He is co-editor with Karen J. Greenberg of “ The Torture Papers: The Legal Road to Abu Ghraib” (Cambridge University Press, 2005), a compendium of government memoranda.
The talk is presented by UNM School of Law faculty and co-sponsored by the law school's chapter of the National Lawyer's Guild.
Contact: Laurie Mellas Ramirez, (505) 277-5915
Posted by scarr at February 9, 2005 09:20 AM