Guest Blogger: Deborah Popowski

Today IntLawGrrls welcomes its 2d guest blogger, Deborah Popowski, author of the above post on accountability, in Argentina and in the United States.
A 3d-year law student at Harvard, Deborah (left), along with fellow student Fernando Delgado, cofounded Stop Torture: The Harvard Anti-Torture Coalition. This Anti-Torture Group's a division of HLS Advocates for Human Rights, a student organization of which Deborah's also co-president. The group provides volunteer support to the Harvard International Human Rights Clinic, coordinates its own projects under faculty supervision, and engages in public education, lobbying, and direct action. Additionally, Deborah's worked on human rights issues in Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East. She interned for Manfred Nowak, the United Nations' current Special Rapporteur on Torture; for Gitanjali Gutierrez, staff attorney for the Guantánamo division of the Center for Constitutional Rights; and for Justiça Global, a Brazilian NGO that litigates before the Inter-American human rights system.
After receiving a degree in political science and social though from the University of Virginia, Deborah worked in journalism and in international development -- including 2 years' service with the Peace Corps. An Argentina-born naturalized U.S. citizen, she is proficient in 5 languages.
Deborah dedicates her post to her own IntLawGrrls inspiration, the suffragist Alice Paul.
Heartfelt thanks for your contribution, Deborah!

Ghosts at Gitmo

Check out this Washington Post op-ed, "Going to See a Ghost." In it Gitanjali S. Gutierrez (right) commits to paper thoughts about her client, Majid Khan, just before her 1st visit with him at Guantánamo; thereafter, she explains, "military regulations will restrict my ability to speak publicly about the case."
A lawyer for the Guantánamo Global Justice Initiative of the Center for Constitutional Rights and the 1st habeas attorney to travel to the detention center in Cuba, Gutierrez writes that Khan lived in the United States as an asylee from age 16 until age 22, when he returned to his birthplace to marry. There, she continues, he "was kidnapped by Pakistani police, who turned him over to the CIA," in whose secret custody he was held for 3 years, as 1 of the several off-the-books captives who've come to be called "ghost detainees." Calling for fairness in Khan's case, Gutierrez concludes:

In literature, ghosts are symbols not only of mortality but also of accountability. ... For three years, Majid Khan was a ghost. Now he has reappeared. Let his terrifying experiences serve to remind us of the danger posed when power goes unchecked -- and of our duty not to be silent but to stand and fight for the fundamental rights that protect us all.