Author Archives: Tom Parker

About Tom Parker

Tom Parker is the former Policy Director for Terrorism, Counterterrorism and Human Rights at Amnesty International USA. He was previously Executive Director of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center in New Haven, Connecticut and has worked extensively during the past five years as a consultant on post-conflict justice issues for clients such as USAID, the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Open Society Institute on projects in Darfur, Iraq and Georgia. Tom has also served as a war crimes investigator with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and as a counterterrorist official with the British government. Tom has held adjunct positions with both Yale University’s Residential College Seminar Program and Bard University’s Globalization and International Affairs Program teaching courses on trends in international terrorism and counter-terrorism. He has also been a member of the adjunct faculty of the Defense Institute for International Legal Studies (DIILS) serving as an instructor on counterterrorism training programs in countries as diverse as Latvia, Rwanda, Nepal, Albania, Thailand, Lebanon and Sri Lanka. He is a graduate of the London School of Economics, the University of Leiden and Brown.
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Act Now or Gitmo Never Ends

August 3, 2011 at 3:30 PM

© US DoD

When Congress returns from its summer recess in September one of the first tasks on its agenda will be hammering out a final draft of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).  Unless we take action now this bill will lay the foundation for a permanent military prison camp at Guantanamo Bay.

As things currently stand, both the House and Senate have both produced language in their respective drafts of the NDAA that seeks to redefine the authority under which the President conducts the ‘war’ on al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and ‘associated forces’.

One lingering concern in Congress is that the original Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) passed in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks failed to create a framework under which to detain private individuals captured during military operations. SEE THE REST OF THIS POST

What We Can Learn From Rais Bhuiyan

July 18, 2011 at 2:37 PM

Rais Bhuiyan is challenging stereotypes about “Muslim radicalization” every day.

You may have read about Rais on this blog before, or even participated in our online chat, but the importance of his story to our larger work fighting prejudice in a post 9-11 world can’t be overstated.

Just ten days after the September 11 attacks Mark Stroman walked into the gas station where Rais Bhuiyan was working and shot him point blank in the face with a shotgun cartridge.

Against all odds Mr. Bhuiyan survived the attack but Waqar Hasan and Vasudev Patel were both killed by Stroman in similar incidents in which the self-styled ‘Arab slayer’ sought ‘revenge’ for Al Qaeda’s assault on New York and Washington by targeting residents of his small corner of Texas with darker skin than his own.

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Obama's Alleged Link to Secret Prisons and Extraordinary Rendition

July 14, 2011 at 10:00 AM

Following hard on the heels of the revelation that the Obama administration had held Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame in secret detention on a US naval vessel patrolling off the coast of Somalia for over two months, comes a startling new claim from The Nation magazine that the Obama administration is back in the extraordinary rendition business.

Writing in the latest edition of The Nation, journalist Jeremy Scahill alleges that since early 2009 the United States has maintained a secret prison located on a compound within the perimeter of Mogadishu Airport and that in July 2009 the United States was involved in the extraordinary rendition of Ahmed Abdullahi Hassan from Kenya to Somalia.

Without further independent investigation it is difficult to make a definitive judgment about Scahill’s claims but it is worth noting that he is the author of the well-regarded study “Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army” and has extensive contacts in the intelligence, special forces, and private military contractor communities.

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A Dangerous Somali Fudge

July 8, 2011 at 12:24 PM

Late Monday night the Obama administration reported that it had transferred a Somali national called Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame from detention on a US warship somewhere in the Persian Gulf to the jurisdiction of the New York federal court.

Warsame is accused of having provided material support to the radical Somali Islamic group Al Shabab and Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. He was reportedly detained on a fishing trawler somewhere in international waters between Somalia and Yemen. Another individual detained with him has since been released.

On the face of it, the Obama administration’s decision to refer Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame’s case to be heard in federal court is to be welcomed. The criminal justice system is both the most appropriate and best-equipped venue to adjudicate such cases. SEE THE REST OF THIS POST

What the Fourth of July Is All About

July 5, 2011 at 9:28 AM

Fireworks explode over the White House. (Matt Campbell-Pool/Getty Images)

Last Thursday the Obama administration launched its new National Strategy for Counterterrorism, tailored to the post-bin Laden era. At first glance there seems to be a great deal for human rights advocates to welcome in this document.

Introducing the new strategy John Brennan, the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, told his audience that the foundation of this new strategy would be a fundamental commitment to core American values and human rights:

“When we fail to abide by our values, we play right into the hands of al-Qa’ida, which falsely tries to portray us as a people of hypocrisy and decadence. Conversely, when we uphold these values it sends a message to the people around the world that it is America—not al-Qa’ida—that represents opportunity, dignity, and justice. In other words, living our values helps keep us safe.”

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The Courage To Speak Out Against Torture

June 27, 2011 at 1:14 PM

Yesterday was the United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture.

In many ways, fighting against the use of torture around the world has been Amnesty’s signature issue over the past 50 years. In that time we have tried to shine a light both on the victims of torture and its perpetrators.

However, there is one group that has often been overlooked: Those rare individuals who display the courage to stand up against those who would use torture, regardless the cost to themselves.

Individuals like Military Policeman Joe Darby, who blew the whistle on the abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib by referring pictures taken by Charles Graner to the US Army’s Criminal Investigations Division (CID):

“I’ve always had a moral sense of right and wrong. And I knew that you know, friends or not, it had to stop.”

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US Courts Best Equipped To Fight Terror

June 22, 2011 at 2:39 PM

Yesterday in Manhattan federal court, with a minimum of fuss, Arid Uka was charged with first degree murder.

Uka, an ethnic Albanian from Kosovo, allegedly murdered two US servicemen and wounded two others in an assault on a bus full of USAF personnel at Frankfurt International Airport in March 2011.

Uka reportedly told German authorities that he was seeking revenge for the US invasion of Afghanistan and had been stirred to action after watching videos on YouTube. He claimed to be acting alone and said that he was not affiliated to any terrorist group.

Uka is currently detained in Germany and the United States is seeking his extradition to stand trial in New York. No one in New York has bleated about security fears or called for Uka to be sent to GTMO. The wheels of justice grind on slow and sure.

What a contrast with Kentucky where Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has been calling hysterically for two Iraqi refugees recently arrested in his state to be shipped to Guantanamo post haste without due process of law so that he can sleep safely in his bed at night once more.

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Is Gun Ownership America's Most Resilient Value?

June 14, 2011 at 10:13 AM

Adam Gadahn, a US convert to Islam who has been indicted for treason in the United States, making a statement. (AFP/Getty Images)

Last week Al Qaeda issued its first major propaganda video since bin Laden’s death calling for further attacks on the American homeland and no one seems to have paid the blindest bit of attention.

The video was issued by Adam Gadahn, a Californian-born Al Qaeda fighter and propagandist who was frequently named as a potential successor to bin Laden in the immediate aftermath of the Abbottobad operation.

Born Adam Pearlman, Gadahn, who is also known as Azzam the American, converted to Islam in the late 1990s and moved to Pakistan where he joined Al Qaeda. Quite a switch for a kid who had once formed a one-man death metal band called Aphasia and wrote articles for the music fanzine Xenocide.

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Stand Up For Torture Victim Maher Arar

June 1, 2011 at 1:25 PM
Maher Arar

Maher Arar, ©Amnesty International

Today we mark the beginning of Torture Awareness Month by highlighting the case of Maher Arar.

Arar, a Canadian telecommunications engineer, was detained by US immigration while transiting New York on his way home from a family holiday and plunged into a Kafkaesque nightmare of torture and abuse.

In September 2002 Arar was traveling through JFK airport when he was pulled aside by US officials. Canadian police had generated a deeply flawed intelligence report based on a brief social encounter in Ottawa between Arar and ‘a person of interest.’ US officials accepted it without question and Arar’s nightmare began.

Despite his citizenship and residency in Canada, Arar was handed over illegally to the Syrian government – a country whose human rights record the United States has routinely condemned. He was held for 374 days before he was finally released and returned home:
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Killing Osama

May 27, 2011 at 12:52 PM

Politicians from across the political spectrum in the United States have been quick to hail the death of Osama bin Laden at the hands of US special forces as an act of justice.  The operation may have been many things, but the exercise of the due process of law it was not.

The Obama administration has yet to set out the legal grounds under which the operation in Pakistan was conducted, with senior officials characterizing it variously as an act of national self-defense or a military engagement. From a legal standpoint neither framework is a particularly good fit.

What the operation to ‘kill or capture’ bin Laden resembles most closely is the kind of targeted assassination mission frequently undertaken by the Israeli Defense Forces and this begs the question, has the US now fully embraced a similar policy?

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